Opaque Sorghum Beer
Thick, gritty, sour and opaque, brewed from maize and sorghum malt with wild airborne yeast, fermented in three to five days and drunk while still working. Low in alcohol, high in B vitamins, and treated across southern Africa as food as much as drink.
It goes by the region: umqombothi in South Africa, utshwala, joala, doro elsewhere. Traditionally brewed by women and served from a clay ukhamba passed hand to hand, because a beer still fermenting cannot be stored. The commercial version, Chibuku, was developed in the 1950s at Kitwe in what was then Northern Rhodesia by Max Heinrich, to give miners something affordable, and reached Zimbabwe in 1962 — sold in cartons that must be shaken before drinking, since the grain solids settle. Zimbabweans call it scud. Until 2026-09-12 no era was linked, because the archive's eras ran Mesopotamia, Egypt, Europe and colonial North America and none of them was this; the origins era now is.
Covered in Era 10 — Beer Was Invented More Than Once.
1 brewery across 1 country
Opaque Sorghum Beer in the archive
Other wild & sour styles