Contents
Ossetian beer (original name – “iron bægæny”) is a low-alcohol carbonated drink (1-9 degrees) of brown or black color, which tastes closest to black kvass, but with hoppy notes of bitterness. The most similar traditional beer style is porter. We will consider a cooking technique that is as close as possible to the classical one, but adapted to the conditions of the kitchen.
Attention! The proposed recipe may shock people familiar with brewing, as it only remotely resembles the classic technology of mashing and boiling. In fact, Ossetian beer can be considered a hoppy mash or even a separate low-alcohol drink, but not beer in the traditional sense of the term.
Theory
In most cases, barley is used to make Ossetian beer due to its wide availability, but you can create combinations of cereals in different proportions, for example, take 2 parts of wheat and rye for 0,5 parts of barley (it is advisable to germinate everything). Sometimes even cornmeal is added to the must, but not more than 25-30%.
In recent years, Ossetians are increasingly abandoning malt, replacing it with black bread and sugar, as a result, something like rye alcoholic kvass is obtained, but this approach can hardly be considered traditional.
The water should be clean, soft and chlorine-free. The ideal option is spring. In urban areas, you can buy bottled.
Only hop cones are suitable for making beer. Ossetians themselves grow and harvest hops, which they add to the must, without particularly delving into varieties and acidity. At home, the easiest way to buy hops is in a pharmacy or in brewing stores (the cheapest one with an alpha acidity of 4-5% will do). The more hops added to the wort, the bitterer the Ossetian beer will be.
For fermentation, Ossetians add sourdough made from the previous batch of beer to the wort. In villages, neighbors borrow leaven from each other or rely on wild yeast altogether. Since we do not have a starter culture, in order to avoid contamination of the must with pathogenic microorganisms, it is advisable to add beer (ideal) or wine yeast. Dry and pressed bakery products give a characteristic alcohol flavor and aroma of mash.
Sugar is added during the boil along with hops to increase the strength or at the end of cooking for sweetening. But sugar is guaranteed to give a leavened taste, so it is better to make a minimum of it or refuse it altogether.
Ingredients:
- barley – 2,5 kg;
- water – 10 liters;
- dry hop cones – 50-100 grams;
- yeast (beer or wine) – per 10 liters of must;
- sugar – 50-250 grams (optional).
From the devices you will need a cauldron or a pan with a thick bottom for cooking.
The proposed composition, proportions of ingredients and cooking technology are just one of the cooking options. There is no single generally accepted recipe, each village has its own understanding of how to properly prepare Ossetian beer. At the same time, the taste of drinks can vary significantly.
Ossetian beer recipe
1. First, you need to make malt from the grains: germinate, dry and grind. The complete technology for making malt at home is described at the link. Ossetians often only wash barley (wheat, rye) well, soak it in water, and when the volume of grains increases by 1,5-2 times (in about a day), the water is drained, the cereals are laid out in a thin layer in a dark, cool place, and left for 2-3 days before the first sprouts appear. Then the malt is dried for 3-4 days, the sprouts are separated, and the finished grains are ground into medium-ground groats.
You can simply buy ready-made, unfermented ground malt.
2. Heat up a dry cauldron or a thick-bottomed pot to boil the wort. Pour in 60% of the malt used (1,5 kg according to the recipe). Smooth out in a single layer, fry over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the flour is dark brown.
The stronger the roast, the darker the color of the beer. If overcooked, the drink will be very bitter. Therefore, in most cases, the malt is roasted to a brown color.
3. Add water and all the remaining malt (1 kg) to the cauldron. Stirring occasionally so that part of the flour does not stick to the bottom and does not burn, bring the wort to a boil, then reduce the heat to a minimum, boil for 15 minutes (be sure to stir 2-3 times) and turn off the heat. Leave the wort for 10-15 minutes until the remaining malt sinks to the bottom.
4. Filter the wort through burlap or cheesecloth. First, use a colander or ladle to get the bottom layer of grains (boiled malt) and put it on the filter material, then gradually pour the entire liquid part through cheesecloth with grains. Wash the first container and again filter the entire liquid part through gauze, then squeeze the grains to dryness (no longer needed). Thanks to such filtration, all useful substances will be washed out of the malt, and the beer itself will become noticeably lighter.
5. Put the clean liquid part back on the fire, bring to a boil, add hops and sugar (optional), mix. Cook for 30 minutes over low heat.
Since the classical technology of malt saccharification (breakdown of starch in grains into simple sugars) with temperature pauses is not used, the wort initially contains a minimum of sugar, so the beer will not be strong – a maximum of 2-3%. To increase the strength, you need to increase the sugar content of the wort, usually this is done with beet sugar (add a maximum of 10% of the malt used, preferably 3-5%, or do it without sugar at all). Then you can get beer with a strength of 3-7%.
6. Remove the pan from the heat, cool the wort to +28-30 ° C, add the yeast pre-activated according to the instructions on the bag, mix. Leave open (without water seal) in a dark room at room temperature for 2-4 days. To prevent insects from getting into the drink, the neck of the containers can be tied with gauze. After a couple of hours, foam should appear and a hiss should be heard, which means that the beer has successfully fermented.
The longer the Ossetian beer ferments, the higher its strength. You can try in 2 days.
7. In Ossetia, beer is usually prepared for the holidays and drunk immediately, so the technology for its storage is not provided. But the drink can be poured into plastic bottles, sealed with samples and left in the refrigerator for a couple of days. It is important to monitor the gas in the bottle and, if necessary, bleed it so that excess pressure does not burst the containers.