I love it and want everyone to be enjoying it, but I’ve noticed that most people have never heard of boza. Hence this post! In it, I’ll explain what the drink boza is, its history, how it’s made and what it tastes like.

What is boza?

Boza is a fermented drink that is native to the European regions we now call Turkey, the Caucuses and the Balkans. Made with millet, it’s gluten-free, dairy-free and, thanks to the fermentation, probiotic. It’s thick, fizzy, tangy and deeply satisfying.

What is the history of boza?

The first time the word ‘boza’ is recorded as being used to describe a fermented drink was the 14th century, but, incredibly, fermented millet drinks have been made since the 9th century BCE, meaning that a drink really similar to boza has been around for 11,000 years!

The heyday of boza was during the Ottoman Empire. A 17th-century traveller to Istanbul reported that the city housed 300 boza shops that employed over a thousand people!

There are still shops selling boza in Istanbul, one of the most famous being Vefa, which was founded in 1876 and is now run by the original owners great-great-grandchildren. You can see the shop here.

As well as being available in shops, boza has a long history of being sold by street vendors, who would wander the streets of Istanbul carrying boza in metal containers hung on milk pail-style apparatus. They had a very distinctive call. You can watch a short clip of one here.

If you’d like to read more about the environment in which boza-sellers worked, the main character in Orhan Pamuk’s 2014 novel A Strangeness in My Mind (a book that was shortlisted for the 2016 International Booker Prize) is a Turkish boza-seller.

What is boza made of?

The earliest records of boza-style fermented drinks used the grain millet. As the drink has travelled to different geographies and been influenced by changing crops, it is now often made with other grains such as corn or wheat.

I use millet in my own kitchen to make boza which creates a drink which is not only dairy-free but also gluten-free and lectin-free. Students of my boza course have also made the fermented drink with sorghum, amaranth and teff (as you can see below!).

Why should I make boza at home?

Boza is a simple, inexpensive drink to make and one that is exciting, delicious and probiotic. It’s great to have in the fridge when you want a healthy snack to turn to. In addition, if you’re looking to bring more probiotics into your life, making and consuming boza is a way that you can do this without relying on dairy, gluten, lectins or, importantly, expensive shop-bought beverages or tablets.

How do you make boza?

To make boza, hulled, cooked millet is mixed with yeast and left to ferment. The microbes doing the fermentation produce acids which make the drink tangy along with small amounts of alcohol.

What yeast can I use to make boza at home?

Some people use packets of commercial yeast in the boza-making process (and this is how boza is made in shops today).

Some experiment with sourdough starter, but I find this creates a drink that is too sour.

I choose to create my own starter full of natural yeasts using a small amount of cooked millet and some sugar. I then inoculate a bigger batch of cooked millet with this home-made starter, which ensures delicious results!

“I’m so impressed with this course. I’d never even heard of boza and now I’m addicted to it!” Deb, student of my course Boza: The Probiotic Millet Drink

What does boza taste like?

Boza is sweet, fizzy on the tongue, tangy and slightly sour. The cooked millet adds a creaminess to the drink too. You can vary the thickness (by adding more or less water) depending on your preference but it is generally a satisfyingly-thick drink which can also be eaten with a spoon.

Boza has generally become sweeter over time. Historically it was a more sour drink. My own method produces a drink that balances the sweet and sour flavours – I think the boza in my home is probably much less sweet than the boza you can currently buy in Istanbul.

What is the alcohol content?

The alcohol content of boza is low. In Turkey there is legislation saying that it cannot be greater than 2%. In my experience, when making boza at home, the alcohol content is much lower. General agreement states that home-made boza is less than 1% alcohol.

How is boza traditionally served?

Historically, boza has been served in the winter. This is because without refrigeration it was difficult to stop the drink over-fermenting in warm summer temperatures.

In addition, traditionally boza is seen as a warming and nourishing drink (even though it is served cold).

If you go to Istanbul today and buy boza, it will be served with roasted chickpeas and cinnamon on the top.

What are some other ways of serving boza?

In my home, boza is most often drunk (or eaten with a spoon) as a snack. My husband and son love it when they return home after a walk or an energetic trip out.

We consume it cold. In the summer, it’s really refreshing. In the winter, the thickness and fizzyness is very satisfying.

Here are some other ideas for serving boza:

• Top it with ground linseed or toasted nuts
• Use it as a yogurt alternative to top fruit or oatmeal/porridge
• Gently heat it up and sip it from a mug whilst warming your hands
• As a base for smoothies: Boza makes a brilliant non-dairy base for a probiotic smoothie. We like to add egg yolks, linseed, fruits or cocoa powder!
• Boza popsicles: Freeze boza in popsicle moulds for a delicious, healthy summer treat.

If you’d like to make boza in your own kitchen check out my step-by-step video course here

This post outlines how I make unhopped ale of the kind my female English ancestors did in their own kitchens until just a few hundred years ago.

Because, yes, ale was women’s work.

For most of history, the realm of fermented drinks has very definitely been under the control of women. And, up until the commercialisation of ale and beer (which started in the UK in the 1400s and took many centuries to complete), ale – the unhopped precursor to beer – was made at home, in a kitchen, by women. It was part of their household work, just like making bread was.

