Burukutu

Burukutu is a rather popular alcoholic beverage with a prominent vinegar-like flavour that is prepared from millet and sorghum or Guinea corn grains (Kolawole et al., 2007). It is produced throughout northern Africa. It is widely consumed as food because it is thick, paste-like and heavy in the rural areas of northern Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia, and in poor urban neighbourhoods because it is more affordable than commercially brewed beer.

The basic manufacturing process is:-

• Malting the grains of millet and sorghum to produce the sweet sugars needed for the fermentation and flavour development.
• Steeping which require soaking of the malted grains in water for at least three hours.
• Drying where the grains soak up enough water that they sprout. The grains are usually spread on a malting floor and turned for over 5 days to encourage even sprouting.
• Mashing – the grain is milled and mixed with water to form a ‘liquor’ which is slowly heated. The mashing process as in general brewing sees the enzymes digest the starch and convert the sugars which are mainly maltose into a type of beer wort.
• Fermentation where yeast is added to convert sugars to alcohol and then a maturation period where the beverage is allowed to rest before bottling.

The percentage alcohol content of Burukutu is between 3-6% (Bennett et al., 1998). Burukutu has been reported to contain vitamins, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, calcium, 26.7 g starch, and 5.9 g of protein per liter (Egemba and Etuk, 2007).

References

Bennett, L.A., Campillo, C., Chandrashekar, C.R., Gureje, O. (1998) Alcoholic beverage consumption in India, Mexico and Nigeria. Alcohol Health Res. World. 22 pp. 243–252.

Egemba, K.C., Etuk, V.E. (2007) A kinetic study of burukutu fermentation. J. Eng. Appl. Sci. 2 pp. 1193–1198.

Kolawole, O.M., Kayode, R.M.O., Akinduyo, B. (2007) Proximate and microbial analyses of burukut and pito produced in Ilorin, Nigeria. Afr. J. Biotechnol. 6:  pp. 587–590.