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Alcoholic drinks from Russia

Braga (Russian home grain mash and beer)брага

Braga is the old Russian peasant home beer, a grain drink from rye, barley, oats or millet, sometimes hopped and sometimes closer to kvass. In distilling, braga is also the fermented mash that goes into the still after a few days. A modern kvass-style braga ferments a rye-malt wort with hops, sugar and yeast for 3–4 days.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks6 days – 9 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceMakes 100 L of a modern kvass-style braga called "non-alcoholic" (a web recipe). Old peasant braga had no fixed recipe; Dal lists plain barley braga on yeast alone, hopped braga, oat braga and millet braga.
Sugar6 kg1 kg of it is burnt to caramel for colour[azbyka-braga]
Dry kvass3.5 kg[azbyka-braga]
Rye malt2.5 kg[azbyka-braga]
Hops100 gBoiled as a decoction[azbyka-braga]
Yeast20 g[azbyka-braga]
Starteryeast; the modern recipe adds yeast and a yeast starter

Total time across the recorded steps: 6 days – 9 days

Start
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Close-up: water moving into a grain

What changes: Hot water draws sugar and colour out of the rye malt and dry kvass

Step 1 of 5
Make a wort as for bread kvass
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts

Output: rye-malt wort.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Braga is the old Russian peasant home beer, a grain drink from rye, barley, oats or millet, sometimes hopped and sometimes closer to kvass. In distilling, braga is also the fermented mash that goes into the still after a few days. A modern kvass-style braga ferments a rye-malt wort with hops, sugar and yeast for 3–4 days. Made in 5 steps over 6 days – 9 days. The longest step, for distilling, ferment a mash and send it to the still, takes 3–5 days (Dal V.I. 1880).

Key numbers
Main step3–5 daysReported[dal1880]For distilling, ferment a mash and send it to the still
Temperature10–20 °CReported[azbyka-braga]Add hops, sugar syrup and yeast, and ferment

What makes this one different

Braga is close to kvass but brewed to be drunk as beer, and the word also names the distiller's fermented mash. Plain braga was made on yeast alone without hops; hopped braga was nearer to beer.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Oat bragaBrewed from steamed, dried and milled oats or oat malt (Dal).
  • Millet braga (buza)From boiled, soured millet, sometimes with honey and hops (Dal). See Tatar buza.
  • Perm bragaRye flour with raspberries (Dal).

Safety

No source we read tests braga itself. A 2011 analysis of 22 Russian alcohol products included seven homemade samogons from two cities; samogon is a spirit, not braga. They averaged about 32 % vol (26.2–46.7 %), and the authors say samogon's composition generally raised no major public health concern other than ethanol. Two of the seven had relatively high methanol, still below the EU limit for fruit spirits.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Dal's dictionary (2nd ed., 1880) defines braga as household peasant beer, sometimes more like kvass, and also as the distiller's fermented mash. The Brockhaus and Efron small encyclopedia (1907) describes it as a beer-like peasant drink of rye flour with hops.

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [solodun2011] Solodun Y.V., Monakhova Y.B., Kuballa T., Samokhvalov A.V., Rehm J., Lachenmeier D.W. 2011, Unrecorded alcohol consumption in Russia: toxic denaturants and disinfectants pose additional risks, Interdisciplinary Toxicology 4(4):198–205 (about homemade samogon, not braga)paper
  2. [dal1880] Dal V.I. 1880, Tolkovyi slovar zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka (Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language), 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 124, entry Брага (Wikisource transcription)archive
  3. [mesbe1907] Malyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar Brokgauza i Efrona 1907, vol. I, col. 536, entry Брага (Wikisource transcription)archive
  4. [azbyka-braga] Azbuka retseptov (azbyka.ru), Braga bezalkogolnaya ("non-alcoholic" braga) recipeweb