Chhaang chang tibetan brew for a cold winter night

[bog69]

hi. does anyone have a recipe for Chhaang (Nectar of Gods) or chang????? I tried this on my travels in nepal about 10 years ago & it was quite pleasant. it was a pewter pint mug full of fermented millet seed which was served with a flask of very hot water. the idea was to cover the grains with the hot water & stir a little then wait. after a few minutes you sipped the hot brew through a aluminum tube, with a crushed end to stop u sucking up the grains. it wasnt a bad taste & you just topped up your mug with the water when you had finished & started again. my friend, who i was travelling with, had tried this with some of his tibetan friends in Ladakh (high up in the Indian Himalaya's) He said that was a lot stronger & better tasting. that may be due to the altitude tho & cold weather. this is what i have found on the internet about it

"The brew tastes like ale. Alcohol content is quite low, but it produces an intense feeling of heat and well-being, ideal for enduring the temperatures which go well below freezing in winter."

"Myth
It is said to be the best remedy to ward off the severe cold of the mountains. It reputedly has many healing properties for conditions like common cold, fever, allergic rhinitis,alcoholism etc.

According to legends, chhaang is also popular with the Yeti, who often raid isolated mountain villages to drink it."

"Chhaang is a relative of the more universally known -- beer. Millet or rice is used to brew the drink. Semi-fermented seeds of millet are served, stuffed in a mug of bamboo called the Domru. Then boiling water is poured and sipped through a narrow bore bamboo pipe called the Pipsing. It tastes like ale. Alcohol content is quite low, but it produces an intense feeling of heat and well-being, ideal to endure temperature which go way below freezing point in winter. This traditional drink is a must in many religious & most social occasions. According to legends chhang is also popular with the Yeti, who often raid isolated mountain villages to drink it.

[hoppingMad]

Sounds like an interesting concoction. If you don't get the recipe, looks like you will have to make the return trip. I would say you probablt have the basis for an attempt of your own anyway. I would gues the wild yeast would be passed down from brew to brew and would be pretty "wild" alright. You would almost certainly be innoculating with one of our more pure strains and therefore the flavour would be quite different, and quite likely more paletable too !

Why not just give it a go by crushing up some millett and mashing, then adding some yeast with no boil and see what happens. The worst that could happen is that Yeti's may arrive on your doorstep.

As I was reading your post, it reminded me of the "Tintin in Tibet" episode where Tintin lost his friend Chang in the Himalayas and shouted aat the top of his voice.....
"CHHAAAANG"
sorry to all. Just going through my second childhood

[Hogarth]

Mmmm ... Chang. Delicious stuff. I used to teach in a Tibetan school up the Himalayas and became quite a convert. It's a good thing I liked it, because whenever there was a party, which was often, you had to drink three bowls of it very quickly -- I think one bowl for the Buddha, one for the Dharma, and one for the Sangha -- and you had to do so before the girls who were serving it had finished singing. The result being that one got very ... very ... drunk.

I don't have a recipe I'm afraid, but there's one in Tsering Wangmo's Tibetan cookbook, I'm pretty certain. Hang on...

Yeah, just had a look on Amazon. It's called the Lhasa Moon Tibetan Cookbook, yours for £8. If you can't find a chang recipe on the net anywhere, it might be your best bet. Let us know how you get on!

[bog69]

cheers for that. did you drink it with the grain in the mug or was it just the liquid???? i like the idea of topping up

[Hogarth]

No, it was just the liquid. The chang was made down in the village, and arrived at the school in plastic containers. But I think the process is the same -- the grains themselves are fermented and then sparged, and the resulting run-off is the chang.

At the Tibetan new year they heat up the chang and put in rice and raisons. There's a knock on your door at around 5am, you stumble out of bed and open it blearily -- because you've been drinking chang the night before -- and there are a couple of girls standing there, holding a bowl of the warm chang and singing. Again you have to neck it before they have finished the song. It's not a bad way to the start the new year, especially if you're allowed to go back to bed afterwards.

[bog69]

cook book ordered. hopefully will be drinking chang by end of this winter. will post on here when i start to make.
i will also try & get an authentic tibetan recipe from a friend who has friends in tibetan refugee camps in nepal & india. hopefully will be able to source some local yeast as well

[Jambo]

Dragging up an old thread here but better than starting a new one I think!

Not long returned from some Indian travels including some treking in the Himalayas - this Tibetan Chang stuff was served up to us while sitting around the fire one cold night and it was just the job...

As is often the case in that part of the world, I asked 2 people the recipe and got about 5 different answers. Bog69 - did you find something that worked!?

Cheers

[alix101]

Bizarre but sounds nice on a freezing night..good luck.
Something similar in concept and a real delight is a hot scotchy.only done this once its a magnificent and I'm regretting not doing it yesterday when I was freezing my tits off brewing.
You take a mug of your wort first running and add in whisky or bourbon and enjoy.

[Jambo]

That would be superb Alix!

I would add to the notes above that the consistencies I found in the recipes I was told were:

- It seems the millet is cooked first
- They seem to ferment it with minimal water, sounded similar consistency to a mash, perhaps drier, potentially just the residual moisture from cooking
- They say they add packaged yeast rather than relying on anything wild (probably because the same people who told me this also boil it first..!)
- There is no residual yeast taste, it is remarkable good for a very crude brew. The closest thing I have tried to it here is sake.
- It can't have been very strong in reality, but at 2500m altitude after walking all day it was fairly potent.