Okolehao relies on ti roots for its unique flavor, and the practice of distilling alcohol in Hawaii goes back a couple of centuries, almost to the moment Capt. Cook set eyes on the islands.
Although it’s thought that ancient Hawaiians might have concocted a kind of beerlike mash or slurry from fermenting ti, newspaper accounts credit Capt. Nathaniel Portlock with the introduction in the 1780s, and a few years later, an escaped Australian convict named William Stevenson taught Hawaiians how to use cast-iron try-pots — utilized by blubber-boiling whalers — as fermentation vessels.
According to lore, the round iron cooking pots, parked one next to another, amused Hawaiians who thought they looked like a human butt, and they called them, and the brew they produced, okolehao, which pretty much means "iron butt."
The primary ingredient was ti root, and over the years various starches such as sugar cane, taro and rice were added, as were fruit sugars such as that from pineapple.
Because of the sugar, the drink is generally regarded as a high-octane rum. Okolehao brewers developed their own secret concoctions, so it’s difficult to find a single recipe for okolehao. It’s more of a class of beverage.
Whatever it was, Hawaii drank it up. King Kalakaua took pity on an imprisoned okolehao distiller and royally pardoned him so he could make more.
According to local newspaper stories in the 1920s and ’30s, okolehao was quietly entered in international spirits competitions and often won.
During the Prohibition years in the 1920s and ’30s, Hawaii, as an American territory, was an alcohol-free zone, unless the stuff produced was either medicinal or religious in nature. Okolehao was neither, and Hawaii had its share of moonshiners and illegal stills. When Prohibition ended, the American military began a big buildup in the islands, and demand for intoxicating beverages skyrocketed. Okolehao distillers sold thousands of gallons to Chinese merchants downtown, who bottled it for thirsty sailors and soldiers. When the war broke out, distilled spirits were rationed, and okolehao demand grew even larger. A sakelike rice-based version was known as "oke."
By the late 1940s, however, the lack of quality control in okolehao distilling made it a poor second to easily available rum, and rum became the signature liquor of Honolulu nightclubs.
Okolehao moonshiners hung up their drip coils and retired. Okolehao became an exotic footnote in Hawaii’s boozy history.
The former Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco classified okolehao as a specific class of alcoholic beverage, like vodka, gin, bourbon, tequila and whiskey. It is now considered a "distilled specialty spirit," or DSS, with specific ingredients and basic formula on the label.
Although the Territory of Hawaii gave okolehao distillers a reduced tax rate to promote production of this unique product, that was quashed by the feds in the ’60s.
Over the years, various attempts have been made to kick-start a modern okolehao distillery in the islands, including an effort to exempt the liquor from federal excise taxes — a plea that fell on deaf ears at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Recently there was a failed attempt to create something called Nine Islands Okolehao, bankrolled by a Kentucky whiskey distiller, and today the only "okolehao" product is a sweet liqueur made in limited quantities by Haleakala Distillers, a rum manufacturer.
