Recipes

Beet Kvass

Not the Slavic bread kvass but the other drink of that name — raw beets in a light salt brine, fermented a few days into something deep red, earthy and SALTY rather than sweet. It is quite challenging on first taste and it is one of the most useful things on my shelf, because it is the souring agent borscht actually wants.

Fermented · Drink · Vegetable

Beet Kvass
Prep 15 minutes
Cook 3–7 days
Serves Makes 1 quart
Level Easy

Not the Slavic bread kvass but the other drink of that name — raw beets in a light salt brine, fermented a few days into something deep red, earthy and SALTY rather than sweet. It is quite challenging on first taste and it is one of the most useful things on my shelf, because it is the souring agent borscht actually wants.

Ingredients

  • 3 medium raw beets, peeled and coarsely chopped (not grated)
  • 1 litre water
  • 20 g salt (a 2% brine)
  • 2 garlic cloves (optional)
  • ½ tsp caraway seed (optional)

Directions

  1. Key ingredients

Raw beets and a light 2% brine.

  1. Chop, do not grate. Grated beet releases too much sugar too fast and the ferment goes alcoholic and slimy. Rough ¾-inch pieces.
  2. Brine at 2%: 20 g salt per litre of water. Lighter than a vegetable pickle because you want a drinkable liquid, not a preserved solid.
  3. Submerge and cover loosely.
  4. Ferment 3–7 days at room temperature. It will go deep red and faintly fizzy and smell earthy and sour.
  5. Strain and refrigerate. Drink in small glasses — a few ounces, not a tumbler.
  6. Reuse the beets once for a weaker second batch if you like.

Notes

PROVENANCE. Mine.

TWO DIFFERENT DRINKS SHARE THIS NAME. Bread kvass is the Slavic original — stale dark rye, toasted and steeped with sugar and often raisins and mint, fermented 2–3 days by yeast into a malty, bready, lightly alcoholic drink, and the best possible use for the ends of a rye loaf. BEET kvass is the modern health-food version and a lacto-ferment rather than a yeast one, so it is closer to sauerkraut brine than to bread kvass. Do not expect one from a recipe for the other.

BEETS ARE VERY SUGARY, which is why this ferments fast and why chopping rather than grating matters. If it turns ropy or smells alcoholic, you grated it or it was too warm.

USE IT IN BORSCHT. A splash at the end brings back the sour and the color that long cooking takes out — the traditional job of a soured beet liquid.

Also good as a base for a salad dressing, and it is genuinely salty, so treat it as a seasoning as much as a drink.