Life not so sweet for East Java's 'brem' confectionery makers
Text and photo by Sulistyo Budi N.
MADIUN, East Java (JP): Apart from its place in the country's history as the site of a Communist rebellion in 1948, this town has also become synonymous with two famous foods.
There is pecel, a dish of blanched vegetables served with peanut sauce and rice, which can be found at food stalls all over the country. Perhaps even more famous is brem, a thin, golden- colored, tart-tasting confectionery made of fermented glutinous rice.
It is sold in markets, at stores and in bus and railway stations for travelers (Madiun is a strategic point on the border between Central and East Java) wanting to bring something back to their loved ones.
The confectionery is also found in supermarkets and stores in major cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, Malang, Yogyakarta and Semarang. Some brands have become so famous that producers have copied them and tried to pass them off as the original.
Life is not sweet, however, for many of the brem producers. They live simple lives in their villages, operating out of part bamboo homes and at the mercy of traders, who determine the price of the sweet.
A "brem village" can be found in Kaliabu, Majayan, Caruban regency, about 30 kilometers east of the city of Madiun. About 40 heads of family in this hamlet of 250 families are in the business of producing the sweet.
Villager Karyono, 56, said brem was first made during the Dutch colonial era, but at the time yeast was added to ordinary rice. He said the results were probably not as good as today's version with sticky rice.
Cut-throat competition in recent years has led to many producers, including some in Kaliabu, taking shortcuts in trying to sell their wares. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, or simply evidence of a lack of creativity, but the Kaliabu traders acknowledge using the names of the two most famous brem brands for their products.
Although the names have yet to be registered, one of the producers, Kasan Solichin, said some of the producers claimed only they had the right to use the brand-names.
The native of Lomongan, East Java, began producing the cake in 1982 but his business went bankrupt. He married a woman from Kaliabu and started making brem again.
Business picked up in the early 1990s and he began selling brem, under the name of one of the famous brands, at bus terminals in the area. He has loyal customers and now employs four workers -- three to mix the watery substance in the initial stage and one to cut the sweet into pieces.
Kasan is capable of producing 550 packs of brem with every 100 kilograms of sticky rice that he processes. The sticky rice is cooked in two stages in a large metal vessel with 35 kilograms of capacity, from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m and from 9:30 a.m. to 11.30 a.m.
It takes 2.5 hours before the rice is done, provided that firewood, not a gas stove or any other means, is used for the cooking. After the rice is cooked, it is allowed to cool before a fermentation agent is added and the liquid is mixed by hand.
It is then left for seven days, when about 65 kg to 70 kg of liquid will be left from the original 35 kgs of rice. The liquid is boiled, then chilled for several hours (usually 10) until it is dry and can be cut into pieces as desired.
To make the sweet harder, the confectionery is put in the sun for two hours to three hours.
It is a time-consuming process to make the sweet, and the rewards are small for the father of one. Kasan's profit from a pack of the sweet sold for Rp 825 to Rp 1,300 is only from Rp 100 to Rp 200.