I used to brew in Bali. It was in the time of "Jaman Boazy"

(I think *Boazy* eventually got the boot for persistent infractions. I always found it entertaining to read him and *Pericles going at. It was akin to that WARNER BROS cartoon with Wily Coyote & The Sheep Dog.

(and alas that *Pork Belly* is also lost to us. I think he left following a series of sustained Troll attacks.)

It was my Mrs who first brought the nicely clear packaged white pills (about the size of a 10c piece) of sorts home from the local market and soon thereafter she had turned out Festival Food fermented rice cakes.

I was intrigued by this and eventually found a great little web site for brewing Japanese "Farm House" Style Sake, or OSake, to use the honourific.

Then, with the addition of a visit to a cool little brew shop in Perth I acquired a range of specialty yeasts in nice little packets (including some classics like that used in the Champagne region) and to the chemist for some specialty food for the yeasts and soon enough we had bottles pasteurizing on the stove at a cost of about 0.40c per bottle from memory

(which included fancy retail priced organic sweet rice)

It took about 10 days for some nice tastes to start to develop and then we quaffed them, preservative free.

So as it turned out, these packets of white pills that you could buy for a few cents in Australian money at the local market contained both the agent for converting the starch into sugar in the first instance, and then a fermenting agent to convert the sugar into alcohol.

So, if you believe my tale, it becomes apparent that alcohol is woven into the culture at the grass roots in parts of Indonesia.

I also knew an Australian guy who, qualified as a Vintner if I am not mistaken, who ended up being the lead chemist for Hatten Wines for a time.

They get 3 crops of grapes a year in Bali.