Suusac (Somali fermented camel milk)

What suusac is

Suusac is a sour camel-milk drink of Somali herding communities, above all in northern and north-eastern Kenya and in Somalia. Fresh camel milk ferments in a vessel treated with smoke. The drink is usually white, acid, slightly astringent and much more fluid than cow's-milk yoghurt, with a taste that joins fermented-dairy acidity to aromas from the smoked container. It is drunk, not spooned.

The name suusac is recorded in the Somali community Tezira Lore studied in 2004, an earlier 1990 dairy-science paper calls the same milk Susa, and later work uses susac and suusa. Somali is written in the Latin alphabet, so no separate original spelling is needed. Gariss, dhanaan, shubat and chal are fermented camel milks of other regions and are not automatic synonyms, since their ingredients, starters and methods may differ.

The raw material is milk of the one-humped camel, Camelus dromedarius. The Isiolo fieldwork records two containers: a small milking vessel, toobke or bire, tied to wood of the garas tree, Dobera glabra, and a larger storage and fermentation vessel, haan or dhiil. English-language studies often call them gourds together. Smoking used smouldering Acacia seyal, now botanically Vachellia seyal, and milk moved into the larger vessel ferments spontaneously.

It is mainly a lactic acid fermentation, with yeasts and other fungi isolated from finished samples. The most common lactic bacterium in the 2004 and 2005 Kenyan work was Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. mesenteroides, with Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, Latilactobacillus curvatus, Ligilactobacillus salivarius and Lactococcus raffinolactis, plus yeasts and fungi once named Candida krusei, Geotrichum penicillatum and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa. These are isolates, not a starter recipe. Camel milk has a different protein balance from cow's milk and forms a weaker acid gel, and traditional suusac has no defined yoghurt culture, so the thin body is not a processing failure.

What is on record

Suusac belongs to the dairy practice of Somali camel herders in eastern Africa. Camels give milk in hot, dry country where other dairy animals may not thrive, and milk is drunk fresh and also soured. Traditional vessels, local wood and spontaneous souring make up the system. Fermentation let households use milk where there was no refrigeration, though it did not keep all stored milk microbiologically safe.

The earliest direct scientific documentation found is from 1990. FAO's The Technology of Traditional Milk Products in Developing Countries lists suusac among Somali acidified milks, drawing on international questionnaires from the late 1980s, and notes that Somali sour-milk traditions may use different animal milks and mixtures, so the entry gives the name and wider family and does not prove every Somali suusac was camel milk alone.

A primary study by Zakaria Farah, Thomas Streiff and Marc Bachmann in the Journal of Dairy Research in May 1990 worked in Garissa, north-eastern Kenya, and identified a spontaneously fermented camel milk called Susa. They collected milk from nomadic herds and compared locally fermented milk with laboratory preparations from selected mesophilic cultures, and noted inconsistent flavour and poor hygiene as problems of spontaneous production.

Tezira Lore's 2004 University of Nairobi thesis gives the fuller ethnography for Somali communities in Isiolo District: the vessels, the smoking material, moving fresh milk, spontaneous fermentation and skimming before drinking, and it supplied samples for microbiological analysis. Lore, Samuel Mbugua and John Wangoh published the peer-reviewed findings in March 2005. In 2019 Isaac Maitha and colleagues examined suusac sold in Nairobi's Eastleigh from north-eastern Kenya and found substantial contamination, showing that fermentation and traditional handling did not reliably control hazards; recent reviews discuss pasteurisation, selected starters and hygienic processing as improvements.

The evidence supports an established Somali pastoral food, directly documented by 1990 and in detail by 2004. It does not give an origin date, a single Somali place or an unchanged historical recipe, and the age of camel pastoralism does not date this preparation.

Camel milk, lactic acid and smoke

Suusac is mainly lactic acid fermentation with other microbes. Lactic bacteria use lactose, the main sugar of camel milk, and make acid that lowers the pH and destabilises the milk proteins. The drink turns sour and may carry suspended protein particles but stays fairly fluid. Yeasts add aroma and affect bacterial growth, though finding them does not mean much alcohol forms in every batch.

Lore's 2004 work gives the species-level evidence. Fifteen traditional samples yielded 45 lactic bacterial and 30 yeast isolates, with Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. mesenteroides 24 per cent of the 75, Candida krusei 20, Lactobacillus plantarum 16, L. curvatus 8, L. salivarius 8, Lactococcus raffinolactis 4, Geotrichum penicillatum 12 and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa 8. These are frequencies of recovered isolates and not the abundance of live organisms. Names have since changed: L. plantarum is Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, L. curvatus is Latilactobacillus curvatus, L. salivarius is Ligilactobacillus salivarius and Candida krusei is also Pichia kudriavzevii.