My ale is a replica of one from the 1200s or 1300s. It’s a ‘weak’ ale (as opposed to the ‘strong’ ale that was served to the wealthy and/or on special occasions) and I’ve based it on a recipe from Judith Bennett’s book Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England, interpreted by Tofi Kerthjalfadsson (his great article on it is available here).

The main differences between my interpretation and Tofi’s are that:

• I make ale with home-made yeast, not commercially bought yeast.
• I use pots and pans that I have around, rather than modern ones made specifically for brewing.
• I do not sanitise my vessels using a chemical solution.

These three differences make a different ale to my peers who replicate medieval ale whilst leaning on modern convenience. I feel strongly about them; doing it this way I am replicating what would actually have been done originally and I’m also trusting in the power and wisdom of traditional food ways to produce a beverage, as millions of people did up until the last few centuries. What did people do before Pasteur’s isolation of yeast cultures; before the manufacture of synthesised cleaning materials in a factory; before air locks? They made fermented drinks at home and enjoyed them!

This ale compared to modern beer

This ale is very different to modern beer, do not expect it to be like anything we call beer these days! It tastes different, it looks different, it keeps differently, it’s made in a different way and it uses home-cultured yeast.

This, being English (and, to a greater extent British) ale, it is also different to medieval continental ale. On the continent, hops were introduced to brewing much earlier than in the UK and the common pre-hopped ale – gruit, was heavily spiced and different to the usually plain UK ale.

Differences between this beer and modern beer:

• The flavour – it is not bitter, it is sweet
• The colour – it is opaque
• The viscosity – it is much thicker
• The strength – it is much weaker
• The yeast used – this is a home cultured yeast with diverse strains; I’ve not been able to test what strains are in it; in comparison laboratory yeast has one strain.
• When it is served – this ale was served fresh, still fermenting, or very recently having ended fermenting, unlike modern beer.
• Uniformity – because of the above, and because were making this at home each batch is different.
• The place in which it was made – this was made by women in their kitchens.
• The equipment – copper kettles, kitchen equipment, and sometimes barrels, no thermometers! These days brewers have hydrometers to measure the amount of sugar in the brewing liquid both before and after the fermentation. Medieval brewers did not have this. Because of this the technique is not so efficient.
• The sterilisation – every brewing book you read these days tells you to sterilise all your equipment with chemical sterilisation liquid; this was not done in the past.
• The process – this is a home process, done on a small scale, with human intervention every stage, hops were not used and there was no boil of the wort.
• The place it held in peoples lives – this was drunk multiple times a day, every day; though not necessarily because the water was bad (there is much debate on this topic among beer historians).
• The keeping qualities – this beer does not last. Bittering hops are antibacterial and keep bacteria out of the brew. As I don’t use these, the flavour of my ale is sweeter but also that the beer spoils more quickly; in addition I am not bottling to keep out oxygen (modern beers are bottled).

I see every one of the differences above as a positive thing. I love the flavour of this beer and I love the work involved in making it!

When did it all change?

The changes that saw unhopped, home-brewed ale being replaced by the bitter hopped, factory-made beer that we are used to today took place slowly, from the 14th century to the 18th century. They happened first in towns and cities, later in rural areas. They were initiated by the plague, and by the immigration of Flemish people to the UK who brought their hopped beer with them.

If you’d like to read about my journey of exploration to get to making this ale, plus learn more about earlier grain brews, home yeasts and why I brew this way, dive into this post or this podcast:

The Method:

Making ale has three distinct phases:

• Malt the grain (you can buy pre-malted grain)

• ‘Mash’ (infuse) that malt to make the wort (the liquid to be fermented)

• Ferment the wort

Disclaimer!! My recreation of this beer has, so far, been a three/four year exploration. Every batch is different – yours will be too. Each time I brew, I learn. Please understand there are many, many variables involved in brewing that can take a lifetime to master…and have fun!

Ingredients (to make three litres/quarts of ale)

1/ Grains for malting

(You’ll need 700g of total malt. This can be made, in my experience, from 850g of grain (prepare more rather than less to be safe).

I make my own malt and will detail how here. You can alternatively buy malt from a brewing supply company. It will need to be crushed, so if you don’t have a grain mill, buy it pre-crushed.

2/ Unchlorinated water

Water quality and ingredients make a huge difference to the end result. I am still exploring this. At this stage, it’s enough to say chlorine inhibits fermentation and you need to use unchlorinated water.

3/ Yeast starter

I use a robust home cultured yeast starter in the form of boza. You can access my course and make this for yourself here. I have also used rye bread kvass as a starter and also, on occasion, made a home-made yeast culture created with rye flour, salt (to inhibit bacteria), sugar (to encourage yeast) and a liquid made from boiling rosemary and water together (again to inhibit bacteria). If you’re interested in making your own culture, I’d suggest reading Lars Garshol’s Farmhouse Brewing Techniques.

