kalsarikänni

When I got back into homebrewing in 2022, one of my first ambitious ideas was to create a trilogy of beers. These beers would not only share common ingredients across range of styles and ABVs, they would also be connected by a unifying theme or story. The Inspiration I had been reading this passage about…

I’ve added a new page in the navigation menu at the top that features custom label designs I’ve created for my homebrew. While all of these labels were designed by me in Photoshop, some were created with the help of generative AI. Check them out here, and let’s talk about them!

I’ve been using the FerMonster PET plastic fermenters exclusively for a couple years now. There are so many reasons I love using these things. But there’s also a big downside: There are no volume markings to tell you how much wort you collected. I decided to solve this problem!

Thankfully, fermentation went off without a hitch. Every couple of days, I checked the gravity of each sahti with a refractometer. From some advice I received online from other brewers, once one of the fermenters reached a reading of about 1.034-1.038, I moved it into my kegerator just above 35°F for cold-conditioning.

If you aren’t familiar, “perkele” is a Finnish word meaning “evil spirit,” “the Devil,” “god damn,” or just about the worst, most-profane swear word you can think of. As I got deeper into brewing this sahti, I began to wonder if Perkele himself had been making plans against me.

Ever since I began homebrewing, I wanted to connect with my Finnish heritage and make sahti — as authentically as possible, with the ingredients and equipment available to me. This is perhaps the oldest style of beer still made in the world today, and it is very difficult to find outside of Finland.