This Might Be a Home Brewing Question

springlering62

I’d like to try my hand at making kvas, a (mostly) nonalcoholic fermented drink made from water, nearly burnt rye bread, raisins, yeast and a shedload of sugar.

Supposedly the yeast eats the sugar. End result is a carbonated beverage, vaguely akin to a dark rich root beer.

Anyone care to take a stab at how many calories and/or carbs might be left over following such a process?

mtaratoot

I am trying to remember if any of my friends made kvas back in my home brewing days. I can’t imagine we didn’t. My friend made kumis once. I was too scared to drink it. Looked awful.

I don’t understand how it can be low ethanol if the whole sugar shack goes in. Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) eats sugar and produces carbon dioxide and ethanol. More sugar should mean more fermentation unless you stop the process somehow. Then again, we used to make root beer with yeast, and it was low alcohol. Dangerous stuff. We would mix it, bottle it, and set it aside a few days. The pressure reduced yeast growth if I recall, and we used very very little yeast. But sometimes it would still get to a high pressure and the bottles could explode. Please be careful if kvas behaves the same. Not only will you have to clean a sticky mess off the ceiling, but glass shards flying when you try to open a bottle can cause serious injury!

If the only fermentation byproducts are CO2 and ethanol, maybe just pretend it’s all still sugar as far as calories go.

How much sugar are we talking about per gallon of kvas? What would the specific gravity be? I presume less than beer wort or it would be undrinkabky sweet.

Sinisterbarbie1

I looked up the values for various kvass brewed in Eastern Europe (Poland, the Baltic countries, Ukraine) where my family is from and the commercially available info has calories at between 30-37/100g and carbs at 6-8g.. This sounds plausible to me as it is in the range for kombucha which is a similarly fermented drink that relies on yeast and acid fermentation also requiring sugar. Because kvass often uses beets for flavoring US bloggers will incorrectly claim that kvass is made by lactofermentation using salt and only the natural sugars of the beets, but they are confusing the fermenting liquid poured off from marinated beets which some folks in the US promote as a healthy drink but that is not intended to be consumed as a beverage in eastern Europe with kvass— kvass made for drinking is made with sugar and ends up with a lightly sweet, slightly effervescent product. Kvass should not be crazy bubbly - it should be flatter than beer and have below .05 alcohol like kombucha. Good luck! I’d love to hear how the project goes and if you have a recipe to recommend.

ETA I wonder how the process used by various NA beer manufacturers to make NA stout beers differs. Some of these have a rich dark chocolaty bready profile. At what point does one NA fermenting/brewing process bleed into another?

springlering62

The kvass we had in Lviv was fairly carbonated. I’ve only had a sip or two of beer in my life (alcoholism runs in family, and I was dubbed the family’s “Little Carrie Nation” 😬) so have no idea how to compare it to beer.

I thought it tasted similar to Vitamalz (sp?) or Gibramalzer (flagrant attempt at sp!) in Germany, only more rootbeer-y.

I was looking at this recipe:
natashaskitchen.com/angelinas-easy-bread-kvas-recipe/

It calls for 4c sugar for 10quarts kvass. I’d probably quarter that for a first attempt. The comments have some interesting ideas regarding pressurization.

It’s absolutely fascinating that the yeast could eat that much sugar and sorta make it go poof (or bang!), but my daughter likes the “light” malz drink in Germany and I do remember it being in the 35 or so range per bottle.

mtaratoot

When folks make root beer, it's usually pretty darn sweet. Plenty of sugar. That actually can inhibit yeast. When I made mead, I often would start a five-gallon batch with one gallon of raw honey. This yielded an initial specific gravity about 1.090 or so. After an initial fermentation, I would add another pint of honey that made the effective initial gravity closer to 1.10 or more. My mead was not sweet; I fermented to a very dry end product with a gravity near, or sometimes below 1.000. If I wanted something sweeter, I would have added all the honey at first. The high gravity can shock the yeast.

