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Ghana Life: Alcoholic Beverages

Ghana has had four modern breweries for several decades, producing European lagers and Irish stouts, and the country imports beers, wines and spirits from around the world. Despite this flood of foreign drinks, some of its traditional local spirits are still produced by brewers and distillers hidden deep in the jungle. In city restaurants and bars, the drinks on display are familiar to the international drinker, and it may be necessary to inquire discreetly about the availability of a local specialty, but in remote rural areas, the intoxicant of choice remains the elixir that protects the body. ancestors of the concerns of everyday life.

In northern Ghana, a local beer called pito is still widely produced from millet or sorghum. To see the women-made dick at Navrongo in the twilight of a tropical afternoon, with the flames of the wood fire curling up the sides of the huge black spherical pot, is to witness a real-life portrayal of the witches in Macbeth. The brewing pot is so large that if it were any larger, the women would not be able to reach it 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 today the term bubra is used to refer to any draft beer, including those produced by modern breweries. Another local southern beer, Ngoma Malt, is commercially brewed in Lome, Togo, just over 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, produced 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 collectors are sometimes called upon to harvest a tree damaged by a storm or that must be felled for land development, but many healthy and productive trees are sacrificed in praise of Bacchus.

By far the strongest alcoholic beverage produced in Ghana is called akpeteshie. It is made by distilling palm wine or fermented sugar cane juice in home stills, often hidden by a stream in the woods. With an estimated 40 to 50 percent alcohol content by volume, it is said that no one drinks akpeteshie and smiles. However, many people drink it and some become addicted. Like all strong alcoholic beverages, it damages the liver and addicts turn a bright orange color during the last few months before circumventing. If the ancestors took akpeteshie to forget their daily worries, it is likely that for some the effect was permanent.

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