I just had to post this!
Today, I received shipment of several cubes of fresh bread yeast from Finland. This is the traditional Finnish yeast used to brew Sahti. After reading a few articles about brewing Sahti, I knew I'd have to give it a try some time. Also, given the descriptions of this bread yeasts flavor characteristics, I figured I needed to get my hands on some of it for storage. I might have to try this yeast in a Hefeweizen. It sounds like it might be a good fit.
Anyway, I was pretty stoked when the package came in. I've been trying to get my hands on this yeast for several months. Now, I need to wake the yeast up and make a couple slants.
Here's a Sahti article, for those who are unfamiliar:
http://brewingtechniques.com/library/st ... style.html

Cool!

I've been intrigued with Sahti since I first heard about it many years ago.

I remembered there were a few articles in Zymurgy a while back so I did a quick a dirty search for Sahti on their cool webpage (http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/zymurgy/archives) and came up with two issues with articles about Sahti and recipes for Sahti. The first article was in the 1994 Special issue (V. 17, No. 4) while the second one was from the Summer 1996 issue (V.19 No. 2).

GuitarLord, I know I have those issues (somewhere) so if you are interested in those articles but can't get a hold of them just let me know and I should be able to find them and copy the articles for you.

At any rate, please let us know how this comes out.

- Scott

Hey Scott,

I'd love to take a look at those articles, if you can find em.

Are you going to replicate the process or attempt an alternative route to similar end results?

If you intend to use juniper berries instead of twigs I have a bit of useful advice: this just came to mind because I have no idea where you could find twigs. From my own experiments the desirable juniper aroma/flavour seems to be in the skin of the berries, while in the centre there is rather unpleasant bitterness. This is why making gin involves putting the berries on a mesh that the alcohol vapour passes through while being distilled, collecting only the desirable oils, rather than blending the berries up in the alcohol solution itself.

So if useing juniper berries my advice would be to leave them intact, and perhaps use them as is done with dry hopping - as apposed to boiling them hard to extract maximum possible flavour. Just a thought,

Joseph

I'm not interested in the process, as much as the finished product. I'm not going to build a bunch of new equipment for a one off product (which I would have to do in this case) when my equipment will probably work just fine.
I intend to mash in my cooler as usual, and just stick the juniper branches/berries into the mash (if I can find some). I don't think I'll need an external lauter tun lined with juniper and hay. I'm sure my normal homebrew equipment will suffice.
I appreciate the advice on the juniper berries. I hadn't really intended to crush any berries into this beer. They'll just be going into the mash. I didn't know about the bitterness though. I'll make sure I don't let any of the berries get crushed in the mash. And boiling is a non issue, as this is a no-boil beer.

Thanks!