Cookbook:Traditional Finnish Lemon Mead (Sima)

| Beverages | Cuisine of Finland

Sima is a Finnish, lemon-flavored mead mostly consumed during the celebrations of the 1st of May. A glass of sima is traditionally accompanied by a funnel cake or sugar coated donut.

The purpose of the fermentation is mainly to make the drink bubbly; the alcohol content of traditionally prepared sima is only 0.5-0.8%. As the drink is meant to be consumed in reasonable quantities anyway, a glass of sima is generally considered suitable for children over five years of age.

Ingredients

 * 8 litres water
 * 500 g brown sugar
 * 500 g white sugar
 * 2–3 lemons
 * ¼ tsp yeast (ordinary baker's yeast, either fresh or dry)
 * 1 handful of raisins

Equipment

 * Container large enough to hold all of the sima (a big plastic bucket for example)
 * Empty bottles
 * Funnel

First day

 * 1) Sterilize all of your equipment. A thorough process is described in the mead recipe. However, as the fermentation time of sima is very short (only a few days) and it is usually consumed within a week or so, just washing the bucket and bottles well and then rinsing them with boiling water right before using is generally enough to prevent spoiling.
 * 2) Boil 4 litres of water.
 * 3) Wash the lemons well and peel the zest, being careful not to include the bitter white pith. Put the zest into your container.
 * 4) Slice the lemons and remove the white pith from around the slices. Add the slices into the container.
 * 5) Add all the sugar into the container with the lemons.
 * 6) Pour the boiling water on top, and mix well until the sugar is mostly dissolved.
 * 7) Add 4 litres of cold water so that the mixture will be lukewarm, the right temperature for the yeast to activate. If unsure, check with a thermometer—the temperature should be between 35°C and 45°C.
 * 8) When the temperature is right, add the yeast. One way is to take a small cup of the mixture from the container, dissolve the yeast in it and then mix it back. Just dropping a crumb of fresh yeast into the container will also work.
 * 9) Let it stand overnight in room temperature.

Second day

 * 1) Bottle it on the next day: add one spoonful of sugar and a few raisins to each bottle before you pour the sima in.
 * 2) After bottling, let the bottles stand at room temperature out of direct sunlight for 2 more days. The raisins will bloat up and float to the surface.
 * 3) Move the bottles to your refrigerator. The sima is ready, and should be served cold. It will keep for at least a week in the refrigerator.

Notes, tips and variations

 * For a simpler process, just squeeze in the juice of 1–2 lemons instead of removing the pith.
 * You may use 1 kg brown sugar instead of mixing white and brown to make a darker sima with a stronger brown sugar flavour.
 * All the sugar may optionally be replaced with 1 kg honey.
 * You can put the bottled sima into the refrigerator immediately instead of fermenting overnight at room temperature. This will cause the fermentation to be slower; the sima will be ready in approximately 5–7 days.
 * Plastic soda bottles are recommended as pressure can build up in the bottles. An exploding plastic bottle is less dangerous than an exploding glass bottle.