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Alcoholic drinks from Häme

Sahti (Finnish juniper farmhouse ale)sahti

Sahti is a strong Finnish farmhouse beer of barley malt, often with rye, flavoured with juniper. The mash is long, the wort runs through juniper twigs in a trough and is not boiled, and baker's yeast ferments it fast. It is drunk young, within a week or two.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks11 days – 12 daysFamily: Ale (top-fermented barley beer)

Recipe

Sahti (Finnish juniper farmhouse ale), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Tommi Nummelin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceAmounts are from one sahti brewer's 19 L recipe. Farmhouse brewers each have their own recipe and no fixed amounts.
Barley malt, often with ryeMalted barley is the base; rye is common[bjcp2021]
Juniper twigs8 g per 19 L batchIn the mash; juniper boughs also line the lauter trough[laitinen-byo]
Baker's yeast31 g fresh (or 13 g dry) per 19 L batch[laitinen-byo]
HopsNone or very little; 3–13 IBU in twelve sahti samples from southwest Finland[ekberg2015]
Starterbaker's yeast

Total time across the recorded steps: 11 days – 12 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countSaccharomyces cerevisiae68–78 °CStarchSugarAlcoholCO₂

What changes: Long, slow mashing turns the malt starch into sugar

Step 1 of 5
Mash for hours with juniper
Time
4–6 h
Reported
Temperature
68–78 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Yeasts

Output: thick mash.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

malt enzymes turn starch into sugar

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Sahti is a strong Finnish farmhouse beer of barley malt, often with rye, flavoured with juniper. The mash is long, the wort runs through juniper twigs in a trough and is not boiled, and baker's yeast ferments it fast. It is drunk young, within a week or two. Made in 5 steps over 11 days – 12 days. The longest step, cold-condition and drink young, takes at least 7 days (Laitinen M) and runs at 0–11 °C (Laitinen M). Saccharomyces cerevisiae does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 7 daysReported[laitinen-byo]Cold-condition and drink young
Temperature0–11 °CReported[laitinen-byo]Cold-condition and drink young

What makes this one different

Sahti uses baker's yeast instead of brewer's yeast and does not boil its wort. The wort is lautered through juniper twigs in a kuurna trough. Hops are few or none (3–13 IBU in twelve samples). The very strong wort gives more glycerol (3.1–4.7 g/L) than lager, wheat beer or porter, and almost no foam.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Gotlandsdricka (Sweden)A farmhouse ale from the Swedish island of Gotland that is in some cases similar to sahti.
  • Koduõlu (Estonian islands)Estonian "home beer" brewed on the Baltic islands; an even closer relative of sahti in flavour.
  • Lithuanian farmhouse aleLithuanian farmhouse brewers leave the wort unboiled and use juniper like sahti brewers, and some bake the mash first (see keptinis-alus).
  • Norwegian farmhouse aleNorwegian farmhouse brewers use kveik yeast, which ferments fast; see kveik-farmhouse-ale.

Made the sahti way

Safety

Sahti is neither pasteurised nor filtered, and its wort is boiled only briefly or not at all, so it keeps for only a few weeks. It is stored cold all the time. Lactobacillus needs at least 11 °C to work, so conditioning stays below 11 °C, with 0–5 °C preferred, and even half a day at room temperature can start souring. Heating the wort and using juniper and cold storage are the traditional ways to hold off souring. The BYO article warns that baker's yeast can re-ferment and build pressure in closed containers, so it prefers containers where pressure is easy to release, and it advises against storing sahti under pressure. Its safety note says a homebrewer who bottles must make sure the sahti has fermented to the finish, or risk exploding bottles.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Sahti has been brewed for at least 500 years, often for summer weddings and other festivities. Brewers moved from their own yeasts to commercial baker's yeast in the first half of the 20th century. It is registered in the EU as a traditional speciality guaranteed.

  1. [ekberg2015] Ekberg J., Gibson B., Joensuu J.J., Krogerus K., Magalhães F., Mikkelson A., Seppänen-Laakso T., Wilpola A. 2015, Physicochemical characterization of sahti, an 'ancient' beer style indigenous to Finland, Journal of the Institute of Brewing 121(4):464-473paper
  2. [bjcp2021] BJCP 2021, Beer Style Guidelines, 27I Historical Beer - Sahtiweb
  3. [laitinen-byo] Laitinen M., Brewing sahti - an ancient Finnish farmhouse beer, Brew Your Own magazineweb
  4. [preiss2024] Preiss R. et al. 2024, European farmhouse brewing yeasts form a distinct genetic group, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (sahti brewers' move to baker's yeast)paper
  5. [wp-sahti] Wikipedia, Sahti (outline only)wiki