Beet Kvass

Beet Kvass in a "juice" glass - what a color!

I had some store-bought, "Angelica's Garden" beet kvass a few weeks ago - it was served a la red wine while preparing a sort of date-night dinner, and it was REALLY good. (It costs a little more than wine, but you get some good gut flora out of the deal!) It also inspired me to try making my own. It looks like the Angelica's Garden folks add some apple cider/juice and fresh ginger juice right before bottling to give it a little sweetness, which I think would be an amazing next experiment. So far, I have only had this straight up, and I give it two thumbs up. It's just a little fizzy, rich and savory/sweet like wine, with a taste of earthy beets that is not too strong. I so far can't drink a whole glass - this is more of a 4 oz. sort of deal. But it's good. And WAY easier than kombucha, with perhaps more nutrition.

I followed Sally Fallon's beet kvass recipe. When I went to look up kvass in Salvador Katz's fermentation book, his kvass was made from bread?! Apparently both bread and beet versions are traditional - I had no idea.

Getting the whey!

I am going to try making kvass some more (maybe sometime without added whey) - but decided to go with using whey to get the culture started. I have not really had much dairy other than heavy cream for the last long while, so it was a bit of an adventure picking out which cultured dairy product to use to get my whey from. I thought about a coconut yogurt, but even the plain ones had cane sugar and weird stuff in there, so I went with some goat milk kefir. I had a swig of it too, and it was really delicious. You could also use juice from homemade/live cultured sauerkraut or any other fermented something you have around.

To get whey, use any yogurt or kefir that has live cultures in it. Put the cultured yogurt/cream/kefir in cheese cloth, or in a coffee melita thing over a cup to separate the "curds" and "whey" - though really you will be having whey and what ends up being like cream cheese. You only need 1/4 c whey, but it does last 6 months in the fridge, so you decide how much whey you want to make. (After you make beet kvass once, you can use leftover kvass as the starter culture.) I ate my "leftover" cream cheese stuff with some frozen blueberries and it was amazing.

Beet Kvass
2 large beets or 3 medium sized ones, peeled and roughly chopped
1/4 c. whey (see above)
2-3 tsp salt
filtered water
2 quart jars or a 1/2 gallon jar

Put all ingredients in jar/s and stir well (I shook them up with their lids on). Set sealed jars on counter for 2-8* days. The Kvass is ready to drink as soon as it is chilled, or right away if you don't mind it at room temp.

*My kvass took 8 days to get the full flavor, though the recipe says 2 days. It's been pretty cool in my house, so I would guess 2-3 days is great for full on August heat, whereas 8 days fits for this cool/cold springtime. I tasted mine every couple of days: early on, it was a light pink and tasted like salty water with some whey. It started to lose the salty taste after about 5 days, and finally started to get a little fizz going on right at day 7 or 8. You can certainly call yours done at any phase, but I was really happy waiting for the bit of fizziness without any sort of salt taste. By then it was a nice rich red color.

Note - reuse the beets another 1-2 times for more kvass. Instead of using whey, you can use some of the kvass you just made as the "starter culture." I have not tried it yet, but you can than eat the beets on salad or however you like. Nothing goes to waste!