Equipment

• 5 litre/quart fermentation vessel (with a lid)
• A heatproof surface to rest the fermentation vessel on (I use a breadboard)
• Towels big enough to wrap the fermentation vessel for insulation
• Clips (or a big elastic band) to secure the towels
• Thermometer
• Saucepan
• Scales
• Jug
• Wooden spoon
• Timer
• Bottles (for this amount I use three 1-litre/quart bottles)
• A funnel to fit your bottle necks
• A sieve/colander with bigger-than-sieve sized holes
• A fine sieve
• Making of malt also requires jars/gauze to soak and sprout your grain plus a way to dry them (a dehydrator is ideal, and oven is possible) and way to crush them (I use a handcranked roller mill, but an electronic grain mill will work too).

Timings

This ale takes time, especially if you are malting. Here’s an example of how a brewing/drinking session might go:

• Sunday night – soak grain
• Monday morning – drain and start grain sprouting
• Thursday and Friday – dehydrate malted grain (I do this in two batches as my dehydrator is not big enough for all of it)
• Friday pm – grind malt
• Saturday – make wort (malt infused water) for ale
• Saturday pm – strain grain from wort and pitch yeast
• Monday pm (or Tuesday am) – strain ale and bottle
• Monday pm till Thursday or Friday – drink ale!

In addition, if you are creating your own yeast culture, you’ll need to time it to coincide with your pitching day.

Malting

I malt my own grain for brewing. I recommend doing this from an authenticity/connection perspective, but it is time-consuming, so if you prefer, you can buy pre-malted grains from a brewing supply store.

What malting is:

Malting is soaking and then sprouting a grain so that starches are converted into sugars ready for the yeast in fermentation to use as fuel.

What grains you can use:

Any grain that will sprout! Traditionally barley was used, (it’s important to buy malting grade barley if you want to use barley because there are different types).

The grains I use:

I have rye in my kitchen all the time, so I naturally worked with that. I read later that oats were very often used medieval England and, because I had some that I knew would sprout (most oats don’t sprout) I decided to use them too. I use the quantity of oats that aligns with the amount used in medieval England. I have not used barley; it has been a hassle to source barley in Italy.

How to test a grain:

Make sure your grain will sprout before you try to do a large quantity. Very often grains are irradiated or left too long and won’t sprout. Test a small amount first (using the same process as below, but with a small quantity).

How to malt:

Soak your grain, ideally in a large unlidded glass vessel covered with a piece of gauze secured by elastic band, for 12 hours in ample unchlorinated water. Drain and rinse several times with water. Leave the container of grains at a 45° angle somewhere they can freely drain. Return to the container every 12 hours and rinse, agitate and drain two or three times.

After a day or so you should see small white sprouts beginning to appear on the grains. Continue with the process until the majority of grains have sprouts that are a centimeter long.

There are people who have spent their entire life studying malting, judging when to stop the sprouts and when to continue them is something that we learn over time.

Dehydrating malt:

The malt was traditionally kilned in order to preserve it, make it easier to work with and, later, to bring out flavours in it.

I dehydrate my malt. Once it is sufficiently sprouted, I rinse and drain it well and then transfer it to a dehydrator at 50°C for around 12 hours until it is completely dry. It will keep like this for months and months.

Preparing the malt for use:

Two things need to be done to the dehydrated malt:

The tails need to be removed as best they can be (as they impart a bitter taste to the ale). The easiest way I have found to do this is to put a quantity of the malt into a wide tray (like a roasting tin) and rub handfuls of it between palms, agitating well. You should see the tails coming off. When it feels like you’ve removed the majority of them, put the results through a medium sieve to separate the tails and the malted grains. Discard the tails.

The malt needs to be crushed to allow easy access to the sugars in it. I do this by grinding it. I have found that if I spray the malt lightly with water to dampen it a few hours before grinding, I’m less likely to cause the grains to disintegrate into powder as they are ground. This works well for my style ale because it is not strained in the same way as modern beer therefore an overabundance of flour like particles will thicken it too much.

Mashing

This is the process of steeping the malted grain in hot water in order to extract the sugars from the grain into the water. Once this has been done, the mash is strained and the water (called wort) is then used for the fermentation.

1. 1. Prepare the vessel by warming it up (to avoid the shock of very hot water on glass) and wrapping it in a towel. Ensure it’s on a heat-proof surface.
   2. Boil 470 ml water and pour into the vessel from a height (the water is added from a height to cool it down before it hits the grain and to oxygenate it).
   3. Add all the malted, crushed grain.
   4. Boil 690 ml of water and pour in slowly from a height, stand for 10 minutes with the lid on.
   5. Boil 230 ml of water and pour in slowly from a height, stand for 20 minutes with the lid on.
   6. Stir it (it should be like thick porridge) and replace the lid.
   7. Leave for at least 90 minutes with the lid on (I often place a towel over the lid too)
   8. Boil 600 ml of water and pour in slowly from a height, stir, leave for 25 minutes with the lid on.
   9. Boil 920 ml of water and pour in slowly from a height, stir and replace the lid.

This mixture now needs to be left. Most grains mash well in a solution that is between 57°C and 72°C. I take the temperature of the mash over the hours after finishing the process and once it’s around 50°C I know that I can strain it.

