Can you make kumis at home?

Can you make kumis at home?

You can make a kumis-style drink, but not easily the real thing. Traditional kumis is raw mare’s milk fermented by bacteria and yeasts, and fresh mare’s milk is rare and expensive outside regions where horses are milked. Most commercial kumis is made from cow’s milk, which is how home versions are usually made too.

How kumis is made commercially

• A liquid starter, containing lactobacilli and a yeast, is added to the milk.
• The milk is kept at about 26 to 28 degrees C and stirred from time to time.
• When it turns creamy, sour and sparkling, it is bottled and chilled to about 4 to 6 degrees C to slow fermentation.
• With cow’s milk, the milk is usually fortified with sugar or heat-treated whey so the yeasts can ferment it.

This describes the industrial method; it is not a tested home recipe.

If you want to try a cow’s milk version

• Use pasteurized milk and sterilized jars. Raw milk can carry harmful bacteria and is not recommended for vulnerable people.
• Use a commercial starter made for the job, or live plain kefir as a base, and follow the supplier’s instructions.
• Expect something sour and fizzy that is closer to thin kefir than to real mare’s milk kumis.
• Keep it cold. Fermentation continues, and bottles can build pressure, so open them carefully.

Safety

• Home fermentation is not risk-free. Discard anything that smells rotten, shows mold or tastes wrong.
• The drink contains a little alcohol.
• Not suitable with milk allergy, and pregnant people and children should avoid it.

Easier alternatives

• Buy ready-made kumis where sold (Central Asian or Russian shops).
• Make kefir at home from kefir grains and pasteurized milk, which is a well-known home ferment.

General information, not a recipe guarantee; ask a food safety professional before selling any home ferment.