Kumis

A bottle and glass of kumis.

Kumis (also transliterated kumiss, koumiss, kymys, kymyz; called airag in Mongolian cuisine) is a fermented milk drink traditionally made from the milk of horses. It remains an important drink to the people of the Central Asian steppes, including the Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Mongols, and Yakuts.

It is traditionally made from fermenting mare's milk in a horse-hide container over the course of hours or days, often while stirring or churning. During the fermentation, Lactobacilli bacteria acidify the milk and yeasts turn it carbonated and mildly alcoholic. Today, a wooden vat or plastic barrel may be used in place of the leather container. In modern controlled production, the initial fermentation takes two to five hours at a temperature of around 27°C (80°F); it may be following by a cooler aging period. The finished product contains between 0.7 and 2.5% alcohol. Kumis can be strengthened through freeze distillation, a technique Central Asian nomads are reported to have employed. It can also be distilled into the spirit known as araka or arkhi.

Kumis is similar to kefir, but is made from mare's milk and is produced from a liquid starter culture, in contrast to the solid kefir "grains". Because mare's milk contains more sugars than the cow's or goat's milk fermented into kefir, kumis has a higher alcohol content. Even in the areas of the world where kumis is popular today, mare's milk remains a very limited commodity. Industrial-scale production of kumis therefore generally uses cow's milk, which is richer in fat and protein but lower in lactose than the milk from a horse. Before fermentation, the cow's milk is fortified in one of several ways. Sucrose, a simple sugar, may be added, to allow a comparable fermentation. Another technique adds modified whey in order to better approximate the composition of mare's milk.

Mare's milk

A 1982 source reported that 230,000 horses were kept in Russia specifically for producing milk to make into Kumis. Rinchingiin Indra, writing about Mongolian dairying, says "it takes considerable skill to milk a mare" and describes the technique: the milker kneels on one knee, with a pail propped on the other, steadied by a string tied to an arm. One arm is wrapped behind the mare's rear leg and the other in front. A foal starts the milk flow and is pulled away by another person, but left touching the mare's side during the entire process.

In Mongolia, the milking season for horses traditionally runs between mid-June and early October. During one season, a mare produces approximately 1,000 to 1,200 kilograms of milk, of which about half is left to the foals.

Documenting Domestication says "unfermented mare's milk is generally not drunk, because it is a strong laxative and purgative." Varro's On Agriculture, from the 1st century BC, also mentions this: "as a laxative the best is mare's milk, then donkey's milk, cow's milk, and finally goat's milk..." Yet today mare's milk is sometimes recommended as a substitute for cow's milk for people with milk allergies, and little mention is made of this laxative effect. In fact, mare's milk is well-tolerated by people of northern European descent and others who are lactose tolerant. Lactose-tolerant people can digest lactose even as adults; most of the world's population cannot, including the majority in the Central Asian steppes where mare's milk is popular. Mare's milk has almost 40% more lactose than cow's milk (and, validating Varro's observations, goat's milk has even less); drinking six ounces (190 ml) a day would be enough to give a lactose-intolerant person severe intestinal symptoms. During fermentation, the lactose is converted into lactic acid, ethanol, and carbon dioxide, and the milk becomes an accessible source of nutrition.

History

Kumis is an ancient beverage. Herodotus, in his 5th century BC Histories, describes the Scythians' processing of mare's milk:

The milk thus obtained is poured into deep wooden casks, about which the blind slaves are placed, and then the milk is stirred round. That which rises to the top is drawn off, and considered the best part; the under portion is of less account.

It is widely believed that this is a description of ancient kumis making, and it matches up well enough with later accounts, such as this one given by 13th-century traveller William of Rubruck:

This cosmos, which is mare's milk, is made in this wise. [...] When they have got together a great quantity of milk, which is as sweet as cow's as long as it is fresh, they pour it into a big skin or bottle, and they set to churning it with a stick [...] and when they have beaten it sharply it begins to boil up like new wine and to sour or ferment, and they continue to churn it until they have extracted the butter. Then they taste it, and when it is mildly pungent, they drink it. It is pungent on the tongue like rapé wine when drunk, and when a man has finished drinking, it leaves a taste of milk of almonds on the tongue, and it makes the inner man most joyful and also intoxicates weak heads, and greatly provokes urine.

In 2005, George W. Bush visited Mongolia, becoming the first U.S. president to do so, "and probably the first to drink fermented mare's milk in a felt tent guarded by the latter-day Golden Horde and a herd of camels and yaks", according to the Washington Post. The same article casts doubt on whether Bush actually drank: "No word on whether Bush actually swallowed or not, but some of his aides evidently did, judging by the looks on their faces afterward."

Health

In the West, Kumis has been touted for its health benefits, as in this 1877 book also naming it "Milk Champagne".

Toward the end of the 19th century, kumis had a strong enough reputation as a cure-all to support a small industry of "kumis cure" resorts, mostly in southeastern Russia, where patients were "furnished with suitable light and varied amusement" during their treatment, which consisted of drinking large quantities of kumis. W. Gilman Thompson's 1906 Practical Diatetics reports that kumis has been cited as beneficial for a range of chronic diseases, including tuberculosis, bronchitis, catarrh, and anemia. Gilman also says that a large part of the credit for the successes of the "kumis cure" is due not to the beverage, but to favorable summer climates at the resorts. Among notables to try the kumis cure were writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. Chekhov, long-suffering from tuberculosis, checked into a kumis cure resort in 1901. Drinking four bottles a day for two weeks, he gained 12 pounds but no cure.

Classification

Strictly speaking, Kumis is in its own category of alcoholic drinks because it is made neither from fruit nor from grain. Technically, it is closer by definition to wine then to beer because the fermentation occurs directly from sugars like in wine (usually from fruit) as opposed to from starches (usually from grain) that had been first worted to be converted to sugars, like in beer. But in terms of experience and traditional manner of consumption it is much more comparable to beer. It is even milder in alcoholic content then beer and is usually consumed cold. It may even arguably be thought of as the region’s beer equivalent.

Taste

Kumis’s popularity in its traditional regions is no doubt largely to its delicious flavor. Kumis is very light in body compared to most dairy drinks. It has a very unique slightly sour flavor with a slight pleasant bite from the mild alcoholic content. The exact flavor will vary as much as that of several different, but similar category beers and, like with most brewed beverages, is, among other factors, largely a function of the brewer’s skill.

Serving

As indicated above, Kumis is usually served cold or chilled. Traditionally it is sipped out of small, handle-less, bowl-shaped cups or saucers, called pialkas.

Trivia

Kumis is so much embedded in the culture of Kyrgyzstan that its capital city, Bishkek, is named after the implement used to stir the fermenting milk. An equivalent in Western culture would be renaming the capital of Scotland from Edinburgh to spurtle, after the wooden spoon used to stir the national dish of porridge.