The yeast can be pitched when the wort is that fermentation temperature, or slightly above. I’ve learnt to ferment my beer at 20°C, and therefore try to pitch the yeast when it’s between 20°C and 25°C.

Sometimes, if I judge it appropriate, I will leave the mash overnight to cool, and pitch the yeast in the morning.

Other times, if I think that’s going to be too long, but I don’t have enough time to let the wort cool naturally before bed, I will immerse the fermenting vessel in washing-up bowl full of water and ice blocks. It then cools down very quickly (taking it from 50°C to 20°C in just over an hour) and I can pitch the yeast.

Straining the mash

Once the temperature of the mixture is below 50C, I strain the mash through a metal colander that has large holes, pushing down on the soaked grain in order to release as much liquid from it is possible. Some smaller parts of the soaked malt will go through the sieve, but I will then remove these during the bottling process, when I use a finer sieve.

I briefly rinse out the vessel used for the mash and return the wort to it for the fermentation.

It can be useful, at this stage, to taste the wort. This will give you a ground zero idea of what you’re fermenting, then, as the ferment progresses you can taste and compare the flavours.

Yeasts

What yeast would have traditionally been used in this ale:

A home-cultured, multi-strained yeast that would have been shared between brewers. Originally these yeasts would have been sourced from nature. Archaeologists have found that beers before 1 CE invariably included fruits and/or honey in them, possibly as the yeast. More recently there are stories that have been passed down of people ‘capturing’ yeasts and culturing them, in Scandinavia with rye flour, at home.

The diversity of multi-strains yeast cultures is astounding compared to single-strain factory-produced packets yeast. I remember hearing Lars Garshol (author of Farmhouse Brewing Techniques) saying that, compared to the total 150 commercially available single-strain yeasts, a lab, when testing kveik, a single yeast culture from farmhouse brewing, found over 280 different strains of yeast!

Types of yeast we can use:

We can culture our own yeast. We can do this by using ‘wild’ yeast (i.e. making a small amount of wort and leaving it out to collect organisms – as opposed to commercial ‘wild’ yeast which is collected from something in nature and then isolated in a lab). We can also do this by using a grain, a bacteria inhibitor (like herb or salt), a little bit of sugar and time – a bit like a sourdough starter.

I culture yeast regularly at home for other fermented drinks (like boza and kvass). These cultures are strong and I like to use them in my beer.

Fermentation

I pitch 150 g of the boza when the wort is at temperature. I stir it in well. I put the lid back on the fermentation vessel and I put it in the place where I wanted to ferment. I try to ferment at 20°C, in the summer this is harder, in the winter I use a home-made proofing box.

I came to 150g of boza (I use the same amount of rye bread kvass) through trial and error. I cannot easily translate this to your yeast culture as we don’t have access to laboratory facilities that would be able to test how much yeast there is in our home-made ferments.

I settled on 20°C as a fermentation temperature through trial and error. I have found, that when I do it at higher temperatures, the beer tends to produce a banana flavour much more strongly. This is a byproduct of the fermentation and can be produced in high quantities when the yeast is more stressed. Yeasts can be stress for many, many reasons: the water is not the right pH, the water has the wrong balance of minerals, the water doesn’t have enough oxygen in, there’s too much yeast in the mix, there’s too little yeast in the mix, the temperature is too high, the temperature is too low, there are too many sugars available, there are too few sugars available, the fermentation is left too long. So many! It is the work of a lifetime to hone this process.

For my ale I generally leave the fermentation 2 to 2 1/2 days.

What happens during that time:

It takes a while for the fermentation to get going, but after 12 hours you’ll start to see a head (called a kraussen) forming at the top. This is made up of larger particles of the wort and byproducts of the yeast and is great because it forms a protective barrier between the fermentation and the air (which could potentially bring in a lot of other bacteria to the mix).

If you watch the fermentation (through a glass container) you will often see, as you do with other ferments like water kefir, particles moving up and down in the wort and also bubbles appearing and popping on the surface.

Try not to disturb the fermentation too much during this period. Don’t move it and don’t stir it.

After two days I taste the ale. Through experience I have come to know what flavour is best at the point of stopping the fermentation. This fermentation is stopped much earlier than modern beers; it is served fresh or still fermenting. Generally, if the mix has lost most of its sweetness and is tasting beery, I will end the fermentation.

Straining and second flavouring

I then strain the ale into bottles. I use a much finer sieve for this than the one I used to strain the wort before fermentation.

I use glass swing-top bottles. Some caution must be applied to the use of these, because the ale, still fermenting, is likely to off-gas and if you are not very careful in your monitoring of it, a bottle could smash.

Some swing-top bottles have much tighter seals than others. If you’re using glass bottles get to know your bottles and check the ones that have a tight seal regularly, burping the beer. If in any doubt, leave the swing-top bottles open during the long overnight stretch, especially at the beginning of the ale’s life.

If you are unsure about using glass bottles, you can instead use plastic bottles that will expand with the production of gas see you can actually see whether they need the top unscrewing to release this gas.

