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You’re gonna appreciate this; a simple, authentic bread kvas that doesn’t need a concentrate! My hubby’s cousin, Angelina, shared this recipe with us. We’ve made it with rye bread and with black bread and both were so refreshing! New favorite for sure – thanks Angelina!
This kvass lasts up to a week in the fridge (probably longer, but it might start tasting kinda strong). You’ll notice it loses sweetness daily as it stands. I think it’s best after a full day in the fridge.
Bread Kvas is uber popular in Russia and Ukraine. You might compare it to a sweet, non-alcoholic beer. From my research, kvass only has up to 1% alcohol content (still probably not recommended for pregos). The longer it sits in the fridge, the more slightly “alcoholic” it gets, but it’s still considered non-alcoholic.
So if you drink it in the first day or 2, there is probably no alcohol in there yet. From what my readers have said, it’s best to store kvas in plastic soda bottles since they are designed to hold pressurized drinks. I like to release the pressure from my bottles 1-2 times a day because an over-inflated bottle just makes me nervous.
Ingredients for Bread Kvas:
2.5 gallons or 10 qt of water
1 lb or 9 slices of classic black, dark or rye bread
1 handful of raisins
1.8 lb (4 cups) of sugar
1.5 Tbsp of active dry yeast
3 large plastic soda bottles
How to Make Russian Bread Kvas: (best if prepared in the evening)
DAY 1:
1. Fill giant stock pot with 2.5 gallons of water (or divide it into two large pots) and bring to a boil.
2. While waiting, toast the bread slices twice on the darkest toaster setting. Yes. Seriously. Darker bread makes darker kvass. Toast bread either outside or in your garage or your house will get smokey. We learned the hard way :). It should look like the photo below.
3. When water starts to boil, remove the pot from heat. Add a handful of raisins and toasted bread to the pot, cover with the lid and let it stay overnight or at least 8 hours.
DAY 2:
4. Carefully remove toasted bread and discard it.
5. In a medium bowl, mix together 4 cups of sugar and 1.5 Tbsp of yeast, add them to kvas mixture and stir.
6. Cover with plastic wrap or lid and leave the mixture on the counter for another 6 hours, stirring every couple hours.
7. Discard floating raisins by scooping them up with a large spoon. Using strainer or cheese cloth, pour kvass into bottles, loosely cover with lid and refrigerate overnight. The following day once the bottles are completely chilled, you can tighten the lid.
P.S. According to my readers, it’s best to store kvas in plastic soda bottles since they are designed to hold pressurized drinks.
DAY 3: enjoy
DAY 4: enjoy
DAY 5: …..did it really last that long?
How do you make your kvass?
Easy Bread Kvas Recipe
Ingredients
- 2.5 gallons or 10 qt of water
- 1 lb or 9 slices of classic black, dark or rye bread
- 1 handful of raisins
- 1.8 lb 4 cups of sugar
- 1.5 tablespoons of active dry yeast
- 3 large plastic soda bottles
Instructions
DAY 1: (best if prepared in the evening)
- Fill giant stock pot with 2.5 gallons of water (or divide it into two large pots) and bring to a boil.
- While waiting, toast the bread slices twice on the darkest toaster setting. Darker bread makes darker kvass. Toast bread either outside or in your garage or your house will get smokey.
- When water starts to boil, remove the pot from heat. Add a handful of raisins and toasted bread to the pot, cover with the lid and let it stay overnight or at least 8 hours.
DAY 2:
- Carefully remove toasted bread and discard it.
- In a medium bowl, mix together 4 cups of sugar and 1.5 Tbsp of yeast, add them to kvas mixture and stir.
- Cover with plastic wrap or lid and leave the mixture on the counter for another 6 hours, stirring every couple hours.
- Discard floating raisins by scooping them up with a large spoon. Using strainer or cheese cloth, pour kvass into bottles, loosely cover with lid and refrigerate overnight. The following day once the bottles are completely chilled, you can tighten the lid.
DAY 3: enjoy
Notes
I never really wanted to try making kvas with original recipe (it sounded so complicated) but as soon as I saw burnt bread in your pictures, I thought that’s something I can actually do :))))) been making your apple kvas recipe for while now, everyone loves it! Making this one right now, just burned the bread again, man, Im so good at this :))) Love your website!!! Keep up the good work!!