Beta-galactosidase splits lactose, glycolysis follows, and lactate dehydrogenase reduces pyruvate to lactic acid, regenerating NAD+. About 60 per cent of Lore's lactic isolates were homofermentative, and heterofermentative Leuconostoc strains may also make acetate and carbon dioxide. Titratable acidity in the traditional samples was equivalent to 0.46 to 0.67 per cent lactic acid. Most isolates except Lactococcus raffinolactis were proteolytic, they differed in making diacetyl, Latilactobacillus curvatus was especially active in flavour assays, and the yeasts assimilated few carbohydrates but could affect flavour and sometimes protein breakdown. In laboratory trials Candida krusei with L. plantarum or L. curvatus acidified camel milk faster than either alone, which is not a safety-approved starter recipe.

Camel milk's protein explains the thin body. Compared with cow's milk it has little kappa-casein, more beta-casein and none of the major bovine whey protein beta-lactoglobulin, and acid destabilises the casein micelles into a weaker network. Farah and colleagues saw fine protein flocs and not a firm coagulum. The smoked vessel adds a separate source of aroma compounds, whose substances and amounts have not been established for the Isiolo process.

How the Isiolo producers make it

The Isiolo method begins with fresh dromedary milk, which supplies lactose, protein that responds to acid, fat and other nutrients. No measured starter is added: the microbes come from the milk, the vessels and the surroundings. Lore's fieldwork records no heating of the milk before fermentation, which is a historic characteristic and also a microbiological risk that keeps the process from being recommended as an unmodified modern home recipe.

Milk is first collected in the smaller vessel, toobke or bire, long and narrow with a capacity usually of 2 to 4 litres, tied to the garas tree. Its inside is cleaned, smoothed and smoke-treated: it is rinsed in cold water, hot smoking chips of Acacia seyal are put in, and the vessel is covered for a few minutes, left to cool and cleared of residual charcoal with root fibres. No quantities or validated sanitation endpoint are given.

The fresh milk, dhaay, goes into the larger vessel, haan or dhiil, which is rounder with a short neck and held in a woven basket. It is closed and left at ambient conditions. No batch size, vessel capacity or inoculum percentage is given, and the smoke treatment may add flavour while microbes tied to the system do the fermenting.

The time differs within the source. Lore's thesis abstract gives one to two days and the detailed Isiolo chapter two to three, with daytime ambient temperatures of about 26 to 29 C during fieldwork, which describe the environment and not a controlled incubation. The milk sours, and because camel milk does not gel like cow's milk it stays fairly fluid.

When fermentation is judged done, the upper fat layer is taken off and the milk is mixed before drinking. Lore describes it as white, thin, smoky and astringent. On standing, some whey and protein sediment separates and shaking restores an even suspension. The fieldwork records keeping it in a cool place at ambient temperature for up to a week, a historical observation and not a modern shelf life.

Farah, Streiff and Bachmann's 1990 controlled adaptation heated whole camel milk to 85 C for 30 minutes, cooled it, inoculated 2 per cent of a 24-hour mesophilic starter and incubated at 27 C for 24 hours, using two commercial mixed cultures. The products were preferred in tasting against local Susa from Garissa. It shows a possible controlled route and does not reproduce the smoked-gourd tradition or give a complete modern safety specification.

Places and relatives

The fullest preparation record is from Somali households in Isiolo District, northern Kenya: fresh camel milk, separate milking and fermenting vessels, Acacia seyal smoke, spontaneous fermentation, then skimming and mixing. It is one authenticated regional example, and the research does not show that all Somali households use the same vessel materials, smoking wood, fermentation time or fat removal.

Garissa is a second example. Farah and colleagues did consumer research there, using locally bought traditional Susa as the comparison, and describe natural fermentation without initial heating and variable flavour and hygiene, without the vessel sequence Lore later recorded for Isiolo, so Isiolo details should not be assigned to Garissa.

FAO's 1990 inventory ties Somalia to the name, including suusac among Somali acidified milks and discussing spontaneous souring of milks from several animals, with camel milk sometimes added to mixtures. Later reviews call suusac fermented camel milk, so the name may have been used more widely than in the camel-milk examples studied in Kenya, and a fully documented Somalia-specific recipe is a gap.

Published descriptions of the vessels also vary. Lore identifies the Dobera glabra vessel and a larger container in a woven basket, while reviews speak more generally of smoked gourds, wooden buckets or pumpkin-like vessels, which may reflect real differences, translation or simplification and do not show every container was Lagenaria siceraria. Some reviews mention Olea africana or other smoking woods, but the directly documented Isiolo method names Acacia seyal. Milk from different herds and seasons also varies in composition, which changes acidity, flavour and consistency.