Sometimes I add flavour and or extra sweetener to the second ferment. The extra sweetener gives the beer a carbonation (although I usually bottle it whilst it still has some fermentation activity happening, so this carbonation happens naturally in the bottle if the seal is tight). Flavouring gives the beer an additional dimension. I’ve used many spices, my favourites being caraway, cinnamon bark, anice and fennel. I also sometimes use redbush tea.

I usually leave these bottles out for around 12 hours, checking the level of remaining fermentation, then I’ll transfer them to the fridge.

Drinking

The ale lasts 4-5 days in the fridge. It’s character changes over that time, and it is mostly best around the second day.

Making bread with the spent grain

The spent malt grain strained out from the wort before fermentation is sweet and can be used to make breads with.

I have experimented with several recipes that use a large percentage of this waste malt in them – a rye with spices and molasses has been my favourite ’special’ loaf so far. I also very often simply use the malt as a 10% by weight addition to loaves.

This ale-making process (with home-cultured yeast, kitchen equipment, no sterilisation and open fermentation), is not something I’ve been able to find anyone else doing. If you’d like to engage with it, to try it, to move it forward, I’d love it. Please do talk to me – comment here or mail me at alison @ ancestralkitchen.com and let me know!

For me, it’s that men drink it, and it tastes bitter.

Because of these two things, for most of my life I’ve thought beer wasn’t for me. Beer’s a man thing, right?! And the stuff they sell on the supermarket shelf tastes pretty awful!

Are you the same?

So what if I told you that, throughout history, beer brewing has most often been the woman’s job? And that, up to a few hundred years ago it didn’t taste bitter?

Women brewing beer? Yes, historically beer has been predominantly a woman’s domain.

Not bitter? No; the bittering agent added to modern beer, hops, was not regularly used in alcoholic drinks (certainly in the UK) until well in to the 17th century.

My journey to ancestral beers and ales has, over the last few years, revealed the incredible history of this drink. It has also taught me many things about fermentation and chemistry, along with giving me many batches of kitchen-brewed beer that have been a joy to learn through!

Where it all began – a 5,000-year old beer

I love fermenting. It started with sauerkraut over a decade ago and has since expanded into a kitchen full of bubbling things and a fascination with fermenting grains. I love sourdough bread, I regularly recreate the ancestral Turkish millet drink, boza, in my kitchen; I eat fermented porridge for breakfast most days. So when I came across a recipe in Sandor Katz’s book Wild Fermentation for a 5,000 year-old Egyptian beer called bouza; I knew I had to give it a go!

The process of making bouza goes something like this:

Soak a large amount of whole grains. Lightly break up half of these in a food processor and mix them with sourdough starter before shaping them into small loaves and par-baking them in a warm oven. Sprout the other half of the soaked grains, making them into malt.

Heat water for the brew and pour it into a simple fermentation vessel. Use the food processor again to lightly break apart your fresh malt, and also crumble up the par-baked loaves before adding both to the water. Let this mix come to room temperature, then add sourdough starter and stir well. Cover and leave this to ferment for several days.

Once the active fermentation seems to have slowed, strain the brew through a sieve to remove the grain (which I use to make bread!). You can now drink your cloudy, thick and sour bouza. Or, as I usually do, you can pour it into swing top bottles, add a spoonful of honey and some spices and leave it to ferment for another day, during which time it will lightly carbonate.

Modern home-brew v. 5,000 year-old bouza

There are many people around the world brewing their own beer today. But they aren’t doing it bouza-style. In fact, the process I’ve just described is worlds away from what a modern homebrewer would do to make beer.

Here are just some of the differences:

Modern home brewing…

• Uses chemically-sanitised vessels that are closed – designed to keep out ‘unwanted’ bacteria.
• Uses industrially-made dried malt, or even a jar of syrup made from malt in a factory.
• A sugary liquid (called wort) is made of this malt or malt syrup and that clear liquid is fermented.
• A yeast strain that has been cultured in a laboratory is used.
• Hops are added to sanitise and bitter the brew.

Bouza…

• Uses clean but unsanitised vessels that are open to the air during the fermentation process.
• Uses whole grains that are malted/processed at home.
• All of these grains go into the fermentation and stay in the fermentation until it’s complete.
• A homemade sourdough starter is used for culturing.

As you can see, aside from the fact that both these drinks use grain and are both fermented, they are very different! In the 5000 years between bouza-making and our modern concept of beer virtually everything in the processing has changed.

So how did pre-industrial beer-making look?

I am English, and my curiosity has led me to research pre-industrial drinks in England. Therefore the information in this article pertains to how English drinks were made. There are, however, a lot of similarities between English processes and how fermented grain drinks were made throughout the world before industrialisation.

First things first, pre-industrial beer was not actually beer; it was ale. Although these two words are used interchangeably in the modern world they actually denote two different drinks. Ale is the older of the two, and was made without the use of hops. Beer came onto the scene, at least in England, from the late 15th century with the inclusion of hops in the drink.

The introduction of hops, which came to England from the continent, are vital in the history of ale and beer because they sanitised the drink, enabling it to last longer. Prior to their introduction, ale would sour quickly, only lasting a few days. This meant it could not be transported very far or sold on an industrial scale.

