The Serumpun Codex · Ferments, grains and starches
Tuak
Rice wine of glutinous rice, ragi and sugar, fermented in a jar and aged.
The entry
- Name
- Tuak
- Other names
- Rice wine
- Scientific name
- Not applicable: a fermentation
- What it is
- Rice wine of glutinous rice, ragi and sugar, fermented in a jar and aged.
- Knowledge from
- The Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu and Bisaya; the Punan, Kayan and Kenyah make it under other names.
- How it is used
- Fermented in a tajau from a few days to two weeks, then aged. Served at Gawai and in the miring offering.
- In the French Borneo kitchen
- A glaze with Liberica coffee in Course III, Mountain, at Osaka. Fermented on site at the Sarawak Cultural Village for the Kuching Finale.
- Season and place
- Brewed ahead of Gawai Dayak on 1 June, the festival that marks the end of the rice harvest. At Rumah Ijau Ikok, an Iban longhouse near Kanowit, the communal cooking of glutinous rice for Gawai tuak (manduk) begins each year on 1 May.
- Conservation status
- Not applicable
- Codex Alimentarius
- No Codex standard
- Medicinal knowledge
- Held privately by the community
- Consent
- Given, recorded by CHASS, 30 October 2026
Still to be confirmed: who shared it with Serumpun.
Sources
- Marcus et al., 2025
- New Straits Times, 2019
- Tourism Malaysia, The Gawai Dayak Festival in Sarawak (media info), 18 May 2009
- Borneo Post, Longhouses uphold manduk tradition in tuak making, 1 June 2024
Added to the Codex on 1 November 2026. Sources last checked on 1 November 2026.
Anyone may cook with this knowledge, commercially too, provided the community it comes from is credited by name. To correct or withdraw this entry, write to the Custodian at connect@chefjameswon.com.
How to cite this entry
Serumpun Sarawak (2026) ‘Tuak’, The Serumpun Codex, ed. James Won. Available at: https://www.chefjameswon.com/serumpun/codex/tuak/ (sources checked 1 November 2026).
Quote any entry with this citation, and name the community whose knowledge it is.