Not mentioned is one more part of the battle: toddy is considered a low-class drink for rowdy workers, and tightly regulated accordingly. This guy has been battling Singaporean bureaucracy for six years now just to be allowed to import it from neighboring Malaysia:<p><a href="https://www.ricemedia.co/one-mans-quest-to-revive-toddy-the-booze-that-built-singapore/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ricemedia.co/one-mans-quest-to-revive-toddy-the-...</a>
I used to travel to India a lot and would have this when staying with friends in Hyderabad, flies and all. My friend would send one of his servants out in the morning to buy it for us. The way he explained it - someone would climb the palm tree in the evening, make cuts in a place where the liquid would leak out and pool, then there would be fermentation overnight (bacterial, not yeast), and then they collect it on the morning.<p>It reminded me of a drink here in Switzerland made during grape harvest and also bacterial fermentation. Also sour cider in the babe region but that’s much more sophisticated.<p>This palm juice alcohol is very primitive and probably something monkeys drank.
I am very intrigued as local, culturally specific wines/beers/fermentation speak so much to our creativity and community as human beings.<p>But thanks for the heads up about Nipah Virus! Wow!
Ever since seeing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6skjbVDVEg4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6skjbVDVEg4</a> my wife has been trying to find a way of importing it to make the dish herself
This story is from 2021 so I wonder how those startups are faring now. For a while molecular alcohol was the hot thing, with startups like Endless West raising a lot of VC to try and shortcut aging.