The Sahti competition

The Finnish Sahti competition (the worlds..?) is held every year in august. Competition is organized by The Finnish Sahti Society.

Every muncipality has a tryout (if there are more than one sahtibrewer) where a local sahti master is elected. Every local sahti master will bring 5 liters of sahti to the final competition and his own judge. There are more than 130 persons attending the muncipal tryouts.

The final competition has three rounds. The first one has more than 30 sahti samples to judge; all judges (more than 30 of them too) are divided to 4 groups. Each group tastes the same eight or so sahti samples. After first round we have 12 samples left, that is the three best samples from every round will go to the next round. In the second round the judges are divided into two goups, each will judge six samples and again three samples from each group will go to the final.

The winner gets a 10 liter haarikka (haarikka is a traditional vessel to drink sahti, see the picture taken by Ari Järmälä to get a clue) and a good load of malts to brew sahti.

The Holder of the Haarikka

Every year the Sahti Society will also appoint a honorary title, The Holder of the Haarikka (Haarikanhaltija) to a person who has promoted knowledge about sahti and helped to keep sahti culture alive. The first Haarikanhaltija in the year 1994 was a finnish TV-person and a chef Jaakko Kolmonen. After that came Michael Jackson (1995), Pekka Kääriäinen (1996, the first commercial sahti brewer), Veikko Rautavirta (1997, a long time winner of the sahti competition) ja Lahden Polttimo (1998, maltster of the sahti malt).

Other information of the competition

Ari Järmälä has collected a good sample (with pictures) of the sahti competitions during the last few years. All articles are in finnish.

The Sahti Competition 1999 by Ari Järmälä

The Sahti Competition 1998 by Ari Järmälä

The Sahti Competition 1997 by Ari Järmälä

The Sahti Competition 1996 by Ari Järmälä (pictures)

The Sahti Competition 1995