Airag

Ingredients

Milk

• 20 litresfresh mare’s milk, milked from hobbled mares six or more times a day in short draws
• 2 litreslive airag from a previous batch, as the starter (khöröngö)

Vessel

• 1khökhüür, the tall smoked cowhide bag, or a wooden tub or food-grade barrel
• 1bülüür, the long wooden plunger with a perforated disc at the end
• Clean cloth, for covering

Directions

1. Prepare the vessel. A traditional khökhüür is smoked over dried larch or dung smoke for days before the season and re-smoked between fillings; the smoke sterilises it and lays down the resinous note that runs through good airag.
2. Milk the mares. A mare gives only a few hundred millilitres at a time and must be milked every two hours through the day, with the foal brought up to start the letdown, which is why airag is a summer drink of the whole camp rather than one person’s work.
3. Strain the fresh milk through cloth into the khökhüür over the live starter from the last batch. There is no bought culture: the mixed community of Lactobacillus and Kluyveromyces yeast is carried on from batch to batch and in the bag itself.
4. Churn with the bülüür. Anyone passing the doorway of the ger gives the plunger a few hundred strokes, and the bag is worked several thousand times a day. This is not stirring for its own sake: the aeration keeps the yeast active, stops the fat separating and stops the milk setting into curd.
5. Ferment at ambient temperature, roughly 18–25°C (65–75°F), for 1 to 3 days. Mare’s milk is high in lactose and low in casein, so it never sets into a solid curd like cow’s milk; it stays a thin, cloudy, pale liquid.
6. Watch for the signs: it turns fizzy on the tongue, sharply sour and faintly yeasty, with a thin foam on top. Alcohol arrives at roughly 1 to 3 percent, similar to a light beer.
7. Keep it going. Fresh milk is added daily and airag is drawn off daily, so the bag runs continuously through the summer rather than being made in discrete batches.
8. Serve in a wooden or silver bowl, held and offered with the right hand supported at the elbow by the left. A guest entering a ger is given airag before anything is said, and it is polite to take at least a sip before passing the bowl back.
9. Drink it fresh and cool. Old airag turns thin and vinegary, though it is then distilled into the clear spirit shimiin arkhi rather than wasted.

Technique

• Airag is fermented mare’s milk specifically. Fermented cow, camel or yak milk has its own Mongolian names and is not called airag; the Turkic word kumis covers much the same drink across Central Asia.
• The churning count is taken seriously. Herders speak of thousands of strokes a day, and airag that has been under-churned is thin, separated and considered badly made.
• This is a genuine wild culture, and cleanliness of the bag and the smoke treatment are the food-safety controls that stand in for pasteurisation. Raw-milk ferments carry real risk, so the vessel, the starter and the health of the animals all matter.
• It is drunk by the bowl in enormous quantities during the summer months and at Naadam, and it has a long-standing reputation in Mongolia as a restorative and a digestive.

Substitutions

• You cannot honestly make airag without mares in milk. The closest approximation at home is to ferment a mixture of cow milk let down with water and a little added lactose using live kefir grains for 24–36 hours, which gets you the fizz and the sourness but not the character.
• No khökhüür: a wooden tub or a food-grade plastic barrel is what most families now use, with a wooden plunger.
• Bottled airag is sold along Mongolian roadsides in summer and is the realistic way to taste the real thing.

Variations

• Shimiin arkhi is airag distilled in a simple still into a clear, low-strength milk spirit, made at home in the countryside.
• Tarag, the thick set yoghurt of cow or yak milk, is the other everyday fermented drink of the steppe.
• Kumis in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is the same drink under a different name, sometimes fermented longer and more sharply.

History

Mare’s milk is fermented in a leather khokhuur and churned thousands of times daily; it was the drink of the Mongol court and still crowns Naadam.

Frequently asked questions

What is Airag?

Airag is a wine & spirit from Mongolia: lightly alcoholic fermented mare’s milk, tangy and fizzy summer staple. Mare’s milk is fermented in a leather khokhuur and churned thousands of times daily; it was the drink of the Mongol court and still crowns Naadam.

How long does Airag take to make?

Airag takes 20 min a day of milking plus repeated churning of preparation and 1–3 days of active fermentation, topped up daily through the season of cooking. The recipe makes about 20 litres, the working batch of a summer camp. It is rated hard to make.

What can I substitute in Airag?

Yes, within limits. You cannot honestly make airag without mares in milk. The closest approximation at home is to ferment a mixture of cow milk let down with water and a little added lactose using live kefir grains for 24–36 hours, which gets you the fizz and the sourness but not the character. No khökhüür: a wooden tub or a food-grade plastic barrel is what most families now use, with a wooden plunger. Bottled airag is sold along Mongolian roadsides in summer and is the realistic way to taste the real thing.

What is the most important thing to get right in Airag?

Milk the mares. A mare gives only a few hundred millilitres at a time and must be milked every two hours through the day, with the foal brought up to start the letdown, which is why airag is a summer drink of the whole camp rather than one person’s work.