Lammin Sahti to U.S. beer market

Finnish sahti is to enter the U.S. microbrewery products market. Lammin Sahti has signed an agreement with B. United International on the delivery of sahti and juniper beer to wholesalers in the United States.
      The first consignment, of 6,000 bottles, will be shipped over in September, and will include the flagship product Lammin Sahti and a juniper-flavoured bock named Puhti.
     
“The order is a significant ice-breaker  for the products of Finnish microbreweries, and particularly for sahti, which has already had its name protected by European Union regulations”, said brewer Pekka Kääriäinen, owner of the Lammin Sahti microbrewery, located in a small town close to Hämeenlinna.
      The brewery was founded in 1987 as the first commercial producer of this old beer in many decades. Others have followed, and there are now around half a dozen producers.
      In practice, all European beer styles with the exception of sahti have been on the lists of American importers for some time.
     
For those who are competely in the dark as to what sahti is all about, there is a comprehensive guide to this ancient “ur-beer” on the excellent pages of the Finnish Society for Traditional Beers, the local equivalent of the U.K.’s Campaign for Real Ale. It details the history of the product, how it is made, and where you can sample it.


Links:
  Lammin Sahti (pages in Finnish)
  B. United International
  Finnish Society for Traditional Beers - Sahti
  Beer guru Michael Jackson on Sahti