AR'EACR, RACK, or RAKI, is the East Indian name for all sorts of distilled spirituous liquors, but chiefly to that procured from toddy or the fermented juice of the cocoa and and other palms, and from rice. The palms in other tropical countries furnish a fer mented beverage similar to the toddy of India, and in a few instances also it is distilled, but arrack essentially belongs to India and the adjacent countries. The cocoa-nut palm (cocoa nucifera) is a chief source of toddy or palm-wine, and is obtained from trees rang ing from 12 to 16 years old, or in fact at the period when they begin to show the first indication of flowering. After the flowering shoot or spadix enveloped in its spathe is pretty well advanced, and the latter is about to open, the toddy-man climbs the tree and cuts off the tip of the flower-shoot; he next tics a ligature around the stalk at the base of the spadix, and with a small cudgel he heats the flower-shoot and bruises it. This he does daily for a fortnight, and if the tree is in good condition, a considerable quantity of a saccharine juice flows from the cut apex of the flower-shoot, and is caught in a pot fixed conveniently for the purpose, and emptied every day. It flows freely for fifteen or sixteen days, and less freely day by clay for another month or more; a slice has to be removed from the top of the shoot very frequently. The juice rapidly ferments, and in four days is usually sour; previous to that it is a favorite drink known in India by the natives as eallu, and to the Europeans as toddy. When turning sour, it is distilled and converted into A., known better to the Hindus by the name of iiaril, and by the Cinga lese as pol or nawasi. A similar spirit is made pretty largely from the magnificent fan leaved palm, borassus flabelliformis, and also from the so-called date-sugar palm, arm, ga saccharifera. Largo quantities of arrack are made from fermented rice prepared as
malt—both in India, Ceylon, and Batavia; in the last-mentioned place sugar and molasses are also added to the rice.
It is probable that the use of arrack is more widely diffused among the human race than the produce of the vine (wine and brandy) and of barley (whisky, beer). The date palm of the Sahara, the oil palm of west Africa, and the cocoa-nut palm of the Pacific islands are made to yield it.
The unscientific method of preparing these alcoholic spirits renders them generally very distasteful to European taste, the process of rectification being rarely, if ever, employed. Some carefully prepared samples of great age, however, find favor, and are used in making punch and other drinks, not only in India and Java, but small quanti ties also find their way to Britain, for the gratification of palates trained in India. The cocoa-nut tree is especially valuable for this industry, because it bears twelve times in the year after it once begins, and continues to do so for as much as 40 years. It is the rule, therefore, to prevent undue exhaustion of so valuable a tree, to discontinue the collec tion of juice at intervals, and allow the natural process of fruit-bearing to go on: in this way it is usual to divide the year between the two crops. Of late years a considerable amount of rum has been produced in the East Indies from the sugarcane, and the molas ses yielded by it. This is often called arrack by the natives, and leads to errors as to the statistics of the latter material. The word saki, used by the Japanese for rice spirit, seems only an alteration of raki or arrack. An imitation A. is prepared by dissolving benzoic acid in rum, in the proportion of 20 grains of the former to 2 lbs. of the latter.