There are as many ways to brew sahti as there are sahti brewers. In general eastern areas (Joutsa) brew paler sahti (they use wheat) than other areas. Also the ingredients vary wildly.

You could say that you can put any malts to the mash though pilsner malt, rye and wheat are most common. You can use hops or then again not. You can use juniper but many traditional sahti brewers don't.

There are some things you do. You use baking yeast (though some blend of german weizen yeast or belgian strong ale yeast might do well). There are lots of phenolic and banana flavours in sahti and I mean lots.

In the brewing process there are some peculiarities. Most of the brewers don't boil the wort. Instead they might boil the mash for a short time. You want to have long chained proteins in sahti to give it some cloudiness and viscosity. And who cares about breaks, all that fluffy stuff will sediment in the bottom of fermentation vessel anyway. Sahti will be consumed so quickly that there are no need to be worried about shelf life.

Well, to be serious I have collected some real recipes to follow. Especially the text by Simo Juvaste is worth studying.

Note! Traditional sahti got a certificate of specific character for agricultural products and foodstuffs in EU-area on February 8th 2002. You can read how the application describes the traditional process and ingredients.

Sahti Recipes

Sahti malt specification
Brewing Finnish Sahti by Simo Juvaste
Sahti recipe by Kari Likovuori
Sahti by Jukka Heino
Brewing sahti in Kuhmoinen