Anyone else love Kvass?

I know this sounds stupid, but is DFH Kvasir considered a Kvass? It's classed as a gruit/herb ale

 

Next to no alcohol?

 

alkoholfrei?

 

It is impossible to obtain a 10 % beverage whilst making kvass, anything above 1.5 % is basically impossible.
The thing with real kvass is that it simply doesn’t keep, it is a living product with zero preservatives.
Commercial kvass is basically carbonated water + malt extract + flavourings.

Historically kvass is a predecessor of sorts to beer, like most historical beverages of the sort, the real deal simply doesn’t keep more than a couple of days. It has none of the characteristics of modern brewing. I think that because it is a fermented beverage using grains people call it too easily beer but it really isn’t. There are lots of fermented food products, kvass is in its own category & it just happens to use grains, that is all really. There are other fermented grain beverages in the world like Gamju or Amazake. I have no idea why it is even listed on BA, the style description at least calls it beer-like.

 

I drank that shit out of tanker trucks in Moscow in the early 80s. I feel no need to revisit that , so that's more for you lot!

 

Kvass doesn’t use malt but bread. If you extend your logic, this would mean that bread is a beer. (See above post).

 

Sake is a beer. Whatever, interesting thread though. Wasn't the first beers from kind of like this origin?

 

Sake is absolutely nothing like a beer. It's made from rice. Beer is made from barley and hops. Barley + hops = beer.

 

From something called Google, results in a nano second: "Sake is known among the Japanese as rice wine. It's not a wine though, it's a beer. Beer is an alcoholic beverage made by converting the ..."
We will find out how close Kvass is to beer by how long this thread is allowed to stay alive. I might be wrong, because you see I am not a know-it-all, but I believe I am right.

 

and found this in the world wide intraweb:
Archaeobeer
Author: Dan Mouer Issue: September 2007
Back in the day - we're talking WAY back in the day - beer was brewed with malt, and bread, and honey and wine . . . and just about anything that could be fermented. How the ancients brewed - and how you can too!

 

Kvass is sort of what came before beer even if beer was already around when kvass originated. There have been beer-like beverages before it that resembled beer; Definition of what is beer has changed even over time. In Shakespearian time beer was the beverage without hops & ale was the same beverage with hops. I would argue that the use of malt is the distinctive character that makes a beverage beer. That the alcohol needs to be obtained solely by fermenting residual sugar. Indeed if kvass is beer then sake isn’t too dissimilar since the main difference is just the use of a different grain.

 

I've only had the commercial 2-liter stuff from Euro groceries, but I've enjoyed it. I'd love to try some more legitimate ones.

 

From Wikipedia:
"Kvass has been a common drink in Eastern Europe since at least the Middle Ages, comparable with other ancient fermented grain beverages including beer brewed from barley by the ancient Egyptians, the pombe or millet beer of Africa, the so-called rice wines of Asia, the chicha made with corn or cassava by the natives of ..."

 

Am reading "The Airmen and the Headhunters" by Judith Heimann. In it the natives of Borneo make and drink a hell of a lot of Borak, which was roasted rice and ginger-root, aged a bit in giant jars- and then sipped through a straw. I am not saying for sure these are beers, but they sure sound like it to me, enough for people to comment if they like Kvass or not. I for one never had it, but it sounds like the kind of thing I would like (who is not a big know-it-all).

 

My grandfather once told me he did some work for an old crofter back when he was young and according to him the old guy would put torn up pieces of sourdough rye bread into a glass jar and pour water over it, he then added some frog legs (!) to the jar and let it sit for some time before serving it. My understanding is that this was a form of kvass, minus the frog legs of course.

 

Well if Google says so then it must be so, but I'm sure if you presented this definition to a Japanese sake brewer, or for that matter most anyone familiar with the likeness of beer, they'd laugh in your face.

Back to the Kvass being beer thing. While a far, far less pretentious propostion than sake, kids in Russia take it to school to drink, just like kids in the UK take shandy to school. Russians don't even recognise beer as being an alcoholic beverage, let alone Kvass as being a type of beer.

 

They're very malty, almost molasses like, with no discernible alcohol. I had no idea mine was alcoholic, and I freaked out after discovering it did because I drank it while driving. It was Gubernijas Duonos Gira Kvass, I found it at a European specialty grocery. I think it's less than 3% abv.

 

Wikipedia, you say?

 

Thanks. I need to find a Russian food store. Kvass and Happoshu are the only two beer styles that I haven't tried on this site.

 

well near enough.
Firemen in my old town had beer in the soda machine in the firehouse. When the media found out, they made a stink and the Fire Chief (a long since passed WW2 hero) said that he felt beer was not an alcoholic beverage and they left it alone. There are unfortunately light beers, with low alcohol. Looked it up (on Google, sorry), in the US a beer has to have less then .05% alcohol to be considered non-alcoholic, but yes, even then it is still called Non-alcoholic "beer"- so in the US at least, alcohol does not a beer make.