Finding Kumis in Kazakhstan: The Ancient Fermented Horse Milk Developed by Nomads

Driving on the grassy plains of central Asia, before the crumbling Kruschevkas of the city have been obscured by the mountains, you very quickly encounter vast herds of semi-wild horses. These animals act as companions for the locals that still maintain some nomadic traditions and tourist attractions, but they also provide transport, meat, and leather. But in the spring time, they are principally valued for their milk. This is then fermented into a mildly alcoholic drink, known as kumis, which is drunk across the steppe from Mongolia to Russia.

My adventure in kumis started not on the steppe, but in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan. This is a city of wide boulevards populated with statues of Kazakh literary heroes, and interspersed with parks filled with pastel coloured Russian churches. Everywhere you look, talkative Minah birds repeat the sounds of construction and traffic, with the nearby Alatau mountains shrouded by smog from rattling Lada engines. 

My first taste of kumis was in a martini. According to the food writer and author of On Food and Cooking Harold McGee, nomads would freeze-distill kumis to spirit-strength, but today commercial distillation makes a kind of horse milk vodka. At Afisha, a smartly appointed cocktail bar opposite the imposing Stalinist opera house, you can buy drinks made using kumis spirit and local herbs that taste of the wild steppe. These were developed as a way of integrating traditional ingredients into modern cocktails that young Kazakh’s enjoy — a fun way to preserve their recent nomadic past, as the city continually grows around them, and that culture becomes more distant.

In Kazakhstan change is happening everywhere, a formerly closed and shadowy country is now opening up to the world through liberalised visa policies and political reform, with young people clearly stating what they want the “New Kazakhstan” to be. These young central Asians tend to be more suspicious of the kumis that elderly babushki flog by the side of the road, or the varieties available from the bazaar made in old wooden barrels, with char from the barrel wall often floating in the milk. The tastes of the new generation has led to a modest number of kumis bars springing up; these are open until 2 a.m. and offer a variety of milks to try. It is here, in places where the traditional and the modern jostle cheek by jowl, that you sit underneath harsh lighting with plastic table cloths and share a frothing bowl of kumis served in wooden cups. The kumis is imported from Bashkortostan, a Russian Republic famed for its grasslands and honey, and stored in plastic bottles in upright bar fridges, the ancient and modern co-existing in a changing society. 

At one of these bars, Kymyskhan, we opted for a lightly fermented kumis mixed with honey to give a Champagne-like effervescence, which is like a pleasant yoghurt drink, sometimes used to make gin-fizz cocktails which gain a complex acid character from the milk. Next we tried a three-day fermented kumis, which was much stronger – with powerful butyric acid (like pre-grated Parmesan) character and a pronounced sourness and barnyard aroma.

Traditionally, kumis fermentation took place in large horse-skin pouches called a khokhuur, which was strung up by the entrance of a yurt and stirred using a paddle known as a pishpek. When nomads were on the move, the khokhuur would be attached to the saddle of a horse and fermented as the group migrated, the movement of the horse giving the kumis its revered frothiness. These movements, as well as the individual microflora of the materials used, gave each kumis a unique taste, and today people still prize the terroir of kumis from different regions and changes in taste due to the diets of the horses. 

Fermented camel milk, known as shubat, is also popular in Kazakhstan and served at fast food restaurants alongside traditional horse sausage sandwiches. In contrast to the kumis, there is little to commend it. It is salty, thick and, to the western palate, almost undrinkable. But that’s not to say Kazakh fast food joints aren’t a delightful place to eat, where you sit at a traditional tapchan (like a large bed with a table in the middle) with murals of horses and eagles on the wall. In these informal restaurants you can find Kazakh fried dough instead of burger buns, and your meal comes with a side of bone broth, and if you don’t opt for shubat you can still get a big glass of Coca-Cola. 

Fortified by kumis, plov, and excellent Kazakh cider, it was time to leave Almaty. I was surprised by how green and spacious the city was, yet seeing school children dressed in their Young Pioneer style uniforms reinforced how the old and the new, the Kazakh and the Russian, stand shoulder to shoulder. My trip next took me to Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. Although here there are fewer kumis bars, there is a surprisingly strong craft beer scene. This is partly driven by western NGO workers who are looking for a taste of home and who wish to drink American-style beer. Kyrgyz people, however, tend to opt for sour beers; fermented using lactic acid bacteria in a similar way to kumis. At Brewster’s Bar, almost 50 percent of the beer menu is comprised of sour beers made with local fruit such as sea buckthorn, showing that despite the evolution of tastes and an increase of outside influences, the local palate tends to revert back to the familiar. 

And even though in the cities, beer is increasingly taking the place of kumis as the principal mode of socialising, the old drink still forms a huge part of central Asian hospitality. Creative drinks producers are taking its ancient flavours and making something that both recognises and elevates it into something that locals and outsiders alike can enjoy. In central Asia the preservation of an eroding culture feels vitally important. The nomadic lifestyle has been replaced with cities that are ever-expanding, and for much of the twentieth century the local population were subject to intense Russification, and forced migration. Whilst the shadow of the USSR has long since evaporated from the steppe, the preservation of tradition and craftsmanship through tangible means, such as kumis or the rich ikat fabrics, represents not just resistance, but a re-rooting of much of what makes this region unique, and forms the central Asian character. For a people so closely linked to the land, and the flora and fauna they share it with, maintaining this fundamental connection with the natural flavours that have not yet been erased by outside influences is crucial. In a rare occurrence, that ancient and unquantifiable character can be distilled, quite literally, and used to preserve culture in the most unexpected of ways. 

Charlotte Cook is a London based head brewer and writer who likes to seek out unusual drinks and flavours around the world. She then writes about them for Ferment Magazine, Everyday Drinking, On Tap, and Glug magazines. The oddest stories end up on her newsletter. 

All photographs by Charlotte Cook.