STEP 1 - THE RECIPE

So, in its purest form, sahti is traditionally brewed by the household. Therefore, there isn't just one recipe. In general, there is:

-Malted barley (60-70%)

-Malted Rye (10-20%)

-Crystal malt (0-20%)

-Juniper branches

I really wish I could have gotten my mits on some juniper branches, but alas, I could find none. Usually the mash is strained through a bed of branches, and I really wanted to do that. O well. Here is the recipe I came up with for the Leavelle house sahti.

-2 lb Pilsen

-2 lb Pale

-1 lb Rye

-8 oz Crystal 120

-8 oz Crystal 80

-.5 oz juniper berries

STEP 2 - CRUSH DA BERRIEZ

Since I could not get juniper branches, I had to settle for berries. I decided that the best way to utilize them would be to crush them up and add them to the mash. So I stuck em on a plate

Crushed them up and dumped them into my grains and mixed them up really well.

STEP 3 - BOIL WATER

Next I got a lot of boiling water started. The idea is to make a very thick mash at first, then continue to add water twice an hour over the course of 6 hours.

STEP 4 - MASH IN

Put the grains in the mash tun, and add enough boiling water to get it up to 150.

Its a VERY thick mash. I wish I had a big enough pot, I would have rather mashed in that, because I know Im going to have to boil the whole mash at the end. Still have not figured out how Im going to do this. Maybe a beer or two will get my gears turning...

Im gonna grab a pint while I wait. Thats all for now!

UPDATE: My cooler holds heat too well. I took the lid off to try and lose some degrees on the mash. Havnt been able to add any water yet, and its been an hour!!!

UPDATE: Minor fail. After almost 2 hours of mashing at 150-155, I realized I added WAY too much boiling water at the beginning. Soooo, Im moving on to boiling the mash/sparging. More updates while the wort is cooling.

UPDATE: DONE. Here's the rest of what I did.

STEP 5 - BOIL THE MASH

There are a few major differences between how beer is brewed and how sahti is brewed. Heres a quick rundown.

-Generally there are no hops
-Usually the wort is not boiled after sparging
-The mash is sparged with boiling water instead of 170 degree water
-Usually the mash itself is actually boiled


*I have to use words like "usually" and "generally" all the time because... there are a million ways to brew this stuff. I looked at many recipes and basically used what I saw as the most common practices.*

So, this final difference is just what I did in this step. I dumped the entirety of the mash into my kettle (actually, some of it got on the floor...)
and let it boil while stirring for about 10 minutes.
As I was boiling the mash, I filled two pots with water and started to boil those as well for my sparging water.
As the mash got to the end of its boil, I boiled a small saucer pan to sanitize it for transfering the mash back into my mash tun from the kettle.