Innovations, Adaptation and Change in the Technology and Technique of Local Alcohol Production in Urhoboland,C. 1800 - 1950

This paper examined the innovations and change in technology and technique of alcohol production in Urhoboland from earliest times to the colonial period. This paper noted that as a product woven into the cultural fabric of the Urhobo dating back to the Atlantic Age, the use of natural equipment and materials in alcohol production was inevitable. The use of organic equipment such as clay pot and vegetal material in alcohol production which defined indigenous technology seriously constrained alcohol production and output and consigned local alcohol to the household level. However, changes and innovations in technology and technique of alcohol production were inevitable and natural owing to internal and external dynamics. Such change and innovations which were primarily in the aspect of equipment and materials - metal equipment, sugar and yeast and in particular, a condenser - introduced to solve the problem of high temperature produced by metal heat conductors - resulted to increases in alcohol production during the colonial period.