Tune in for a special episode of Beer Sessions Radio™ as Jimmy Carbone chats with Finnish brewer Pekka Kaariainen about Lammin Sahti Oy! Finnish Sahti is a truly ancient beer style, dating back thousands of years and not using hops. This means a quick fermenting process and genuine “drink by” beer. Dating back to the 1500s, this beer is still mostly produced near Helsinki in traditional sahti brewing equipment like open wooden mash tuns and troughlike wooden lauter tuns (Äúkuurnas‚Äù) with a filter bed made of juniper twigs (the juniper acts as the main preservative). Sahti is an all-malt beer (Pilsener or Pale malt, Crystal barley malt and dark rye malt) with Finnish Baker’s yeast that produces phenols and esters similar to those produced by the classic Bavarian wheat (weisse) beer yeast.
Pekka traveled to OEC (Ordinem Ecentrici Coctores – Order of the Eccentric Boilers) at B. United in Connecticut last month to brew with OEC Brewing brewmaster Ben Neidhart to create “a Sahti as fresh as possible at our facility and then release it to customers in as fresh a state as possible.” Everything in the OEC Sahti is authentic; even the baker’s yeast was imported from Finland.
Joining Pekka and Jimmy are George Flickinger and Michael )palenski of B. United, who talk about the snowed-in brew day they had. Per Michael: “We served Steffi’s ‘Quinoa/Kamut’ bread fermented with wild yeast collected from our Zymatore barrels/horticultural area with a Sourdough pre-starter/mother starter}. Steffi only used sprouted quinoa grains she sprouted herself (i.e. soaked and dried on site). It was served with farmhouse salted butter.”
This was the first time Pekka ever brewed on a coolship + French Baudelot system, and you’ll be able to taste the results over the next week or two at Jimmy’s No. 43, Proletariat, The Cannibal, Torst, Gingerman and The Owl Farm (check back later in the week for our official “Sahti Tracker”).
Also at Jimmy’s No. 43 during this pre-record were brewers Chris Cuzme and Mary Izett (author of the up-coming book, Speed Brewing), who have lots of interesting technical questions (and offer up tips) about the brewing process of this unusual and amazing beer style.
You can see all the photos from the brewing day on our Facebook page. And listen to the full episode here.