Pre-industrial grain fermentation for drinks was done without hops. The result was ale (which is what I’ll refer to it as from now on in this article). Because it well did not keep well, it was made regularly. And this making was done by women. Brewing was a household task, just like making bread was. Women would make it in their kitchens every week. It was literally household knowledge; women learnt, at apron–strings, from their mothers and grandmothers how to brew.

Malt was made at home. This was then mixed with water in a large ‘tun’ (kettle/saucepan) brewed up over a fire to make a sugary wort to ferment. Then a household yeast, that was probably the same yeast used to make bread and certainly handed down and around by friends, was used to ferment that wort into ale. The fermenting vessels weren’t chemically sanitised and there was no way to keep air out of the ferment.

The ale was thicker, cloudier and less bitter than our modern beer. It also soured much more quickly than the beer on our supermarket shelves today.

Back to my brewing experiments

Making bouza, and holding a glass of home-made, 5,000-year old ale in your hands, is amazing! But it is very sour (I have read that bouza was originally sweetened by adding honey before serving) and quickly I realised I wanted to experiment with trying to change that. It was clear to me that a lot of the sourness was coming from the sourdough starter that I was using to start my ferment. Sourdough starter is a mix of yeasts and bacteria. Alcoholic drinks are usually cultured with yeasts alone, which produce alcohol as a by-product. Bacteria produce lactic and acetic acid and can make sour flavours.

I turned to my current fermenting practise to find yeast-based starters that I could swap out for the sourdough starter in the bouza recipe. I regularly make boza, a Turkish fermented millet drink and also the English drink mead, both of which I maintain yeast cultures for. I swapped out the sourdough starter in Sandor Katz’s recipe for a boza starter and for a mead starter and found that the resulting drink tasted less sour.

But it still became sour quite easily and quickly – this was due to the inclusion of airborne bacteria in the brew when it was fermenting.

Why don’t I just use commercial yeast?

At the same time as these experiments, I was reading up on medieval ale. I noticed that home brewers who are historical fans and reproduce medieval or traditional ales all use commercial yeast.

I can understand why – it’s easier! It introduces a laboratory-grown yeast into your ale which has literally been developed to produce a certain result. That reliable yeast helps in outnumbering any competing bacteria, making souring less likely.

I do not want to use commercial yeast.

I believe in the beauty, power and benefits of pre-industrial food and I do not want to use commercial yeast even though I know it provides more predictable results. Commercial yeast was developed in the 1880s off the back of Louis Pasteur’s discoveries in the 1850s. We’ve had it 150 years. Alcoholic drinks have been brewed for thousands and thousands of years (there is archaeological evidence dating back to the eighth century BC) – these people did not use commercial yeast.

The ale that British women made in their kitchens up and down the United Kingdom for hundreds and hundreds of years was made with a home-grown yeast population.

The risen breads that have been made by men and women since the the agricultural era (12,000 years ago) were, until 150 years ago, made with homegrown yeasts and bacteria.

The moving of our food out of our own hands, our own gardens, our own kitchens into laboratories and factories has shifted the raison d’etre of food production. It used to be about giving our bodies what they needed whilst looking after the local environment. It’s now about money. I believe this has ruined our society’s health and sanity. I respect the processes and wisdom of our ancestors. Therefore, I choose a diverse homegrown yeast culture for my ale.

If hops were used, it may be easier to get a good ale outcome from home-grown yeast cultures, because, after all, hops were introduced into brewing for their antibacterial properties. But because I choose not to use hops (partly because of wanting to recreate the beers my female ancestors made in their kitchens, and partly because I do not want to use hops which are soporific and oestrogenic), I have more of the challenge!

I have cultured yeast communities at home inspired by the description in Farmhouse Brewing by Lars Garshol, using rye flour, water, sugar (to encourage yeast), salt and rosemary (to discourage bacteria). I have also continued to experiment with the yeast culture that I make for the Turkish millet drink Boza.

Why don’t I use modern air-locked fermenting vessels?

Again, I could ‘help’ my process along (i.e. get a more reliably yeast-only brew that soured less quickly) if I used modern, specially-designed fermentation equipment (as most brewers of historical ale do). Aside from having a tiny kitchen and apartment and enough food equipment already, my female ancestors, just 400 years ago (and for centuries before that) brewed beer in their kitchens, using equipment that was not specialised. I want to explore and play with household, age-old process not follow along with developments created by science that have aided industrialised food production, so I choose to use household pots and pans; as women have done through the ages.

Moving towards medieval – more malt

Thanks to the work of people like Tofi Kerthjalfadsson (drawing on sources such as Judith Bennet’s brilliant book, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England) I understood that the quantity of malt being used in medieval brews was substantially higher than that which I was using for my 5,000-year old bouza and also that medieval ale-makers dried their malt and then infused it in water, creating a sugary liquid, which, after staining the malt out, they fermented.

And this makes sense. More malt means more fermentable sugars, which means more alcohol. That alcohol helps kill off souring bacteria while still allowing alcohol-producing yeasts to thrive. And drying the malt means it can be stored and used whenever it’s needed.

