The drink of naptanu (kaš)
Šikaru — thick barley beer with straw
DrinkDocumented🫙 🍋difficile1 h + 3 to 5 days fermentation
A cloudy, low-alcohol, nourishing beer, almost a liquid porridge, made from fermented barley bread and malt, flavored with date syrup. It is drunk through a long straw to avoid the sediment and grains.
The drink of naptanu (kaš)
A cloudy, low-alcohol, nourishing beer, almost a liquid porridge, made from fermented barley bread and malt, flavored with date syrup. It is drunk through a long straw to avoid the sediment and grains.
Inanna loves beer, and I pour it for her. We bake barley breads half-done, crumble them into water with sprouted grain, and wait for the jar to sing and foam on its own. I mix in a little date syrup to soften the sourness, then we bend our heads around the jar and drink through reed straws — for the dregs stay at the bottom and joy rises to the top.
Ingredients
- •Half-baked barley bread (bappir) — several (fermentable starch)
- •Sprouted barley (malt) — a good portion (sugars and enzymes)
- •Water — a jar (fermentation medium)
- •Date syrup — a dash (sweetness and sugars)
How it was made : Sumerians distinguished many kinds of beer (kaš), brewed from "bappir," a barely baked barley bread. The Hymn to Ninkasi, goddess of beer, is both a prayer and a poetic recipe. Beer, thick and full of grains, was drunk through straws to filter the sediment — hence banquet scenes where several people drink from a single jar.
Sources : Hymn to Ninkasi (Sumerian text, ca. 1800 BCE) · Solomon Katz & Fritz Maytag, "Brewing an Ancient Beer", Archaeology, 1991