Tapayan or tempayan are large wide-mouthed earthenware or stoneware jars found in various Austronesian cultures in island Southeast Asia. Their various functions include fermenting rice (tapai), fermenting vinegar or alcoholic beverages, storing food and water, cooking, and burial of the deceased.
Traditional tapayan jars in Vigan, Philippines
A Malay tempayan
Traditional burnay jars containing fermenting bagoong in Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Igorot pottery makers (c. 1910)
Tapai is a traditional fermented preparation of rice or other starchy foods, and is found throughout much of Southeast Asia, especially in Austronesian cultures, and parts of East Asia. It refers to both the alcoholic paste and the alcoholic beverage derived from it. It has a sweet or sour taste
and can be eaten as is, as ingredients for traditional recipes, or fermented further to make rice wine. Tapai is traditionally made with white rice or glutinous rice, but can also be made from a variety of carbohydrate sources, including cassava and potatoes. Fermentation is performed by a variety of moulds including Aspergillus oryzae, Rhizopus oryzae, Amylomyces rouxii or Mucor species, and yeasts including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Saccharomycopsis fibuliger, Endomycopsis burtonii and others, along with bacteria.
Packaged tapai paste made from cassava in Indonesia
Tapuy, a traditional Ifugao rice wine prepared with tapay in the Cordillera highlands of Luzon, Philippines
Dried alcoholic fermented cassava or peuyeum at Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Tapai ketan, fermented glutinous rice wrapped in leaf, Kuningan, West Java.