Some home brewers, especially for stronger beer, start the yeast in a more dilute solution until the population increases. That time when the yeast population increases is called the "lag phase." Not much fermentation is going on until the yeast fully colonize the wort.

So I suspect that with root beer, and probably kvas, that because you use very little yeast and don't let it ferment too long, your risk of explosions are somewhat low but not zero.

If you lived nearby, I would loan or give you some good old HEAVY DUTY bottles. The modern glassware is thinner and probably more prone to cracking or exploding. And truth be known, the bottle would probably crack and just make a mess before it really let loose. The thing we were always warned is that if one bottle starts to have problems, gently more the rest to the refrigerator and open it SOON. Another strategy is let it sit at room temperature just a few days and then keep it cold. Yeast activity is slowed in the cold. The exception is lager yeast. Ale yeast floats and is a "top fermenter," and it needs warmer temperatures. The word "lager" means "to store." Lager beer was aged in cold caves; the strain of yeast (same species) ferments from the bottom and can tolerate much colder temperatures and continue to slowly ferment. Bread yeast is the same species. It is a fast fermenter, and it is very attenuative. That means it doesn't leave a lot of residual sugar. It also imparts a "bready" flavor. That may be perfect in kvas since it's made with rye bread. If you have a home brew shop nearby, I might splurge a dollar and get a satchet of beer yeast. You don't even need to use it all; it will store in a glass jar in the refrigerator. Like bread yeast, you can proof it in a more dilute solution of whatever you will be fermenting to get it going or at least make sure it's alive.

Sanitation is a great idea; use a mild bleach solution for your bottles to prevent spoilage organisms from ruining your project.

If you can find swing-top bottles (think Grolsch or Fischer beer) they are thick glass, and you don't need a capper to seal them. Ask local beer bars or friends. I have a bunch of them, but... you're far far away.

Sinisterbarbie1

So I kept having the thought that your description of kvass sounds a lot like how some people jump start sourdough starter with bread or fruit sugar and I found the blog below describing kvass as a use for discard from sourdough starter, the recipe seems a lot like yours except the starter takes the place of the active yeast. Also, this and several recipes i read (not in English) rely on far less sugar (a couple of tablespoons ) so I think your recipe may have a misprint if it calls for massive quantities of sugar. It also seems that the longer you leave it sitting the more sugars will ferment making it more alcoholic - kvass is not intended to be an alcoholic drink. Finaly this guy and a couple other folks recommend using soda bottles and not filling them to the top in order to avoid carbonation issues. That isn’t healthy for alcoholic drinks but sounds like a posssible solution for this case.
I am definitely intrigued and may have to make some myself now. . . To go with the weird brown gjetost cheese I like

Sinisterbarbie1

Oops here is the blog https://thetakeout.com/make-homemade-kvass-from-your-sourdough-starter-1844801564

mtaratoot

I personally would not use plastic bottles even if I had them.

I don't know why adding head space would increase carbonation, but if you do use plastic bottles and want to leave headspace, a pro tip would be to squeeze out all the air before you screw the lid on. The air might contain spoilage organisms, and for sure it has oxygen. If you leave space but purge the air, the first of the CO2 will expand the bottle, and additional CO2 will dissolve under pressure. Note, too, that gas is more soluble in cold liquids than warm. You could probably use a "squeeze test" to see how hard the plastic bottle is and then toss it in the refrigerator to get more gas into the kvas.

For what it's worth, plastic bottles can explode too. People make "dry ice bombs" with plastic. When the go, there's a lot of energy discharge, and even if there's no shards of glass they can still lead to injury. Plastic shards can be dangerous too.

The old advice was to start checking your root beer bottles after just a few days to see how far long the pressure was adding up. When I lived in Utah, people just dumped pounds and pounds of dry ice into a vat of root beer base to dissolve the CO2 and then bottle it that way. There was no risk of explosion, and zero ethanol. I think a healthy beverage like kvas should have some natural fermentation.

Let us know how your first few batches turn out!