Sahti pours yellow to dark brown, most often amber, cloudy and almost flat, with little head. It tastes sweet and thick, of raw, grainy malt, caramel and a little rye, with strong banana and clove from the yeast and a woody, piney note from juniper. There is hardly any bitterness and no hop flavour; the juniper does the work of hops. At 7–11% alcohol it warms, though the sweetness hides much of it.
Where it comes from
Finnish farmhouses have brewed sahti for at least 500 years, often for summer weddings and other feasts, and drank it within a week or two. The brewer mashes malted barley, often with rye, filters the mash through juniper boughs in a trough, and ferments the wort without boiling it, using Finnish baker’s yeast in a fast, warm fermentation.
Selling sahti became legal in Finland in 1987, when Lammin Sahti and Joutsan Sahti began. Since 2002 the name has been protected in the EU as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed, which sets out how sahti is made.
Next to its neighbours
It bears a passing likeness to a weizenbock, with the same banana and clove, but sahti is sweeter and thicker, with rye and juniper. Its rye should not taste of caraway, as rye bread does.
Sahti in numbers
- Classic example
- Lammin Sahti
- Original gravity
- 1.076–1.120
- Final gravity
- 1.016–1.038
- Protected
- EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed since 2002
- Classic examples
- Lammin Sahti; Joutsan Sahti; made year-round by several breweries in Finland
- BJCP style
- 27A Historical Beer: Sahti
Sources
Checked .
- 27A. Historical Beer: Sahti, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
- Sahti — Wikipedia (Finnish)
- Sahti — Wikipedia
- Lammin Sahti — Lammin Sahti
