Pee

What it is

Pee is a dry rice starter from Arunachal Pradesh, India. Pradhan and Tamang group it with paa and phut as Arunachal starters, beside the marcha, phab and related starters of Nepal, Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan. Like the others, it is a dry cake of rice and herbs that carries a mixed microbial population to the next fermentation.

The paper gives two community attributions for pee. Its opening sentence names the Apatani, and a later sentence names the Nyshing for the beverage opo. Because the two conflict, the community linked with pee needs a second source before it is relied on.

Making the starter

The authors describe one method for the family of dry starters. Soaked and pounded rice flour is mixed with local wild herbs, a few spices and 1 to 2 per cent of a previously made starter in powder form. The mix is shaped into doughs, which are wrapped in locally available leaves. The doughs ferment for two to three days at room temperature, then dry in the sun for two to three days.

For pee, the paper does not give its own ratio, temperature or time. It states that the method is more or less the same as for marcha, with rice as the substrate and a local leaf as the wrapping. Those general figures should not be taken as a recipe for a home batch.

Microbial community

The survey sampled three pee starters from the Ziro valley, at about 1,576 metres. Their moisture content was 11 to 13 per cent, and their pH was 5.5 (range 5.2 to 5.8). Bacterial counts were about 17.6 × 10^7 cfu/g (range 16.8 to 18.4 × 10^7). The authors isolated 17 bacterial strains from pee.

The pee isolates included Firmicutes (about 67 per cent), Actinobacteria (about 17 per cent) and Proteobacteria (about 16 per cent). The paper records Klebsiella pneumoniae among the Gram-negative bacteria in pee. Lactic acid bacteria were present in the survey as a whole, and the bacterial list does not show which organisms drive saccharification or alcohol production. Moulds and yeasts were studied in other surveys cited by the authors.

Beverages and use

The paper names two rice beverages for pee: opo, which it attributes to the Nyshing, and apong, which it attributes to the Apatani. Both are described as mildly alcoholic. The paper gives no alcohol content for either and no process details beyond the starter's role in fermenting rice.

The wider description in the same paper is that rice or finger millet is fermented into mildly alcoholic drinks of about 4 per cent, using dry starters of this kind. Pee is one of the starters the paper ties to that practice.

Storage and renewal

Traditionally sun-dried starters of this type are kept in a dry place, and the authors cite earlier work that stores them for more than a year. The survey's samples were held in a desiccator at room temperature before analysis. The traditional way of renewing the starter is back-slopping, in which a portion of the previous batch is added to the new one. The paper gives no renewal interval for pee.

Safety and limits

The survey identifies the bacteria present in pee by sequencing their 16S rRNA genes. It does not show that a pee starter is safe to use, and finding an organism does not make it a suitable starter. The Gram-negative Klebsiella pneumoniae in pee is reported as an isolate, and the paper does not assess its function. Smell, taste, bubbling and visible growth do not establish safety.

This page gives no home renewal, storage or fermentation instruction for pee. Whether pee can be kept or passed on outside its community practice is not established by this source.