Cholai is an illegal

alcoholic beverage An alcoholic beverage (also called an alcoholic drink, adult beverage, or a drink) is a drink that contains ethanol, a type of alcohol that acts as a drug and is produced by fermentation of grains, fruits, or other sources of sugar. The c ...

made in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, equivalent to "hooch" or "bootleg" alcohol. Usually made from rice, it is sometimes mixed with industrial alcohol or

methanol Methanol (also called methyl alcohol and wood spirit, amongst other names) is an organic chemical and the simplest aliphatic alcohol, with the formula C H3 O H (a methyl group linked to a hydroxyl group, often abbreviated as MeOH). It is a ...

, which has resulted in several hundred deaths.

Preparation

The Indian encyclopedia, ''Bharater Adibasi'', has a description of ''cholai'' as being a distilled alcohol made with two earthen pots joined together; the lower pot filled with yeast and mixed rice/

jaggery Jaggery is a traditional non-centrifugal cane sugar consumed in the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and Africa. It is a concentrated product of cane juice and often date or palm sap without separation of the molasses and crystals, and can ...

; the upper pot left empty with an output tube. When the lower pot is heated, the vapour of 80% alcohol goes to the upper pot and comes into contact with cold air, which distills the vapour to become "cholai". It is locally made, and sold cheaply and illegally. In 2011, consumption of cholai

adulterated An adulterant is caused by the act of adulteration, a practice of secretly mixing a substance with another. Typical substances that are adulterated include but are not limited to food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, fuel, or other chemicals, t ...

with

industrial alcohol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a ...

resulted in the death of over 140 people. Cholai is also considered a local name, or a variant, of "

desi DESI may refer to * Desorption electrospray ionization * Drug Efficacy Study Implementation * Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument See also * Desi (disambiguation) Desi or Deshi is a self-referential term used by South Asian people. Desi may al ...

dāru" (

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

for "country alcohol"), i.e., cheap distilled liquor.

References

{{Indian beverages Indian alcoholic drinks Indian drinks Traditional Indian alcoholic beverages