Major development in search for Okolehao recipe!

Some of you may have been following my post asking for an authentic okolehao recipe and the ingredients to make it. I now have a nursery man contact, who has the ti root, in Hawaii that has been working on the project. He has been keeping be updated on his quest. He's become like Indiana Jones drying to get the the information. He sent me this incredible email the other day:

"Aloha,

I am still on the hunt for your Okolehao recipe. I have an appointment next Monday with a direct decendant of Queen Ka'ahumanu. I have to four wheel drive in to see her, she still lives on land that King Kamehameha set aside for certain people. I talked with her momentarily on the phone. I mentioned the recipe that you emailed me and she said not rice, they used ripe bread fruit. She still has the ti plants that her grandfather planted to make Okolehao. I guess he’s long dead and the plants are very old. So, wish me luck, maybe she will let me dig one up.

Garry"

The plot thickens!

I wanna go! I wanna go!

It would be fun to make the stuff and ship it to Hawaii...

I've got a firm commitment on the ti root, but how in the hell am I going to get ripe bread fruit??? I live in California. I don't even know what a bread fruit looks like. Maybe I could get him to freeze some and ship it overnight in a cooler, but that's got to cost a fortune. I'll figure something out. Maybe the stuff can be done with home canning.

There has to be a source around. But, finding it is going to be a challenge. Close to Hawaii, it might be easy enough. What I have read says it is similar to taro in some ways. Might get it through Jamaica on the East coast.

[ Edited by: Swanky 2007-08-27 12:57 ]

Doing some web searching I've found that there is an Asian market, especially in Indonesia, for canned breadfruit, but I haven't found any American sellers yet. I don't know if canned would be as good as fresh, but it's probably the best I could do.

I may try to strike a deal with my contact to see if he wants to try a test run there in Hawaii. Fermenting is very easy and cheap copper stills from Turkey can be bought on eBay.

Let's hope the ATF doesn't read Tiki Central posts. :)

Funnily enough, breadfruit is quite easy to come by here in England: a lot of Asian and west Indian grocers sell it...
do you have any Asian grocers near you? I think I will add some lightly toasted breadfruit to my "tincture"... Asian grocers just round the corner from where I work!

CHRIS

Check these guys out. Artocarpus altilis is on their list of fruits. As tricky as it is to bring fruits and veggies into CA, you'll might have to find CA growers. The CRFG might be able to tell you who has Breadfruit near you.

Considering the varieties of Artocarpus altilis and other species that are called Breadfruit, lets hope the supplier you find has the right one.

As for the Ti roots, according to this you'll be SOL unless you can import it from Hawai'i.

TMI on Artocarpus altilis

National Tropical Botanical Garden Breadfruit Institute in Hawai'i

Well, I've found the other difficult ingredient of Oke - breadfruit. After searching several Asian food markets I found one that had a few dusty cans of the stuff. It's canned in Vatuwaqa, Suva, Fiji.

Never having tasted breadfruit, I opened a can tonight and gave it a taste test. Strange stuff. It looks like pineapple spears that have been bleached, has the texture of canned potatos, and tastes sort of like wet bread mixed with a very bland sweet potato with an exotic ginger like aftertaste. Not bad, but nothing too exciting. The most interesting aspect of the stuff is the way the taste stays with you for a long time. It's like the way garlic keeps hanging around after you've eaten it. I can see how if it were fermented and distilled it would create a very unique drink. I'm really curious now how the ti root will taste.

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement".
Jim Horning

[ Edited by: Okolehao 2007-08-31 21:06 ]

I got another email from my Hawaiian contact. The story keeps getting more interesting all the time. He's doing some important cultural research on this thing with the help of lots of other people. Can you imagine getting different family recipies?

"Aloha,

Yes, I got the ti roots. They still have to be rinsed so I don’t know how much they weigh. I kept them in soil so they would stay alive and fresh. Recipe is not what I would like though. I was told that your recipe must have been the commercial one that was used. The one she told me about was older and I guess more like moonshine and was evidently against the law to make back then. Not sure which one you want. No percentages on ingredients though. She is checking with family members to see if we can get it more nailed down. She said the core is green ti root, bread fruit, and sugar cane, and then depending on who was making it they would add different fruits to alter the taste a little, so different families had slightly different tastes to their Oke. I figured maybe you could use your percentages from your recipe and apply it to this one and see what you get. Personally I would run both batches. I have people all over tracking this down so I’m certain more information is going to be trickling in to me soon

This is so cool- Hawaiian moonshine archaeology!

Well I watched the Three Sheets Hawaii tonight, and it reminded me of this long ago post.

Did some research sad to say, from what I can come up with is this. Kolani Distillers is suing Sandwich Islands Distillers. This was started in 2007 and is still in court on going.
I wonder if this is a trade secret thing or what. But sadly it may be some time before we get to see or taste any.

Hey guys! I'm a newcomer to the forum, hope you don't mind if I chime in. I was born and raised in Hawaii but have lived in NYC since '95. It's a drag breadfruit is so hard to come by in California, here in New York you can go to lots of West Indian markets and get a fresh green one. The Hawaiians, unlike the rest of Polynesia preferred them ripe (yellow, sweet and soft) rather than green. The Asian lady who sold me my last one considered this "rotten", though I have fond memories of my dad mashing up a ripe one and frying it up like a pancake. Yummers! I guess ripe would make more sense for okolehao, since the sugar content would be much higher.
As far as Ti, in Hawaii they're all over the place, but I guess agriculture would give you a hell of a time trying to bring any back fresh to a place like California. I actually have one growing right behind me in my Queens apartment. They do amazingly well indoors. You can buy root cuttings cheap at the Honolulu airport, and they actually grow! Gotta soak the cutting in water for a few weeks/months (change is every so often so the water doesn't get nasty). Then it will start putting out roots like an alien. When those look reliable, stick 'um in some soil (mine is in a pot)and water it every so often. If you don't have cold winters, it'll probably grow really fast.
Good luck with that, don't know how badly you want to try okolehao. I used to see bottles of it for sale @ Ala Moana Long's until the late '80s or so. Most folks I asked about it told me it was nasty stuff, but maybe it was just a cheap reproduction. Aloha, Jack

I have read in Da Bum's latest tome that he now recommends Rye Whiskey as a better substitute for Okolehao than Bourbon, which was the go-to sub in his previous book. Any opinions on using Rye??

Holy Mackerel! Rye Whiskey!! Which book? I've got a commercial micro-distiller in my town that does boutique rye. I was going to work with him on bourbon but he already makes an incredible rye. 'Fog's End Monterey Rye'.

Which book?

Beachbum Berry Remixed

I felt this was worthy of digging up.
What ever happened to the recipe?
What ever happened to Okolehao?
I'm bumping another thread as well, especially since Swanky seems to be involved, and might be able to provide insight.