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Somehow I went to the apiary. My older brother fell ill at the wrong time – at the very beginning of summer, so I myself had to look after the bee colonies for several months. Bees start to swarm in the very heat and you need to carefully monitor them, make daily rounds and all that.
The story was shared by my longtime subscriber Ivan D.
How did the idea come about
The apiary is located in the middle of nowhere – no shops, no good roads nearby, there are forests and mountains around. Beautiful, but hot, such heat in nature leads to the idea of some kind of soft drink.
What to do? No beer, I don’t know how to make mead, and, as I said, there is no shop either. I only have sugar (for the bees) and water.
Braga made from honey, but not mead.
Then I remembered the recipe for mash from the Internet, which does not require yeast. I haven’t had a chance to “test” this recipe before, but I remember it. At one time, I was very surprised when I saw the cooking technology – how can you cook mash without yeast?
What ingredients are required
Having estimated, I decided that I have all the ingredients, because nothing special is needed.
So, for the mash I took:
- 500 gram of sugar;
- a little flour;
- hop cones.
Pressed yeast, which I didn’t have. Any bag can be enough for 5 liters of mash.
That’s all. And if in more detail, then five liters of water require at least a kilogram of sugar, then the degree of mash will be at its best.
My main ingredient is hops. Of course, it takes time, but it will be a natural brew. I didn’t rush anywhere. The whole summer was at my disposal.
The cooking process
The recipe for making yeast from hops is simple, for this you need:
- 1,5-2 cups of hop cones;
- 2 cup boiling water;
- 1 tablespoon flour;
- 2 tablespoons of sugar.
Collecting hop cones in nature is not difficult. Hops poured boiling water and held in hot water – 10-15 minutes. The broth is properly cooled and strained. A few days later the yeast was ready. It turned out a kind of mass, which became the main ingredient in the preparation of a “natural” drink.
Before that, I had never had to make and try a mash from fresh hop cones. It seemed that the taste would be like a regular yeast tincture. Therefore, to make the drink “real”, I collected and added a few mint leaves to my recipe. Braga matured in an ordinary five-liter plastic bucket.
In short, here is a step-by-step recipe for making hop mash:
- Boil 2 liters of water in a saucepan.
- Add some of this water to the ladle and dilute the yeast mass from the hop cones.
- Pour the gruel into a five-liter bucket.
- Pour two and a half cups of sugar – 400-500 grams.
- Add a few mint leaves – 10-15 leaves – not more!
- Pour all this mass with cooled, but not cold boiled water.
Mass of hop cones
My experiment was fully “ripe” only after a week. The first time I tried it three days later, in my opinion, only then did the main fermentation process begin. The taste was sweet, which means that the mash has just fermented, everything is in full swing.
I decided that now I’ll try it only after seven days to get a drink that looks like beer. After all, I put a little sugar.
All messed up mint leaves
I wanted beer, not very strong, but, most importantly, cold. I could easily cool my brew in the icy water of the stream, dropping a bucket there for an hour or two. But what happened, you can’t call beer in any way.
Exactly a week later, I went to try the drink, took the gauze and poured myself into a glass. It turned out a strong and tasteless swill, but the mash was definitely ripe. I realized this after a few minutes.
The whole taste, it seems to me, spoiled the mint. After all, I put it much more than I wrote here – in the recipe. Braga made from natural alcoholic yeast spoils the taste of yeast, so I wanted to “play it safe”, but I went too far.
The disgusting tincture was simply poured out, because there was no moonshine in the apiary. Perhaps moonshine from this mash, infused with hops and mint, would have turned out excellent, but in this form I did not drink it.
What do you think about this? How should I deal with the brew?