My friend and fellow sauna enthusiast Dan told me that there’s a thing called the 200-degree club. You become a member by taking a sauna with a 200 degree difference between the temperature of the sauna and the outside air temperature. I was intrigued, but sure I could pull that off, at least in this first year of real sauna (wood-fired) ownership.

Well, Mother Nature decided to help out couple of weeks ago, when we had -17 F temps. I decided to go for the club when I saw the forecasted temps, and planned to get the sauna up to at least 180 F, lest I miss the club by a degree or two. I stoked her up before heading up the local brewery (Lake St. George Brewing Company, or LSGB), where Dan is the patriarch, Master Brewer and one of the owners along with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law). LSGB is the social hub of our community, so I had a few friends cheering me on when I decided to head home and go for membership. The picture shows the sauna temp when I walked in. Given the outside temperature, I managed to make the club with 19 degrees to spare!

I can tell you that there’s no way I could do 200-degree sauna regularly. I know the Finns do that all the time, and consider 180 F the minimum temperature for a true sauna, but even that’s more than I really enjoy. 145 F is just perfect, and I’m reasonably comfortable up to about 165 F, but anything above that and I just don’t enjoy it for long. I guess I’m just not a Finn… But hey, I made the club, and even enjoyed cooling off in the -17 F temps with a 20 mph wind (for about a minute or two, before I headed back in to soak up some heat and then dash back to the house).