Okay ready. [SOUND] Okay I'm
ready [LAUGH]. Hi, my name's
Cortney Burns. We're at Bar Tartine
today and we're gonna be
making kvass. Kvass is traditionally
a bread drink. All over Russian and the
Ukraine and Lithuania, people have been making
rye based beverages for hundreds and
hundreds of years. So we're taking on that
tradition today with our sprouted rye
bread that we make here at Bar Tartine. And we're gonna use
this as the aid to start the fermentation
in our beverage today. So we end up with a fizzy
probiotic beverage that becomes fizzy
by way of CO2. That is
the production and the byproduct of
fermentation. To make our kvass, we're gonna start with
six cups of water, one cup of whey. We culture all of our
dairy in house so we end up with a lot
of whey left over. This one is sour whey or acid whey, which we get
from making our yogurt. One apple, a quarter
cup of dried apples, two beets. We have red beets, and
we have yellow beets. The color doesn't
really matter. It just changes
the end product of what you're working with. And two hunks off
of our rye bread. With that said,
let's make some kvass. So, what we're
gonna do is, I'm gonna grab
a couple of ball jars. It takes about two to
three days to ferment. And the alcohol content
in kvass will only be about 0.5 to 1%. So it's very low. You take it any
further than that, you will end up with a,
you know, a hard cider and gently
alcoholic beverage. If that's what you want. Here's your gentle lesson
in, in moonshine at home. We make ours with
rye bread and beets. Traditionally it is
just with rye bread. But what you can do is if
you have old rye bread or you have pieces
of rye bread, you can just
grab any scraps. Doesn't matter if they're
dry or if they're moist. And you just pop them in. For the swimmer
just gonna rip a couple pieces off. We'll do a couple
different ones today. We'll do both a red and
a yellow kvass. So there's active yeasts
that are still alive in the bread, and it helps
to get everything going. And we don't add
sugar to our Kvass. So there's lots of
recipes if you're looking around that do say that
you add sugar to Kvass. We find that the barley
malt that we use in the bread is enough to get it
to go to start to sour. And in the apples. And in the beets. So we're adding
one cup of whey. When we're fermenting
things we're creating live,
active mediums. And so sometimes when you
open them they like to fissure out on you. They like to volcano. Just be aware. Be careful. Have fun. It's not gonna hurt you. It's just gonna get
all over the place. And then we're
going to split up our dried apples. Any dried fruit works. We just like it. We have some fresh
apples as well. We drink Kvass cuz we
like the flavor of it. But another reason that
we like Kvass is that they're chock full of
bioavailable probiotics. So, all of our bodies
need probiotics. The non-sexy part of the
fermented food world is that it actually
populates your gut with all sorts of
really healthy things. Not only does it
taste delicious. It's fun to make, it's
also really good for you. And then we
have our beets. And all of this,
the leftovers, in theory can be cooked
down to make soup. Nothing goes to waste. And then we have some of these beautiful
yellow beets as well. We leave the skins on
just cuz they have so much natural
yeast on them as well that they don't
really need to come off. They've been cleaned. I kind of balance
everything with a little bit of bitter
as well which we like. So now that we have
our rye bread in here, our dried apples. We have fresh apples and
our beets, we're just gonna pour
water over this and let it sit for a couple
days and do its thing. We're gonna do the same
thing over here. We're creating
a Kvass kaleidoscope. Like that. So next, we'll just
put a little bit of cheese cloth on here. If you have these
rings at home, if you do happen to
have ball jars or other jars like this. You just clamp it
down this way. That way you don't
have to go searching in your cupboards for any rubber bands that might
be lurking about or not. This keeps flies out,
more than anything. And anything else that may fall into it
that's gross. Just let them sit out at
ambient room temperature. About 76,
72 to 76 degrees, for two to three days. After two days, we'll use
these guys, lock them up. Let, we can let them sit
out for another day. It'll make them
a little more active. And then we strain it
off and we drink it. This is what it looks
like, this is our base. So this has been going
now for about three days. Just went into
the fridge yesterday. This one has the apples,
the rye, and the beets. So it'll be like
the the red version. This is the finished one. So another way that
we use the Kvass at the restaurant is
to emulate what you see often in the Midwest
is called a pickle back. So get a beer. Then you get a shot of
pickle juice and often times you'll put that
straight in the beer or you'll drink the beer and you chug
the pickle juice. So, we offer this
just as a beverage on the menu but we also
offer it with a pilsner. Some people pour it in, some people drink
it on the side. We're going to taste
some of this Kvass now, see if we've
done a good job. Hey Nick, do you want to
come taste this kvass? Hey, Caitlin. She's gonna
drink the beer. So, often times
people will drink this right
on the side. But today we're
just going to put it right in there. >> Oh man. >> It's like the lava
lamps of your youth. Cheers. >> Cheers. >> Down the hatchet. >> That's good! >> Keep going. >> Down the hatchet? >> Down the hatchet. [LAUGH] There we go, that's looking
Kvass right there. You're not allowed
to be useless for the rest of
the night now. >> Yeah, Caitlin!
One more dip. >> Whoo!
>> Peace. >> It's Kvass
at its finest. >> That was amazing. >> It is amazing. >> What,
you guys want some? >> [LAUGH].
>> I'm Cortney Burns from Bar Tartine, for the recipe,
click on the link below.