Honey beers and ferments of sub-Saharan Africa
Fermented honey drinks made across a wide band of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Xhosa iqhilika of South Africa to the honey beers of Central African forest communities.
Current status
Local living practice
Practised now, in a limited area or by a limited number of communities.
Made today in several of the documented traditions, including small-scale commercial production of iqhilika. For other members of this family the current status is genuinely not established, and this record's living claim rests on the cases where it is.
A widespread and under-described family
Fermented honey drinks are documented across a large part of sub-Saharan Africa, and they are consistently under-represented in writing about honey that treats mead as the European default and tej as the single African exception. In practice, honey ferments occur wherever honey is gathered in quantity and there is a reason to store it in a form other than honey.
Iqhilika, made by Xhosa communities in South Africa, is among the better-documented examples and is produced commercially on a small scale as well as domestically. Honey beers are also recorded among forest communities in the Congo basin, where they are tied to the honey season and to its social occasions.
What makes them different from mead
- They are frequently drunk young and lightly fermented rather than aged, which makes them closer in role to a beer than to a wine.
- Wild yeasts and, in several traditions, specific plant additions do the fermenting, rather than a selected commercial strain.
- The honey is often wild-gathered rather than from hives, so the drink is downstream of a hunting practice.
- Production is domestic and seasonal in most of the documented cases, which is why commercial statistics almost never capture it.
Naming the record
Current status varies enormously by place. Some of these drinks are made commercially today; others are recorded in mid-century ethnography with nothing establishing that they continue. HoneyHQ does not average those into a single claim.
Who it is documented among
Named at the precision the sources support, with the period each record describes. Countries are not cultures, and a monograph dates its fieldwork rather than the present.
Xhosa communities
Eastern Cape, South Africa
Documented in twentieth-century ethnography and in current small-scale commercial production
Iqhilika is the named drink; the record for it is better than for most others in this family.
Cultural significance
In forest honey-gathering societies the honey season is a social and musical occasion, and the drink made from the harvest is part of that rather than a separate product.
What this page does not claim
That honey beer is a pan-African tradition, that every drink in this family is still made, or that any of them is ancient. The record is a set of separate local practices with separate evidence, and it is presented as such.
In short
- Honey ferments occur across sub-Saharan Africa, not only in Ethiopia.
- Usually drunk young and lightly fermented, closer to a beer than to a wine.
- Status differs by tradition and this record refuses to average them.
Sources
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
- Bees and their role in forest livelihoods — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2009) · Industry body
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.