HoppySlosh brews: Sahti

A long overdue update, for which (*) I humbly apologise.

*) for it being overdue, that is. Not for the update itself. Duh.

These past few months have been rather busy, with much brewing and tasting and a couple of beery events surreptitiously trying to intertwine with my everyday activities, insofar as those don't already center around beer.

...such as dreaming of beer...

One little project I embarked on was the brewing of sahti. This almost extinct Finnish beer style is a remnant of the days when literally everyone knew how to brew beer, despite knowing hardly jack shit about how brewing beer actually works. Quaint rural brewing practices, still unhindered by scientific knowledge, form the basis of this empiric, and nigh-on disappeared beer style.

Finland has it all.

Sahti, then, is a primitive country beer, historically brewed by Finnish farmers using whatever they had lying about the place (not unlike saison in that regard) but typically including a hefty dose of rye malt.
More importnant than its malt composition, however, is the use of juniper during the lautering(*), in the form of berries, branches and needles. The idea is to use the piney fragrant branches to serve as a filtering aid.

*) lautering, you ignoramuses, is fancy brew speak and entails the recirculation of the turbid wort through the mash grain, which serves as a filter to clarify it.


Juniper (aka Juniperus communis), I am sad to report, is a protected species in this part of the world, but apparently it's free-range in parts of France, where my inlaws, assisited by a local friendly couple, were able to score me a box of fresh twigs.

Juniperus communis in hic arca.

No web article about sahti is complete unless it features that picture of the headless, feetless Fin pouring his mash on top of a layer of fresh juniper twigs, into a hand-made hollowed-out log...

...called a kuurna

The idea is simple and self-evident: the twigs in the kuurna not only serve as a filter, but at the same time impart a resiny juniper flavour to the wort.

First things first: I mashed my grist (60% Pale malt, 25% munich and 15% rye malt) with water in which I'd steeped those same branches which would later filter my wort.. 

Berries included.

 While the mash was underway, I layered the twigs onto the false bottom of my highly sophisticated Double Bucket Mash Filter Gizmo Thingy (TM pending), onto which I dumped the mash.

21st century kuurna's are made of white plastic though.

Now a word on rye.

It's a bitch.

No lacing it: rye is a bitch to lauter and sparge(*) because it forms the gummiest, stuckest filter bed since the invention of the verb "to stick".

 *) sparging is more confusing brewspeak for "rinsing the mash to extract more awesome from the grist".

Good thing I had plenty of other things to do inside the house because the sparge took literally forever (°). And it was raining.

Sparging at a milliliter per minute or so

°) Well, no, not literally forever otherwise I'd still be sitting there waiting for it to finish and you wouldn't be reading about how long it took since it would still be busy taking literally forever.

 Eventually, I collected about 3 gallons of turbid(*) wort, 30 gravitiy point shy of my 1.100 goal (°).

 *) since sahti is traditionally a cloudy drink, that didn't bother me none.

°) That's 1.070 in case you're confused by now

Besides the juniper-kuurna-shennannigans, sahti is known for two other things. The first is anathema to most brewers (and beers alike): no boiling.

Like I'm going to spoil the opportunity to show you what Anathema looks like these days...

No boiling means traditional sahti is meant to be drunk fresh and fast (yeah, vikings don't drink slowly but at least their brew is fresh). Since I didn't fancy quaffing 3 gallons of strong weird beer all by myself, I decided to flip the bird to tradition and do short, 15 minute boil with a handful of saaz hops for sanitary reasons. Tossed in a handful of dried juniper berries for good measure.

Cooled to tolerable levels and then pitched. 

With bread yeast.

...which, I hasten to add, I did not dissove in milk first
Pic not mine.

Fermentating with bread yeast is another quirk which sets the sahti brewer apart from his peers. Although it could be debated how likely it would be for 16th century Fins to have a steady supply of beer yeast cubes, I can agree with the idea (or at least the spirit) of using bread-related fermenting agents, rather than, say, leftover sahti.

Without putting up more pics of scouser post doom metal bands: brewing with baker's yeast is also anathema and very much frowned upon, even among home brewers. However, since brewer's yeast and baker's yeast are both essentially the same genus and species (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), there's absolutely no reason other than the strictly brew-technical why you couldn't brew with either.

Baker's yeast ferments swiftly, vigorously and Fragrantly, with fenolic whiffs of banana and clove wafting from the airlock. A bit like a hefe going postal.

From 1.070 to 1.010 in three days.
Showoff.

The resulting beer is flat, and intended to be drunk as such. Ideally scooped directly from the fermenting bucket, however I decided to bottle anyway.

Cloudy, with a chance of beer.

 An 8% ABV semi-authentic Scandinavian herb brew, in just over three days. Not too shabby.

But what's it taste like?
Well, honestly, even though I quite like it, it's nowhere near as special as I'd imagined it. Sure, it's cloudy and flat, and smells strongly of yeasty phenolics (specifically ripe banana), but the juniper is somewhat disappointingly subdued. There's a slight zip of resins way at the back of the finish, but without a heads-up, you'd never tell it's a juniper brew.

My guess is that the branches were either not "in season" (meaning they weren't fragrant enough yet) or they were the wrong variety after all. If you scroll up again to the pic of the headless feetless kuurna guy, you'll notice his twigs are not only a different shade of green, but also morphologically different. My guess is he's using the viginiana variety, which is native to North America, and which I presume is more piney, seeing as how much more coniferous it is than its communis cousin.

All that being said: this was a fun beer to brew. Not only do I like its oddball character, I also like many of the archaic techniques that comprise its brewing process. While perhaps not very special flavour-wise, the result is tasty enough for me to want to improve on it.

Definitely something I'll try again, possibly in the shape of a spruce or pine beer.

Until then,

Greetz

Jo, who will do his best not to take so long between blog updates anymore