Kyrgyzstan’s Quencher Preserves Old Traditions

Vessels for whipping the fresh milk, called "cheleks," date back to pre-industrial societies. They usually are sheepskin, smoked with burned pine branches, a mixture that informs kymys' unique taste. Kyrgyzstan houses kymys factories, which produces the fermented milk by machine. Self-proclaimed kymys experts, though, say the ancient method produces the best taste. Fresh kymys offers a very peculiar sour taste and contains between two and three percent alcohol. Devotees say that the thick drink satisfies both hunger and thirst.

For many farmers, selling kymys provides a supplemental source of income during the busy breeding season. From April to November, farmers in Kyrgyzstan's mountains breed horses and mares and prepare the drink. While some rural people sell kymys at roadsides, it is common for city dwellers and other tourists to visit farms on summer vacations and sample the local drink. Some visitors stay for a long time at the farms, where they live in yurts and undertake the so-called "kymys therapy."

Farmers and some doctors attest that kymys can bring relief to troubled stomachs, livers, intestines and lungs. Legend has it that Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky both took this cure. The practice dates from a time when physicians thought that time in the mountains could cure most diseases, but many people say that kymys therapy produces happy results.

On the lush pastures near a typical farm, a man or a woman milks mares every three or four hours throughout the long daylight. At milking time, a farmhand removes the colts from their pen and ties them up. When mares hear the colts yelling, they immediately come down from the hills. First, they give some milk to the colts. Farmers dislodge the "baby" from the mare and begin the process of milking, leaving some extra for the colts.

To begin the process of fermentation, someone pours the collected milk into a chelek and beats it with a wooden stick, specially designed for kymys, after which the milk ferments for between 90 minutes and two hours. The stick is called a bishkek. This suggests how important Kyrgyzstanis consider their national drink: the country's capital takes its name from the stirring stick.