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Fermented milk from Buryatia

Kurungaкурунга

Kurunga is a Buryat cow-milk drink soured by a mixed lactic and alcoholic fermentation, much like koumiss but made from cow's milk. A kept starter called ekhe goes into the milk, and lactic bacteria with yeasts sour it within hours. Fermented kurunga is also distilled into milk vodka.

Fully documentedFermented milk8.3 h – 10 h

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe sources give no fixed amounts. The step numbers come from a laboratory study in Yakutsk that made kurunga from skimmed cow's milk with a natural kurunga starter; it does not say whose starter that was.
Cow's milkSkimmed and pasteurised in the laboratory study[zandanova2021][kochetkova2022]
Kurunga starter (ekhe)A natural starter of lactic bacteria and yeasts, which people in Buryatia sometimes keep for six months or more[kochetkova2022][stoyanova2014]
Startera kept natural starter called ekhe, of lactic bacteria and yeasts

Total time across the recorded steps: 8.3 h – 10 h

Start
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84 °C

What changes: In the laboratory study the milk is pasteurised before the starter goes in

Step 1 of 4
Pasteurise the milk
Time
15 min
Reported
Temperature
84 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts

Output: pasteurised milk.

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

Kurunga is a Buryat cow-milk drink soured by a mixed lactic and alcoholic fermentation, much like koumiss but made from cow's milk. A kept starter called ekhe goes into the milk, and lactic bacteria with yeasts sour it within hours. Fermented kurunga is also distilled into milk vodka. Made in 4 steps over 8.3 h – 10 h. The longest step, ferment to a sour, lightly alcoholic drink, takes 8–10 h (Zandanova T.N 2021). Lactobacillus, 62.4 % and 94.1 % of the bacteria in two Buryat samples; the strain Lactobacillus diolivorans KL-2 was isolated from kurunga and Lactococcus do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step8–10 hReported[zandanova2021]Ferment to a sour, lightly alcoholic drink
Temperature84 °CReported[zandanova2021]Pasteurise the milk

What makes this one different

Kurunga is a koumiss-style mixed lactic and alcoholic ferment made from cow's milk instead of mare's milk, and it is soured more strongly than kefir (120 °T against 90 °T in the same study).

Related ferments

Variants

  • Concentrate-starter kurungaA starter built from kefir-grain microflora plus L. bulgaricus and L. acidophilus gives kurunga with an amino-acid value close to that of the natural starter (Zandanova et al. 2021).

Safety

Two khurunga samples from Buryatia measured pH 3.5–4 (Kochetkova 2022). The laboratory study that gives the step values pasteurised the skimmed milk first, at 84 °C for 15 minutes. As a general warning for any fermented milk, the CDC says drinking or eating products made from raw milk can expose people to germs such as Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Listeria, Brucella and Salmonella. None of these was reported in the khurunga study, which does not show that any batch is free of them.

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [stoyanova2014] Stoyanova L. et al. 2014, The probiotical potential of lactobacilli from therapeutic preventive beverage kurunga, Central Asian Journal of Global Health 3 (Suppl):176 (abstract)paper
  2. [zandanova2021] Zandanova T.N., Ivanova K.V., Myryuanova T.P. 2021, The effect of starter on amino acid composition of fermented milk, Vestnik VSUET 83(1):258–262paper
  3. [cdc-raw-milk] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Raw Milk (food safety page)gov
  4. [kochetkova2022] Kochetkova T.V. et al. 2022, Microbial communities of artisanal fermented milk products from Russia, Microorganisms 10(11):2140 (read via Europe PMC full text, PMC9697859)paper