Are you saying you are good at burning bread? lol. Your comment just made my day. Thanks! 🙂
Hi,Natasha ! S 2,5gallons vody u menja poluchilos pochti 5 (2liters) butilok kvassa! Ja chto sdelala ni kak vse? U tebia napisano 3!
The bottles in the picture are 2.84L each, so it makes about 8 1/2 Liters of Kvass. Hope that helps 🙂
made kvas yesterday. the best taste. The most important is …. it remind me kvas I had when I was a child. easy to make. all family loved it. definitely will make again, and again. thank you for the recipe.
Thank you Raisa, I’m glad that your family loved it. I always like a good report especially when it reminds you of your childhood :D.
I can’t find ANY black bread! I live in Alabama and It seems no one even KNOWS what it is here! Can someone help? I’ve seen a recipe to make it on allrecipes.com but I can’t find any of the things on the list either! Someone please help 🙁
You can use either classic black, dark or rye bread for this recipe. It doesn’t have to be black bread to work well 🙂
does it effect taste?
You wouldn’t notice the difference! 🙂
Then I will try that! Thanks
thank you so much for help, ya poprobuvala etot kavas and its taste the BEST OF THE BEST :), but for me just really bit sweet, so obezatelna ya bydy delat etot kvas more and more but with less sugar. Thanks a lot
It will get stronger and less sweet as it stands.
Natasha izvini, y menya takoj vopros, skolko on mozhet xranitsya, mne etot kvas nyzhen na ety syboty ( ya ego zdelala razlila v takiye zhe plastikovuye bytulki kak y tebya ( ot sodu nety, nepokypayu sody) i postavila v xolodilnik, on y menya bydet stoyat, ya ne bydy yburat xolodilnik ( ny ne polopayut bytulki 🙂 ). Pasibki, sorry asking tooooo much ?????
You might want to let out the pressure every couple days. It will be good on Saturday 🙂
Vchera zdelala na noch, sejchas zdem 6 hours i potom bydem probuvat.
Kak tu dymaesh a esli on postoit bolwe nezheli 6 hours, a potom v xolodilnuk, kokoj on bydet? ili lytwe ne probuvat a to isportit mozna 🙂 pervuj raz delayu kvas, i hope taste turn out great, my husband and brothers LOVED kvas, they always pokypayut v Russian store (monasturskij), so I hope they will enjoy this one. Thanks a lot for all your recipes ( made so many already, and it was always turn really YUMMY & GOOD). Thanks a lot for all your hard work ….
We’ve only tried making it one way and it works well so we haven’t tried to change it. 🙂 Thanks for your sweet comment!
Hi Natasha –
Etot xleb eto tolko dlya kraski kvasy, ili on dayet kakoy to vkys ?
bolwoye pasibki
Bread gives kvas dark color and flavor, hope this helps.
What is the maximum time for this to sit the first night?
8-9 hours
A tip for those who like dark Kvas. Melt your sugar in the skillet and add it when it still hot so it doesn’t harden. Your kvass will be darker. That’s what my mom does and melted sugar also adds extra flavor.
I’ll definitely try that next time. I love learning from my blog readers 🙂 Thanks for sharing!!
Wow,this seems a nice beverage. What kind of dry yeast to make kvass? Can I use baking yeast?
I use the Red Star Brand. It is an active dry yeast.
I’m in Georgia (The country, not the US state) and they sell Kvas (or Kvasi, as they call it) here in the summer from little kiosks, and it tastes somewhere between cola and weak beer. But it is perfect on a hot afternoon. or with a late meal in a restaurant.
You CAN buy it bottled, but it is hard to find. And impossible in the winter.
I tried your recipe yesterday, and am reaping the rewards today. Whilst not EXACTLY like the drinks I was buying (theirs is darker, more ‘malty’ and clearer), your recipe is a real taste of summer on this cold Tbilisi evening.
Unfortunately, after a year here, I am leaving soon, but happier that I will be taking this taste back with me.
Thank you!
Welcome to the site 🙂 We make this kvas on the regular bases. If you toast the bread to black, kvas will be darker. I hope you’ll find more favorites on the site.
Thanks:))))
I toasted mine well, but it was a little lighter than yours. I’m guessing your toaster has a higher setting.
My local friends have looked at it with some trepidation, they are used to something clearer, but they liked the flavour.
