Lithuanian Honey Kvass

I wouldn't like to die too soon. There is so many things to try, to eat! Grass-smelling olive oils, crispy ethnic breads, strange fruits, wild meats and  papaya moonshine. I couldn't tell what I would like to have for my last supper. Two of my most beloved dishes were... chocolate desserts while in a properly disigned meal you are supposed to have only one dessert. Certainly I am not going to die because of hunger. I am going to try as much I can through my whole life. Egg starters, so popular decades ago when it was not so easy to cook in old-fashioned kitchens -  so basic yet so tempting as so many others. Not to mention our Lithuanian red beetroot blinis -haven't you heard that the British version of  the beetroot blinis was served last Friday in Buckingham Palace with salmon rosettes?

Following some request, I come back to bread matters but from a different perspective. Kvass generally is known as a Russian beer made from rye and barley must or from soaked and fermented black bread. It is dark in colour, slightly alcoholic (0,5-1,05 %) and has a bitter-sweet taste considerably depending on the bread used. At home you use freash yeasts and sugar to drive the fermentation process. In Lithuania they got a plethora of recipes for their refreshing drinks. As soon as the warmer period comes, it is late spring, they put a kvass to develop.

Lithuanian Honey Kvass

150 ml fair honey

1,5 l water

3 g fresh yeasts

30 g washed raisins

half of one lemon

1. Dissolve honey in a boiling water (you don't have to boil it). Cool down to 30 Celsius degrees.

2. Pund yeasts with about 5 tablespoons of the tepid honey water and leave for about 20 minutes in moderate temperature (about 20-25 degrees) to start working. When frothy add to the rest of the honey water, cover with a cloth and leave at the same temperature for 24 hours.

3. Remove the froth from the surface, strain through a sieve covered with a cloth (do not pour in the rubbish from the bottom). Pour into clean, dry bottles, with few raisins per bottle. Close tightly, place in a cold place and wait. This kvass is the best after 5-7 days and keep well in the fridge for another week. 

I would suggest a plastic bottle as you will see the pressure inside the bottle would rise. Be careful while opening it as you would open a beer can. I used the plastic drink container with gasket and immediately after sieving I put it to the fridge, it worked very very well. Certainly your friend will be surprised where the hell you got this nice and cheap chateau from a plastic bottle!

This is a noble kind of kvass, it is said that is's best after seven days, I found it best after five, maybe ageing went faster because of the temperature in my flat (around 26 Celsius degrees). It has a distinctive honey taste, is ideally sweet and at the 5th day it has an appropriate amount of little bubbles. You would feel a tickle in your nose and changes in your body's weight later. Generally honey kvass tastes like a nicely balanced white wine. Just please remember, there are other varieties, like caraway seed kvass, cranberry, apple juice, mint&tarragon, whey (!), red beetroot, carrot...You would forget the Coke exists. Unless you would find yourself on a tropical island - then you would discover an absolutely different refreshing drink. But this is totally different story...