Local Sahti Adventure Part 1

There are many ways to judge a friendship: by the ability to keep a secret, demonstrated loyalty, or some kind of convoluted ROI analysis. But for me what carries the most weight is how they respond to my schemes. When inspiration claws its way out over the face, posture tightens and the madness settles in, that's when you know who your real partners in crime are.

So one Saturday morning after my daily devotional reading of Randy Mosher's "Radical Brewing", I called my buddy Cole to inform him that we would be making an archaic Viking brew, still known to the Finns as "Sahti"....


 I cased things out the week before over my lunch break. A vacant lot behind an unassuming Overland Park shopping center was fecund with brewing material. Wild hops, wild grapes, mulberries, and for purposes of this article - several overgrown juniper seedlings covered in the traditional resinous aromatic berries.

 Several commercial breweries produce Sahti, the most widely available being New Belgium's, but it always struck me as a mere "Ale with Juniper berries" not the traditional beverage - mashed from short-season rye & barley, lautered through a dug-out log filled with juniper boughs, fermented with a mixture of whatever bugs were on the juniper boughs.  I started reading Finnish websites on Sahti brewing, and got pretty excited.

 The malt bill is simple - mostly pilsner malt, some rye and a bit of dark crystal malt. Scale up or down depending on how big an occasion you're brewing for.

After some light trespassing and judicious pruning, we had collected enough berries and juniper boughs to fill two mash tuns and flavor a dozen gallons of strike water. We also threw in some cedar that was growing at my parents house. Two large branches went in the strike water, and as it warmed an intense invigorating aroma of pine, resin, and citrus filled the apartment. The smell of volatilized aromatics combined with the summer humidity (and the 10% Saison Cole had on draft) gave the whole brew day a feeling of ancient quest and shamanic portent.

 We made two batches - one unboiled and unhopped wild ale fermented with Fermentis S-33 and Nottingham. The other lightly hopped with two oz of Delta and boiled for a standard 60 minutes. (one at 60, one at 30, 6-8% alpha in a 1.060 beer) and fermented with US-05. 

Grain bill (for 10 gal)

16# US 2-Row (Rahr Harrington)

4# Maris Otter
2# Crystal 120

3# Flaked Rye

Single infusion mash with 175 deg F Kansas City tap water. Mashed roughly 1 hour, drew off first runnings for batch 1 to be unboiled. Sparged with 5 gallons for second beer boiled as above.

3 months later:

 The Good:

  - Powerful, almost minty juniper aroma in both beers. The combo of hop aroma and juniper in the Sahti-Pale Ale is especially nice.

  - Hints of cedar in the taste, coconut, spicebox, really interesting.

  - The unboiled beer is tart and super-attenuated (0.999 FG), almost like a juniper lambic

The Bad:

 - Both beers have a strong sweat sock aroma. I'm assuming it comes from pedio or mold. It seems to be lessening with age. It is honestly undrinkable at this point despite the redeeming features above.  I'm unsure why the boiled beer was infected, I assume there must have been cross contamination during chill phase.

Lessons learned (or revisited for the hundredth time):

- Remember kids: Only session beers until flame out! 

- Juniper branches, berries, and grain can harbor a lot of mold and random stuff. If you're going to go no-boil, brew in the winter when spore/bacteria counts and temps are lower.  Otherwise, boil, pasteurize, or sulphite your beer. 

 - Juniper (and cedar) have a lot of potential! Sahti mark 2 is on the drawing board for this winter.

  Have you brewed a Sahti or Gotlandricka before? Share your experience in the comments  If you're viewing this blog, I'd be happy to answer any questions.