Related camel-milk ferments are separate: Sudanese gariss, Ethiopian dhanaan and Central Asian shubat or chal share camel milk and microbial acidification but may use skin containers, repeated milk additions, retained starters or different times. The defining features of the Isiolo product are its Somali setting, camel milk, smoked containers and spontaneous lactic souring.

Drinking it

Suusac is drunk sour. It is fluid enough to pour or drink from the vessel, acid and a little astringent, usually smoky, and may carry small particles of acidified protein. The traditional Isiolo method removes the fat layer and mixes the milk before drinking, and if whey and sediment have separated, gentle shaking brings back an even look.

It has a practical place in Somali pastoral food. Camel milk gives liquid and nutrients in arid country where households may depend on their animals, and souring changes the flavour and stretches the use of milk past the day it was drawn. Farah and colleagues describe traditional fermented camel milk as widely drunk around Garissa, and note that local production and no reliable cold chain kept sales close to the herds.

Some reviews describe suusac as useful on journeys where water is short. That records historic food and fluid habits and is no evidence that unrefrigerated fermented milk meets modern standards, and the 2019 market study shows the need to separate cultural usefulness from verified hygiene.

On standing, whey separates from precipitated protein and the product looks layered, which suits camel milk's weak gel and does not by itself show a failed fermentation, and the fractions are mixed back for drinking rather than strained as for yoghurt or cheese. Suusac also reaches city buyers: the 2019 study bought it in Nairobi's Eastleigh market from suppliers linked to north-eastern Kenya, without a documented standard of refrigerated packaging, shelf life or safe retail process, so commercialisation raises hygiene, transport, temperature and starter-standardisation questions.

In the 1990 tasting Somali and other consumers preferred two controlled-culture camel milks to the traditional drink, which shows controlled fermentation can be acceptable and does not make the smoked flavour, vessels or community unimportant. Neither the 1990 nor the 2004 research establishes a ceremonial use, named dish accompaniment or standard seasoning for suusac.

Reading results and problems

Typical suusac is white, fluid and distinctly sour, with a smoky aroma and astringent taste. Thin body is expected and is not automatically a failure, since camel milk forms weaker acid gels than cow's milk, and small suspended curds or some separation on standing may be normal. A pleasant sour smell does not show a batch is microbiologically safe.

The 2004 and 2005 work measured traditional samples at a mean of about 6.77 log10 colony-forming units per millilitre of lactic bacteria and about 2.05 of yeasts, with titratable acidity of 0.46 to 0.67 per cent as lactic acid. These are sample measurements, not targets, and titratable acidity is not pH and cannot be turned into one pH value without more data. The proportions of isolates do not reveal the living community in every vessel, the identification tests predate modern genomics, and strain-level identification, metabolic testing and safety evaluation would be needed before using an isolate as a starter.

Candida krusei, now also Pichia kudriavzevii, was isolated by Lore and improved acidification and flavour with selected lactic bacteria in trials, but it is also linked to opportunistic infection and antifungal resistance, and food-microbiology reviews caution against choosing Candida as a starter without safety evaluation. Rhodotorula mucilaginosa and Geotrichum penicillatum likewise do not become suitable bought cultures by being found.

Safety findings from different studies stay separate. Lore's 2004 research reported low average coliform counts in 15 traditional samples, whereas a 2019 study of 28 market-sold samples from north-eastern Kenya found Escherichia coli in every sample, Staphylococcus aureus in about 63 per cent, Shigella in about 88 and Klebsiella in about 77 per cent. They concern those samples and not every producer, but show that spontaneous acidification and smoked vessels cannot be assumed to ensure safety. A 2016 study separated intentionally fermented suusa, made over about three days, from milk that soured by accident in transport and was then sold as suusa, with no controlled process, and found poor equipment hygiene, pooling of milk from many suppliers, dirty plastic containers, dust, slow transport and too little refrigeration.

The raw-milk process carries risk before acid develops. Camel milk has natural antimicrobial proteins, which do not replace pasteurisation, and the CDC lists Campylobacter, pathogenic E. coli, Listeria, Brucella and Salmonella as possible in raw milk. Smoking may change the vessel's microbes and flavour and has not been validated as sanitation, and claims that smoked suusac keeps safely unrefrigerated for days need product-specific challenge studies.

For modern preparation use pasteurised camel milk, clean equipment, an authenticated food-grade culture, controlled incubation and a measured acid endpoint; the 1990 experiments give starting conditions for selected mesophilic cultures but are not a full safety validation of traditional suusac. Do not rescue a failed batch by extending warm storage. Reject mould, offensive smell, odd colour or excess gas, and remember dangerous microbes can be present without visible spoilage. No safe homemade shelf life, alcohol content or proven probiotic benefit has been established.