In order to move my practice forwards, and try to replicate my medieval brewster ancestors, I started (as medieval brewsters would have) to dehydrate and subsequently create a sugar-infused liquid (called a wort) with my malt.

Where I’m at now

In my kitchen right now, I’m brewing ale with home-malted and dehydrated rye and (naked) oat grains. I make a wort with the dry malt and ferment with a robust home-made yeast culture from my ancient boza drink. You can read about my process in Becoming a Brewster – How I Make Medieval English Ale in my Kitchen.

If you would like to learn more, you can sign up for my newsletter at the top of this page, or listen to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast, where I often talk about my ale and, for patrons, I recently recorded a special episode on my brewing adventures. I would also love to hear from you at Alison (at) ancestralkitchen.com with questions or your own experiences with ancestral ale.

Tibicos was one of the first fermented drinks I ever made. I read about it in 2011 in Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions and I’ve not looked back since; the drink’s been in virtually constant production in my home kitchen since then.

The process, once done a few times, is really simple. I can attest to that as, these days, it’s my 10-year-old son who is in charge of tibicos in our house. He makes (and drinks) a litre/quart a day.

Here’s our method:

What do you need?

• A 1 litre/quart glass bottle with a lid or a clean piece of cloth plus elastic to cover

• A 1 litre/quart swing top glass bottle (a plastic screw top bottle would also work)

• A small sieve, preferably made of plastic.

• A funnel that will fit inside the swing-top bottle and allow you to lean the sieve on top of it.

• 1 litre/quart unchlorinated water (use a filter to remove the chlorine or pour tap water into a jug and let it sit for 24 hours).

• 3 tablespoons sugar (2 of brown cane sugar and 1 of very dark brown sugar are a good mix).

• 4 tablespoons tibicos (water kefir grains)

• A small piece of ginger

• A small piece of fresh fruit or some dried fruit

How to Prepare the First Fermentation

1/ Put 3 tablespoons of sugar into the glass jar and fill it almost to the top with unchlorinated water.

2/ Stir well until the sugar is dissolved.

3/ Add 4 tablespoons of tibicos (water kefir) grains.

4/ Loosely cover with the lid or use a clean piece of fabric and elastic band to create a temporary cover.

5/ Leave the jar at room temperature to ferment for 24/48 hours. For a sweeter tibicos leave it for a day, if you prefer your tibicos less sweet, leave it 48 hours.

How to do a second fermentation

You can drink your tibicos (water kefir) at this point – all you need to do is strain it through a sieve to remove the grains. But by doing a second fermentation, your tibicos (water kefir) will become more fermented and fizzier! Here’s how:

1/ Put the funnel inside the swing-top bottle and balance the sieve atop your funnel. Slowly pour the tibicos (water kefir) through the sieve, into the funnel. The liquid will fill the bottle and the grains will be caught in the sieve.

(These grains are now ready to use again, in a new sugar/water solution. They often reproduce – if you have too many, you can eat them or give them away!)

2/ Cut the ginger and fruit into small pieces.

3/ Put them into the bottle, close the lid well and leave the bottle at room temperature for 12-24 hours. Pay attention during this time because gas can build up in the bottle – for this reason some people prefer to use plastic bottles (you can literally see the gas building up as the bottle will expand).

The tibicos is ready!

If you’d like to know how I make tibicos when travelling, without glass bottles, check out this post.

Russian Bread Kvass is a favourite in our house.

It’s sweet, it’s sour, it’s bubbly, it’s rich. And that’s before you’ve flavoured it – which you can do with fruit, herbs, spice and roots.

Kvass is a less-well-known cousin to water kefir or kombucha. It’s easy to make and full of probiotic goodness. All you need to start it off is some sourdough rye bread. And you can keep that bread – using it over and over; it’ll just get stronger and tastier.

My hubby, when I first started making it, commented that it tasted like Cola – indeed it is known as ‘Russian Cola’, comes from the Slavic and Baltic regions, and has been around for over 1000 years.

Some recipes you can find online use bread yeast to start the fermentation. I don’t and I’ll show you that you don’t need it – wild yeasts captured in the sourdough and omnipresent in our environment do a fine job of weaving their magic on this drink without the need for industrial yeast.

A by-product of yeast fermentation is alcohol, and kvass is slightly alcoholic – usually 0.5-1.0%. In the summer it’s refreshing straight from the fridge and in the winter, it’s a warming, fizzy treat!

Russian Bread Kvass

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of cubed sourdough rye bread (can be stale)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 to 4 cups of non-chlorinated water
• (Optional) Herbs/spices/fruit/flavourings/extra sugar or honey (for flavouring the second stage of fermentation).

Equipment:

These specific pieces are not strictly necessary, but will help you a lot.

• 1 litre/1 quart glass jar with lid
• small plastic sieve
• small funnel
• 1 litre/1 quart swing-top glass bottle (for the second stage of fermentation)

Let’s look more closely at what you need:

Sourdough rye bread

Sourdough rye bread is traditionally used as the starter for Russian Kvass.

