Sima (Finnish Lemon Mead)

Ingredients

• 2 lemon, zested and juiced
• 150 g white sugar
• 100 g brown sugar
• 1 l water
• 1 l water
• ¼ tsp dry yeast
• 12 g raisins

Method

1. 1.

   Pare and juice the lemons — Pare the zest off the lemons in wide strips with a vegetable peeler, taking as little of the bitter white pith as you can, then squeeze the juice. Put the strips and the juice into a large heatproof bowl or a clean bucket with the brown sugar and all but 2 tsp of the white sugar.

2. 2.

   Dissolve the sugar and cool — Pour the boiling water over and stir until not a grain of sugar is left on the bottom. Add the cold water and leave until the liquid is no warmer than your wrist, around 45 minutes — any hotter and it will kill the yeast outright.

3. 3.

   Pitch the yeast and ferment — Sprinkle the dry yeast over the surface, stir it in once, then cover the bowl loosely with a cloth and leave at cool room temperature for 24 hours. By the end there should be a fine head of bubbles and a faint smell of bread.

4. 4.

   Bottle with raisins — Strain through a fine sieve into clean bottles with swing-top or screw caps, leaving 4 cm of headspace in each. Drop 3 raisins and half a teaspoon of the reserved sugar into every bottle before sealing — they feed the second fermentation and give you the fizz.

5. 5.

   Chill until the raisins float — Refrigerate for 2-3 days. The sima is ready when the raisins have risen from the bottom and are floating at the neck — that is the classic Finnish signal that the bottle is carbonated.

6. 6.

   Open slowly and pour — Open the bottles slowly over the sink, easing the pressure out in stages — a warm bottle can foam over. Pour into tall glasses and stop before the last centimetre so the yeast sediment stays behind. Serve very cold.