First time making kvass

Gód Yule, everyone!  Or gód Litha, depending on what hemisphere you're in, and what better way to celebrate than with a traditional beverage?

Skål

Kvass is a national drink in Russia, where it has been enjoyed since at least the 10th century.  The earliest written source for it it is the Primary Chronicle, which mentions it in an entry for the year 989, and by then it was already an established tradition, something the writer did not need to explain because his readers were already familiar with it.  Apparently the word may be related to the Sumerian word KAS, meaning beer, which suggests kvass could have been influenced by the Sumerian practice of using bread to make beer.  Technically, kvass is not exactly beer, but the dividing line between kvass and beer is difficult to pinpoint.  For one thing, kvass does not use malted barley.  It contains a small amount of maltose, but this all comes from the bread.  It also has a lower alcohol content than most beers, typically around 2%.  Like ancient Sumerian and Egyptian* beers, kvass has a short fermentation and is drunk when it's fresh.

The recipe I used is modern, but it follows the traditional process for making kvass and uses traditional kvass ingredients.  As a fermented drink enthusiast I'm aware of what kvass is, but I've never tried it before, and who better to show me how to make it than Boris the Slav King?  If you haven't seen Boris' videos, you're in for a treat.

I did make a couple of ingredient substitutions, which is probably perfectly okay because working with what you have is the Slav way.   Firstly, I couldn't find any raisins in the cupboard, but did find some dried currants, so I used those instead.  Secondly, I used kveik instead of bread yeast, because it was there (really, this is the reasoning behind at least 90% of the things I do).  Traditionally kvass is not made with brewing yeasts, but hey, it was there.

So what's it like?  Opa, this stuff is good!  Boris describes it as a little like a cross between beer and apple cider, and I can see the similarity to apple cider, but to me it doesn't taste much like beer at all.  Nor does it taste much like rye bread, though it smelled a lot like rye bread when it started fermenting.  There are strong hints of rye, but the flavour is mainly sweet, citrusy, and a little like apple.  It's definitely a recipe you should try.

If sugar is not your friend, it might be possible to make a very low sugar version, by adding just a little sugar so the yeast has something to work with, then sweetening it to taste with artificial sweetener after the fermentation is finished, but I haven't tried this so I can't say for sure if it would work.  In fact it seems reasonable to assume that medieval kvass didn't necessarily contain sugar at all, considering sugar was expensive and not easily accessible in medieval Europe.

Given that kvass is potentially connected with Sumerian beers in some way, does kvass give us any indication of what Sumerian beers might have been like?  Well, unfortunately no.  Beer in Sumeria was not all the same for starters.  It came in many different varieties, just like beer today.  It also included malted barley in addition to bappir (usually considered to be a kind of bread used in beer manufacturing but not as a food on its own), which kvass does not, and of course the kvass has sugar and lemon juice in it.


*  You'll see a lot of sources saying the Egyptians used bread to make beer, but that appears to be a misconception.  They used malted grains.

Working with casein paint

Armour scales painted red and laced together in rows

Analysis of the scales from Tutankhamun's armour showed they had been stained red on their faces and along their edges.  Exactly what was used to colour the scales is unknown, so I used casein paint, which is known to have been used in ancient Egypt, and is appropriate for painting vegetable tanned leather.  It's also readily available in the 21st century, and if you shop around online you can sometimes get it reasonably cheaply.  This is the same paint people use on furniture to get the shabby chic farmhouse look.  Initially I had planned to use a synthetic leather stain, but that stuff's not cheap and after a bit of thought I figured why not do it properly and use something that was actually available to the ancient Egyptians?

Apparently, some of the objects in Tutankhamun’s tomb were painted with casein paint, but there's no guarantee it was used to paint his armour scales.  Egyptian paint technology was sophisticated, with a wide range of pigments and binders available.  I chose casein purely because it's readily available and convenient; the stuff I got comes in powder form, and just needs to be mixed with water to create a vibrant red paint in any consistency you like.  The directions on the packet suggest mixing it 1:1 with water, but I used a tablespoonful to every 60mls (2oz) of water to get a stain that would soak into the surface of my leather.  As you can see, the result is a rich blood red colour.  Unfortunately the texture doesn't photograph well, but it's a really lovely velvety matte effect.  This is a characteristic of casein paint, and some artists like to use it for this reason.

Be aware, however, that casein paint is finicky to work with.  You'll need to apply two or three coats using quick, even, vertical brush strokes and you may get some streaks of unabsorbed pigment on the surface of the leather, but these can be rubbed off with a damp cloth.  If you use it to stain leather the way I did you will get some variation in colour because not every piece of leather absorbs the same amount of stain and, unlike modern synthetic leather stains, casein paint is not designed to create an even, consistent colour on leather.  If you need a perfectly uniform colour throughout, casein paint is not the product for you.  In this instance I like the naturalistic, variegated effect, but it's something to keep in mind.