‘Ōkolehau:

‘Ōkolehau, "iron bottom," is named for these iron pots in which it was brewed. These were left by the whalers in the early 1800s.

‘Ōkolehao (“oke” for short) is an alcoholic spirit derived from the root of the tī plant. According to one article, the history of it is as follows:

“In the 1780’s, English sailors on Hawai‘i found everything their hearts desired except booze, so they decided to make it themselves. Captain Nathaniel Portlock dug up roots of the ti plant, baked them in an earthen oven (imu) to convert starches to sugars, added water and let it ferment with wild yeast into a ti root beer. At just a few percent alcohol, the brew wasn’t potent, but it got the job done.

“About a decade later, an escaped convict from Australia named William Stevenson took things up a notch when he taught native Hawaiians the art and science of distillation. Using the ti root beer as his wash and a crude distillation apparatus made from two whaler’s try-pots (iron cauldrons used to render whale blubber) he made the first batch of ti root distillate. Because the two try-pots next to one another resembled a person’s backside, the Hawaiians called the resulting spirit okolehao, which translates roughly as “iron bottom”. Thus, Hawai‘i’s folk spirit was created (by a haole).”

“Ha‘ikū Plantations was a dump,” Rocky recalls. “We had to go through the dump to go to my uncle’s house, and on the way to my uncle’s house had all the big mountain apples, I mean, those mountain apples are big, black. My uncle made oke. My uncle was the first in the history of Hawai‘i to ever get arrested for bootlegging. Really, he has part of his still—right now, today—pictures of his still and parts from the still in the police museum in Honolulu.

An old poster promoting a commercial brand of ‘Ōkolehao.
Image from Gianni Zottola.

“He made the best oke. I remember my father and them arguing over, ‘You had to have a blue flame.’ I’m talking good stuff, clear-water oke, good stuff. As a young girl, I’m looking, ‘Why are they fighting?’ And they always came up with the blue flame. If it’s through a blue flame, you had the best oke. My father lighted up this blue flame, and they sold it to the military guys, 15 dollars a gallon. I remember, fifteen dollars a gallon. I said to my mom, ‘Mom, why are you making so much money?’ And she always said, ‘Shut up.’ One bottle, because fifteen dollars before was 100 dollars to us. One bottle.

“The military, that’s their biggest business is to the military, because they had to come past our house to get up to the Omega Station. That was a naval station at the time. And then the navy turned it over to the Coast Guard, but there was a naval station going up. And there was a short stop, pick up the oke. And then across King’s School, my uncle sold poi. It’s still standing today. They have a studio there, so poi from the front door and oke from the back.

“But my father made the best tasting swipe out of the black, dark mountain apple. The oke, you got to cook it. They had all these stills and all these glass tubings that they cooked it in, and the big stills that they cooked it in. For swipe, you just ferment it. It takes time. My son makes good ones. My father taught him. From all kinds, whatever. I remember one Christmas, my father lived with me and my parents lived with me. I heard popping going on. I looked in my kitchen. I wanted to kill him because he had them all in corks, bottles, and they popped. It was on my ceiling, in my shelves, it was all over. And my father sees me and he cracked up laughing. I was so mad. He said, ‘Oops!’ He said, ‘That’s good stuff.’ I said, ‘Good stuff? Clean it!’ But I drink swipe sometimes. It’s good stuff.

“I worked at Hokulele subdivision. I cleaned the brand-new houses. You got to take the tapes off the toilets and stuff before people can move in. That was all part of He‘eia ahupua‘a. When they built it, it was all guavas, but we made a lot of swipe with the guavas.”

“John Reppun said, ‘I’ll never forget the day your father told me to come have some lilikoi juice with him.’ He said, ‘I couldn’t even walk out of your house. I was so drunk.’ He said, ‘It tasted so good and I got so drunk.’”

Pacific Worlds > He‘eia, O‘ahu > Memories > Wartime