Mastaw: The Kurdish Yogurt Drink They Call “Kurdish Beer”

Mero Ranyayi
May 29
5 min read

Mastaw: The Kurdish Yogurt Drink They Call “Kurdish Beer”

Mastaw is the everyday Kurdish yogurt drink: yogurt whisked with cold water and a little salt, often with dried mint or dill, served cold alongside almost any meal. The name says exactly what it is — mast (yogurt) and aw (water), yogurt-water. It is also called dew or daw, and it is the drink a Kurdish household reaches for with rice, with kebab, with a hot summer afternoon. Kurds love it enough to joke about it. “I am a Kurd and we call it Mastaw, meaning yogurt and water,” one writer explains; “it is our traditional drink, and we refer to it as Kurdish Beer.” The savoury yogurt drink is shared across a vast region — ayran in Turkey, doogh in Iran, tan in Armenia, shenina in Iraq — and this series does not claim Kurds invented it. But it carries its own Kurdish names (mastaw, dew, avamast), and it is bound tightly into the Kurdish dairy tradition this project has spent dozens of articles mapping. This is the ninety-first article in the series, and the first about a drink. Mastaw matters here because it is not a separate product but the drinkable end of the same dairy process behind the cheeses and yogurts: when yogurt is shaken to make butter, what is left is the drink. To understand mastaw is to see the Kurdish dairy chain reach the glass.

Key Takeaways

• A cold savoury Kurdish drink of yogurt whisked with water and salt, often with dried mint

• Kurdish names: mastaw (mast + aw, “yogurt-water”), dew, daw, avamast — jokingly “Kurdish beer”

• The drinkable end of the dairy chain — the buttermilk (do) left after churning yogurt to butter

• Churned in a mashk (waterskin) hung from a malar frame — a shared regional drink with Kurdish roots

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Mastaw (ماستاو) / Dew / Daw — from mast (yogurt) + aw (water)

Type: Cold savoury yogurt drink — the everyday Kurdish beverage

Ingredients: Yogurt (mast), water, salt; often dried mint or dill

Served: Cold, with almost any meal — the classic partner to kebab and rice

Traditional Preparation

At its simplest, mastaw is made in a minute: yogurt is spooned into a jug, cold water is added until the mixture is thin and drinkable — roughly one part yogurt to one or two parts water, to taste — and a pinch of salt is stirred in. It is whisked until smooth and uniform, then served cold, often over ice in summer. Dried mint, dried dill, or a touch of lemon salt are common Kurdish additions, lifting the tang with herb and brightness. But the older, deeper version of mastaw is a by-product of butter-making. Yogurt is poured into a mashk — a waterskin — which is hung from a wooden frame called a malar and rocked back and forth for an hour or more until the butterfat gathers and is lifted out as butter. The thin, tangy liquid left behind is do, and that liquid, salted and chilled, is the drink. Mastaw, in other words, is both a thing made on purpose and a thing left over: the cooling drink that falls out of the work of making butter.

The Dairy Chain Reaches the Glass

This series has followed Kurdish milk through more than a dozen forms — mast, kaymak, torak, motal, jajî, çökelek, the buried Kope. Mastaw is the same story told as a drink. When the household shook yogurt in the mashk to raise butter, the leftover liquid did not go to waste; it became do, and do became dew, the drink. The vocabulary around it is its own small map of Kurdish dairying: do for the shaken buttermilk, qurraw for a dish made from it, danadwa or doyna for a winter food of do cooked with ground wheat. Mastaw sits at the centre of that web — the cool, salted, everyday face of a culture that turned a flock’s milk into a dozen foods and a drink besides. That Kurds half-jokingly call it “Kurdish beer” says something real: in a culture where alcohol was often absent, the social drink — the thing poured for a guest, drunk with a meal, shared in the heat — was yogurt and water. It is the most ordinary thing on the Kurdish table, and for that reason one of the most telling.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is mastaw?

Mastaw is a cold Kurdish yogurt drink made from yogurt (mast) whisked with water (aw) and a little salt, often with dried mint or dill. It is also called dew or daw. Tangy, salty, and refreshing, it is drunk cold with meals — especially kebab and rice — and on hot days. It is the Kurdish member of the wider family of savoury yogurt drinks that includes ayran and doogh.

Why is mastaw called “Kurdish beer”?

It is an affectionate nickname Kurds use for mastaw, reflecting its role as the everyday social drink. In a culture where alcohol was often absent, the drink poured for guests and shared at meals was this cold, tangy yogurt-and-water — so calling it “Kurdish beer” is a fond way of marking how central and beloved it is. It is the refreshing drink of choice, drunk freely and often.

How does mastaw relate to butter-making?

Traditionally, yogurt is poured into a mashk (a waterskin), hung from a wooden frame called a malar, and rocked for an hour or more until the butter separates out. The thin liquid left after the butter is removed is called do (buttermilk), and salted and chilled it becomes the drink. So mastaw can be made fresh by simply diluting yogurt, or it can be the natural by-product of churning butter — the refreshing liquid left at the end of the work.

Conclusion

Mastaw is the ninety-first article in this series, and the first to put down a glass instead of a plate. The savoury yogurt drink is shared across a huge region, and this series does not pretend otherwise — but mastaw is its Kurdish name and its Kurdish habit, woven into a dairy tradition that turned milk into yogurt, butter, and a dozen cheeses, and then drank what was left. From mast and aw comes the most ordinary drink in Kurdistan: cold, salted, faintly minted, poured for every guest and drunk with every summer meal. Ninety-one articles in, mastaw is a reminder that a food culture is not only its feast dishes and its contested specialties. Sometimes it is the plainest thing in the house — yogurt and water in a glass — carrying, quietly, an entire pastoral way of life.