Ghana has had four modern breweries for several decades, producing European lagers and Irish stout, and the country imports beers, wines, and spirits from around the world. Despite this avalanche of foreign beverages, some of its traditional intoxicants are still produced by backyard brewers and distillers hidden deep in the jungle. In city restaurants and bars, the drinks on display are familiar to the international drinker, and you may need to discreetly inquire about the availability of a local specialty, but in remote rural areas, the preferred intoxicant is still the elixir you protected. to the ancestors of daily life cares.
In northern Ghana, a local beer called pito is still widely produced from millet or sorghum. To see whistle made by women in Navrongo in the twilight of a tropical night, with the flames of the wood fire curling around the sides of the huge black spherical pot, is to witness a real-life representation of the witches in Macbeth. The cooking pot is so large that if it were larger, women would not be able to reach in with their wooden stirring sticks.
A similar local beer called bubra appears to have been brewed in southern Ghana by the Ga tribe of the Greater Accra region, but currently the term bubra is used to refer to any draft beer, including those produced by modern breweries. Another local southern beer, Ngoma Malt, is made commercially in Lomé, Togo, just beyond the eastern border of Ghana, from where it is exported to many countries, including Ghana. This beer may be linked to the Ewe tribe that dominates both Togo and the Volta region of Ghana.
Perhaps the best known and most appreciated traditional alcoholic beverage in Ghana is palm wine, made from the fermented sap of the oil palm. The process requires the felling or uprooting of the palm tree, and as these trees take up to five years to bear fruit, palm wine production is often criticized as a waste of resources. Palm wine pickers are sometimes called upon to harvest a tree that is damaged by the storm or must be cut down for land development, but many healthy and productive trees are sacrificed in praise of Bacchus.
By far the most potent alcoholic beverage produced in Ghana is called akpeteshie. It is made by distilling palm wine or fermented sugarcane juice in homemade stills often hidden by a stream in the woods. With an estimated 40 to 50 percent alcohol content by volume, no one is said to drink akpeteshie and smile. However, many people drink it and some become addicted to it. Like all strong alcoholic beverages, it damages the liver and addicts turn a bright orange color during the last few months before circumference. If the ancestors took akpeteshie to forget their everyday worries, it is likely that for some the effect was permanent.
