Kvass vs. sima

I like kvass, the Russian bread-based beverage.

The first time I tasted it was on Olkhon island at lake Baikal. I was coming home from Cambodia by train. Probably my memories are clouded with the fact that it was the most memorable travel I've ever done. In reality, the kvass may have not tasted that good. It was home-made and I remember it was yeasty and a bit cloudy, not at all how a good kvass should be. But I had just gone to a banya and had a dip in the (cold-cold) lake Baikal and was surrounded by these untamed Siberian hills and cliffs... I fell in love with kvass as well as with Siberia.

While living in Estonia I had quite unlimited options of different kinds of kvass, which in Estonian is called kali (like Finnish kalja). But moving back to Finland, I returned to a sad kvass-vacuum. I simply had to start brewing it myself.

I've mainly used this recipe, although there's too much yeast in relation to too little sugar. Once, I think, the yeast actually ate all of the sugar, and the result was surprisingly sour. A half teaspoon of yeast should be enough. Another time I used Finnish style rye bread instead of Russian style  ̶  which is often baked in a tin and closer to our archipelago style bread  ̶  and the result was like drinking jälkiuunileipä (a kind of semi-hard sour rye bread). I've spiced kvass with winter spices like cinnamon, cardamon, ginger and cloves; I've spiced it with fresh mint; at times I've thrown in whatever comes to mind. Once a friend actually went through the trouble of preparing and baking a mash of rye flour and malt for the base  ̶  it was awesome.

But kvass takes a lot of bread compared to how much of the ready beverage you get, and you have to know that you have time to sieve and prepare it the next morning and then bottle it the next evening  ̶  and quite often I don't know if I will  ̶  and then there's all the leftover mash that you simply have to bake to a bread, as otherwise it would be a terrible waste, so you have to know you have time for that too...

Not very surprisingly, I only brew kvass for very special occasions and have turned to much simpler mead-kind of drinks instead.


Sima is a Finnish spring mead. I have to admit I've never followed the basic recipe with only lemon and brown sugar to give it taste. My favourite is sima with dandelion flowers, as they give the beverage a wonderfully soft, honey-like taste. For some reason I'm convinced that lemon balm would make a perfect base, too, although just one glass would certainly make one quite sleepy. For that experiment I have to wait until the end of the summer, but nettle beer and spruce beer I can already try in May. (The latter I first heard of in Jane Austen's Emma: it happens to be a favourite of both Emma and Mr. Knightley.)

But, as my favourite spiced tea this spring has been decaf green tea with cardamon and clove, I begun the brewing season by turning some of it into sima. Doesn't look especially tasty yet, but we'll see in few days how it'll turn out. Hopefully it'll be ready just for the general birthday party on Saturday.