Nam khao (fermented rice wine)

Fermenting cooked rice with a dry starter is an old household practice across the rice lands of mainland Southeast Asia, where the grain that feeds the family also supplies its drink. It belongs to the village and the farming household rather than to the court or the market, and it is carried by those who grow and steam their own rice. The rice that Alford and Duguid describe, the plain aromatic jasmine and the sticky rice, is the grain from which such ferments begin.

Nam khao, literally rice water, is here taken as the cloudy, mildly sweet and faintly sour liquor drawn from cooked rice that has been inoculated with a dry starter and left to ferment. The base is steamed glutinous rice, Oryza sativa var. glutinosa, or plain long-grain rice, cooked until tender and cooled before it is seeded. As the starch converts to sugar and the sugar to alcohol, the grains soften into a pale, milky mash and a liquid gathers about them. The result is low in strength, opaque and lightly effervescent, and it is the ancestor in method of the clear spirits distilled from the same fermented rice.

Nam khao is drunk with the food of the rice household: steamed sticky rice, grilled meats, and sharp, salty, chilli-hot dishes. Its gentle sweetness and light acidity soothe the heat of chilli, while the low strength and slight fizz cleanse the palate between bites of salted or fatty food. It suits a meal that is dominated by rice, because it carries the same grain in liquid form.