Brewer: Some guys out in Daun Mann
As I opened this bottle of cold Khmer, I was reminded of an edition of the blog Steve, Don’t Eat It!. Not content with eating corn smut or the original Steve Urkel breakfast cereal ten years past its use-by date, Steve decides to brew his own prison wine (or ‘pruno’ in the American prison vernacular). He refers to the Jim Hogshire 1994 classic ‘You Are Going To Prison’:
One of the problems you have right away with making wine in prison is the difficulty getting yeast. It’s a strictly forbidden item and you might not be able to get any. In this case you can improvise the by using slices of bread, preferably moldy (but not dry) and preferably inside a sock for easier straining.”
The initial aroma wafting from my Khmer smelled as if it had been created with moldy bread strained through a sock. A sock that Satan himself had been wearing on a particularly loathsome day in the sulphur mines. The rotten egg notes continue through to the flavour, where they seem to cut through the mouth-puckering sourness and overwhelm anything else in this beverage. The brew has a slight natural effervescence which only serves to make things worse. Alcohol by volume was listed as 4.5%, so there wasn’t much hopes that a few swift gulps could anaesthetise my tastebuds into submission.
There are at least one hundred uses for the ubiquitous sugar palm tree in Cambodia and this is the very worst.
If this beverage was jailed, it would be for: Grand Theft Hydrogen Sulfide
Availability: Bottle only, in drink stores.
See also: Taipei Times interviews the Khmer beer manufacturers.
I agree this fine drop really is egg essence in a bottle. Whereas Confirels Palm Juice is a refreshing drop without a trace of extract ala ‘Yellow Stone National Park’, maybe those readers who have had Giardia know what I am talking about.