If you don’t currently make this, it’s a great opportunity to give it a go. I have made sourdough rye regularly for a decade and have a lot of resources that can help you. Start with my post How to Make Sourdough Rye Bread From Scratch and listen to my podcast episode Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering the Basics.

If you aren’t up for making a rye sourdough, go find a baker who is. Supporting local artisanal bread is such a good thing! 

You only need 1 cup of bread cubes – not much – and it can be stale. The end of a well-loved loaf is perfect!

Sugar

I use a mix of two-thirds whole dark brown sugar and one-third golden sugar. This gives the resulting kvass a dark colour and a rich, deep flavour that compliments the sourdough rye extremely well.

You don’t need to do this though; use whatever sugar you have to hand or fancy trying.

Isn’t this a lot of sugar?

When I started making fermented drinks, I was concerned about the sugar content. I’m not anymore.

How come?

• I make them sour (much more so than the ‘average’ guest to my house cares for!!) which means more of the sugar has been transformed into by-products.
• I know sugar is essential to the process of fermentation and that the benefits of drinking fermented beverages far outweigh the minimal sugar imbibed in the process.
• I don’t drink these beverages in quantity…even my son (who drinks the most in our house) only has 2 small cups a day. You can hear me talking about this in my podcast episode What Fermented Drinks Can I Make?

I haven’t tried using honey or other liquid sweeteners. If you want to give these a go, I suggest you wait for your second or third round of the drink to give your starter some time to get strong and you some time to get used to how it should work.

Water

Your water should be non-chlorinated. Filter it, or failing that, pour and leave tap water out overnight. A lot of kvass recipes suggest boiling the water first to remove potentially harmful particles. I boiled my water the first time I did this, but have not done so subsequently and have not had problems, but please make your own mind up on this – if you feel more comfortable boiling, ensure the water has cooled to below 41C/105F before you add the sugar and bread.

Flavourings

This is where you get to be creative!

For the second fermentation you can add more sugar – in the form of honey, dried fruit or fruit and/or other flavourings.

Fresh mint is traditional and I love it, but I’ve also added fresh rosemary.

Ginger works well, helping to make it more bubbly and give it a zing and combines well with honey or fruit.

I’ve also used coffee grinds, cacao nibs, cardamon pods, fennel seeds and my current favourite – liquorice root in stick form.

The process:

Stage one – Preparing the first fermentation

• If you wish to sterilise your 1 litre/1 quart glass jar you can do so by washing it out and placing it in an oven at 120C/250F for 15 minutes. Let it cool.

• Toast 1 cup of sourdough rye bread in the oven at 120C/250F for 1-2 hours. You want it dried out and crispy but not burnt. Let it cool.

• Fill your litre/quart glass jar with water (previously boiled and cooled, if desired) two thirds full.

• Add half a cup of sugar and stir until dissolved.

• Add the cooled, toasted bread to the jar and stir gently.

• Lightly screw a lid on or cover the glass jar and leave it somewhere warm and out of direct light to ferment. Stir once a day. 

• Check it after 3 days (put a note in your calendar!) and taste. If it is sour enough for you, you can proceed to stage two, if it still tastes strongly sweet, leave it to ferment further (to produce a soured drink (the way we like it) mine usually takes 6-7 days).

Stage two – Decanting and (optional) second fermentation

• Prepare the 1 litre/1 quart swing top bottle by cleaning and sterlising as above.

• Put the funnel in the neck and balance your sieve on this (see below).

• Pour your fermented kvass through the funnel/sieve, so that the kvass ends up in the bottle and the bread cubes are caught in the sieve. You may have to hold the sieve still and/or use a spoon to scrape out some of the bread to complete this.

• Remove the funnel/sieve/bread and put to one side.

• Add your optional second fermentation sweeteners/flavourings to the bottle. Cap the top. If necessary (it is with honey) gently agitate the bottle to mix.

• Leave this bottle somewhere warm and out of direct light to ferment.

It’s ready to drink from now onwards, but will improve over the next 24 hours. Check it regularly, releasing the gas in case it has gotten very bubbly. I find it’s best drunk within 3 days. Remove it to the fridge if you want to preserve – this will virtually stop the fermentation but will also mean it looses some of its fizz.

Stage three – Making the next batch

The next batch of bread kvass is ready to make as soon as you’ve strained the bread from the liquid at the beginning of stage two. You will use this bread as a starter in your next batch.

• Wash your previously used 1 litre/1 quart glass jar, or use a new one.

• Return to stage one above and repeat the process from the third paragraph. I’ve found it is possible to use less sugar on subsequent fermentations, so feel free to experiment with quantites and the time they take to ferment.

If you don’t want to immediately make a new batch of kvass, you can keep the starter in the fridge for a few days until you’re ready.

Download a hand-drawn graphic that you can keep in your kitchen to help remind you of this process here.

For more on fermentation and ancestral cooking, check out my podcast Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.

You might also like:

What Is Boza Drink? (another historic European fermented drink)

How To Make Sourdough Rye Bread From Scratch

What Fermented Drinks Can I Make? (podcast episode)