High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Okolehao is an alcoholic spirit whose main ingredient is the root of the Ti plant. Okolehao is also called `oke` by the Native Hawaiians whose ancestors were the first to make it prior to contact with western explorers, missionaries, and seamen. Okolehao started out as a beer and when distillation techniques were introduced by English seamen, it was distilled into a high proof spirit. Hawaiians discovered that if you baked the ti root a sweet liquid migrated to the surface of the root. They did not know that chemically, the heat changed the starch in the root to a fermentable sugar. The baked root was then soaked in a vat of water which dissolved the sugar and fermentation began to take place. The beer was later distilled into a high proof spirit which was prized by the king.