dua-yinepu:

Ancient Egyptian Beer. Sorta.

I’ve been interested lately in making my own alcohol. In the past month, I’ve been I did a little digging in the topic of AE beer. I decided to make a version of my own, keeping it cheap and relatively simple. I had to change a few things to keep it easy and practical, but I’ll get into that.

Here’s the recipe I used, I’ll give some recommendations as I explain.

For a little over gallon of beer:

• 1 gallon of water
• 3 lb of honey
• A few prunes (I used a lot)
• 1 lb of Emmer (I used Farro)
• Dukkah spice mix
• 1 packet of wine-level yeast

For the Dukkah:

• Large pinch or two of cumin seeds, sesame seeds, and then coriander, and a bit of chopped/crushed pistachios (you can also add cashews, fennel seeds, dried mint, red pepper flakes, or even hazelnuts but that’s just what I used and had available) This should just take up about a teabag full (as that’s what I used to hold the ingredients) but that’s up to you.

You’ll need:

Two containers that will easily hold a gallon, and a little more. I had a container that held a gallon and quarter, and a 3 gallon container. Easily found at Walmart.

A strainer of some sort, preferably cheesecloth. Coffee filters don’t work work well and mesh filters may have too big of holes. (If you have a siphon or some sort of tube, that could be used as well.)

1. Clean water: I started with filling a metal pot with one gallon of water. Since it’s from my sink, I boiled it for 10 minutes, and left it in the fridge to cool to room temperature.

1. Once that was done, I put half a gallon in the metal pot, half a gallon in the 3 gal container. I warmed the water in the pot to about body temperature, mixed in half the farro, and the other half in the room temperature water. This was originally done with malted and unmalted Emmer, which would produce sugar when mixed to ferment into alcohol. I personally don’t have the time or attention to malt my Farro, and it can’t be found malted already. To replace that process, this is where the honey comes in to add flavor and natural sugar to ferment. Once I let the Farro rest in the two water containers for about 30 minutes, I mixed occasionally until the water was murky, like with uncooked rice in water. Once that happened, I poured the warm temperature mix into the room temperature mix, and let them cool down back to room temperature.

1. During that process I decided to mix my Dukkah. I had no measuring spoons so I played it by ear. I have sorta large hands, keep that in mind, but here are some images of what I used. I emptied a teabag, put the mixture in, and tied it up after twisting the ends.

(I forgot to take a pic of the cumin, same amount as the sesame)

Once the water/Farro mixture cooled, I strained the Farro out and threw that part away, we need the water now. I put the water back in the large plastic container. I dumped 3 pounds of honey (try local!) in it, stirred it until it dissolved, emptied the yeast packet in, dropped in about 8 prunes (don’t do this for a gallon, it wildly takes over the smell and a lot of the taste, but it tastes good nonetheless).

Now that everything is in your container, we wait!!

1. Store in a cool, room temperature place, as that’s when yeast will work it’s best. I waited 36 hours, removed the prunes, and I lightly shook the container a few times to see if any of the top foam would drop to the bottom (it would). I waited until nearly 48 hours hit, and strained my beer into another container. I removed the Dukkah baggie, and placed the closed container in the fridge for a few hours.

Two nights after making, it was ready and had stopped fermenting. I let my girlfriend take the first hesitant sip despite it smelling wonderful, and she went for more before saying a word. I immediately took a sip and loved it. It turned out very sweet with a light alcohol taste, very light but delightful carbonation. Fruity with a little spice. We got her roommate to try it, he enjoyed it as well. For my first time trying this, I’m impressed.

I’d suggest 1) Less prunes 2) Stronger yeast, made more for beers than wine 3) More spice.

I’ll be making another batch this upcoming weekend, and I’ll be recording the whole process. I’ll do it very close to this batch, and then later I’ll try to experiment a little.

(A pound of Farro was about $7, the honey about $12, the spices were very cheap, I had a teabag at home, the container wasn’t expensive, prunes are fairly cheap and easy to find, and I bought the yeast online for very cheap.)

It’s perfect for cooling down on a warm day, sipping on at a night in, or great for an offering to your preferred deity)

If I could mass produce this, I promise you I would.