Your version continues to ferment, I guess. So to test just how much, I placed ONE 2L Coke bottle in the fridge to ‘kill’ the process with cold, and left another, 8L store water bottle (containing just 6L) outside, where it is warmer. Storing the kvas in a water bottle seems fine, but the gas builds up quickly, requiring a 1-2 hour ‘release’. I JUST forgot and 4+ hours later, the plastic bottle was a little more spherical than normal and the lid flew across the room after I released it 😀
I’ll certainly be checking out some other recipes. 🙂
🙂 Soda bottles are the best for kvas because they are designed for the higher pressure. The longer you let it sit, the more fermented it will be.
Hands down this is the best recipe I have found. Thanks for sharing as it makes the best, tasty kvass I have ever had.
You are welcome Alan, I’m glad that you like the recipe 😀
We used to do this in a Army to make ”Braga”. Raising was much accessible than sugar. We were mixing Braga in old Soviet vertical washer with much more yeast and pack in empty fire extinguishers. Since it real cold in Siberia we had hide them inside baraks , replacing real fire extinguishers with ares. After a week or sow it get high in alcohol. Longer it stay stronger it get. Hit your brain like a sludge hammer. Never had a problem with eextinguisher burst. Never get busted by officers.
Oh my gosh. You made me laugh. That is quite the kvas adventure!
I’m a Peace Corps. volunteer and this is sooo popular in my host country (especially during the summer when it seems to be offered on every street corner in every major city). Such a refreshing drink during those hot summer months! Thanks for the recipe and I hope you won’t mind if I share it with others?
You are more than welcome to share the recipe Kim (as long as it’s not word-for word copy/paste; google will ding your site for duplicate content & I always appreciate a link back) 🙂 , welcome to the site!
Hi Natasha,
Really excited to try making this. Since it involves waiting for long hours, I was wondering: How would you schedule making this in the middle of the week around a workday? Would you start during evening of day 1, do next step next morning, step in the evening and have it ready on morning of day 3?
Also, how sensitive is the recipe to temperature changes? I live in San Francisco, use a heater at night, so the temperature in the apartment falls and rises throughout the day. Any tips on that?
Best time to make kvass, is towards the evening, just like you stated. Serguei, I would recommend placing kvass mixture in warm temperature to help yeast ferment better. At night you might have to place it closer to the heater. I hope this helps.
Has anyone tried Grolsh-style reusable seal beer bottles for kvass? Any danger in that considering that these bottles are made to contain fizzy beer?
Thanks in advance! I can’t wait to try the recipe!
D
I used a similar bottling method and it works fine but you really need to watch the built up pressure and release it every so often otherwise it ends up everywhere.
I loosen it up all week long because it makes me nervous. 😮
Grolsch type bottles are good, but leave an inch and a half head room before sealing. It gives any additional carbonation some where to go.
I’ll have to look into that. Where do you get them?
So much commotion on what kind of bottle to use, I think that you should just go on what you have used glass, plastic, aluminum….. it’s just like moms arguing about what diapers are best pampers leak, huggies give a rash wal-mart brand just falls apart. You just have to try it and if it doesn’t work for you it might work for someone else. I used pampers for 2 years while my sister in-law only used huggies because pampers were no good for her……..by the way I made this and my husband loved it and he was really impressed by my skills 🙂 and I used a glass jar with a cheese cloth on top. Thanks Natasha 🙂
Ha ha, you’re right! This is starting to turn into a diaper debate. Huggies gave my son rashes. I’m a pampers gal, but yes huggies are obviously still in business so it must be great for many babies. I guess I just need a disclosure that says, “caution, Kvas may explode”; and be done with it. I’m glad you and your hubby enjoyed the kvas and that he was impressed by your skills. 🙂
I’m trying your recipe for Kvass, and thought I would add the tip that I decided to toast my bread on the gas grill outside to avoid smoke in the house. Some of it got quite black – even flaming a bit. I did it late in the day, with not much light, so next time I may halt the toasting a little sooner. What we’ve sampled so far tastes really good, tho. Thanks!
That is a great tip! Sounds even better than toasting in the garage!
I made this using a plastic juice bottle and found that it did not distort too much.
I had a Russian visitor who loved this recipe and took a bottle of Kvas with him to drink on his travels!
We both agree this tastes just as good as the Kvas that can be purchased on the side of the road in Ukraine!
Well done a great easy to make recipe!!
Stephen, thank you! I’m glad you found it to taste authentic.