Change Their Ways?

But Will The Bush Beer Boys Change Their Ways?

Will the new, more liberal liquor laws have much effect on the illicit making and consumption of bush beer in the Cook Islands? This has been going on for more than 100 years despite determined attempts to stamp it out.

ADDICTS scoff at imported beers, saying they have no more “kick” than lemonade; and for many of them, anyway, imported beers are too expensive. The situation ob viously won’t resolve itself im mediately.

The art of brewing bush beer was introduced into Rarotonga from Tahiti in 1850. It is usually made from the fermented juices of oranges, bananas, papaws, pineapples or tomatoes.

A few years ago the powerful orange beer seemed to be the most popular, but a brew of malt and hops has grown in popularity.

In making the orange beer, orange juice is filtered into a container; yeast and sugar are added; and the brew is left to work for three days. After this, it is considered mature enough for drinking. It is extremely potent.

In the early days, Rarotongans used imported wooden casks for their illicit brews. In the outer islands, beer tubs were painstakingly made from the hollowed-out trunks of coconut trees.

But the police destroyed all the coconut beer tubs they found, and imported kegs became scarcer than £lO notes.

Four-gallon kerosene tins took their place, and, as a result, some drinkers went down with ptomaine poisoning.

As the drinking of locally-brewed beer has always been unlawful, de votees take to the bush to hold their revels. Hence the name “bush beer”.

At a typical bush beer school, the four-gallon beer container is placed in the centre of a squatting ring of drinkers. The first man dips in his glass and downs his drink as quickly as possible. Then the glass is handed to the next man, who repeats the pro cedure, and the single glass is passed around the circle until all the beer has gone.

Before long the drinkers are sing ing happily and playing their guitars and ukeleles, and for a while their work-a-day cares are forgotten.

But if one of them is a carrier of tuberculosis or some other in fectious disease, there can be serious after-effects for the others.

Home brew made with malt and hops to whatever alcoholic strength is desired has gained in popularity in recent years while orange beer has declined.

One reason for this trend is that malt beer is easier to make. Another reason might be that since the estab lishment in Rarotonga of a fruit juicing factory, which buys up all rejected oranges, the fruit has become too scarce and perhaps too valuable for the brewing of bush beer.