Sourdough mead - Why only bake from sourdough?
Well it's not exactly mead, but sima, a Finnish drink which is based on mead. It used to be made with honey, but once sugar and other sweeteners came available in Finland, we switched off to them. As mead is made from honey, I wouldn't call sima as mead, but I'm using the word mead in this post.
The recipe
4 liters of water
Juice from 1-4 lemons
500 grams of.. .syrup coated sugar?
A teaspoon of active sourdough
Sugar
Raisins
Let's start with the syrup coated sugar. We have this thing called "fariinisokeri", I could try to call it "Farin sugar", but it's sugar mixed up with some sugar cane syrup. I'm assuming you could replace this with adding brown sugar and some sugar cane syrup, but I haven't tried it and I don't know the correct ratio for sugar and syrup.
Heat up 2 liters of water to the boiling temperature and pour it over the sugar in a large enough container. Mix it a little bit to make sure the sugar is melting in the boiling water. Then pour the remaining 2 liters of water and the lemon juice on the water. Let it cool down a bit, until the temperature is 40 Celsius degrees and then add the sourdough in the water. Too hot water will kill the sourdough.
Looks amazing, doesn't it?
Leave the mead for 24 hours in the room temperature.
After 24 hours has passed, pour the mead in bottles. Add a few raisins and a little bit of sugar in every bottle with the mead. Close the bottles but not too tightly, as some pressure will build up in the bottles otherwise.
Leave the bottles in room temperature for some days (3+ days at minimum, depending on your sourdough). The mead will start to produce bubbles (and alcohol) when it'll be ready. You can lift them to the fridge at any point, but this will slow down the process.
I had the mead 4 days in room temperature and when I gave it a first taste, it tasted somewhat poor, but still put it in the fridge. After 5 more days in the fridge it was perfect!
Nice, fresh and bubbly.
You can do the same without the sourdough by using a really small amount of yeast, approximately a piece sized of a small pea. Then the process will be faster and 3 days should be enough in room temperature.
My wife is going to kill me if I make it. I HAVE TO MAKE IT.
The sugar looks like dark muskovado - sugar with molasses.
Visually it reminds me of Kvass.
I tried to do some research and it seems dark muskovado-sugar is basically stronger than this is, so if you use dark muskovado you could use 50%-50% with regular sugar. Or just use dark muskovado 100% and get darker and stronger tasting sima :)
But hope it'll succeed! Hopefully it'll succeed the first time!
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Sugar syrup... Molasses? That sounds like an interesting process. Interesting that it's ready so quickly, too. Do you suppose you could age it in barrels into a more wine-like liquor?
It sounds as if it may taste a lot better than mead, anyway. Maybe I've only ever tried sub-standard meads, though.