Sahti Dec 2025

I've been wanting to try boiling water with rocks from a fire for awhile - this would have been the method used for larger cauldrons that were made from wood and couldn't go over the fire. I thought I'd start with a small batch as proof of concept. 

Since the hyperfocus said, "Do NOW!" and it's Monday - the brew store isn't open. I figured I'd just use the rye I grew and harvested earlier this year. However, I only had a couple hundred grams or so, which is not a ton of grain. 

at about this point, I decided that trying to keep the kettle warm outside was a problem, and the ratio of rocks to water was too large. This technique is NOT designed for small batches. I decided to heat 1/2 the rocks in the oven and try heating the water with the rocks inside, transferring the wort from one pot to another and restraining thru the grains at every transfer - since the grains weren't literally sitting in the water and soaking like I usually do. 

I got the wort to middling hot - hotter than the faucet, but not boiling. After a couple rounds of this, I decided that I was going to boil the wort with the stove element anyway for cleanliness, so I poured the wort back and forth over the grains until it looked dark enough, and then turned the stove on to let it boil/simmer for 10 minutes (and maybe steam off a little extra liquid so it would be more concentrated). 

After I let it cool down, I put it into a growler and added some bread yeast. Then, I wrapped it in the heated blanket (had to steal it back from the dog bed).

 Sahti should ferment warm - body temperature or warmer - for 36 hours or so before cold conditioning. The laundry room is certainly the right temp for the second part this week.

 We'll see if I need to add more yeast later today, and then hopefully see what it tastes like around New Years. I'm planning to save yeast from this batch to make a batch later in January. 

Next day: added extra yeast and sugar, not as much blooping as previous batches. Day 3 (Wed) transferred to a different growler and put in the laundry room. Smelled very yeasty still. 

Dec 31 (written up later):

I shared small tastes of this batch at our new year's party. The color is a lot lighter than my typical batches, which I expected because it's thinner. I can taste a difference from either the stones or the smoke, which I definitely liked. 

I saved a jar with as much of the yeast as possible to add to a batch later (end of January hopefully).