Hi All,
Have been thinking about making my first berliner weisse for quite a while but not everything has gone to plan.
My original idea was to culture some lactobacillus after making a small mash from grain (pilsner) malt. I boiled the mash I made for a full 60 minutes, chilled it, then took it over to a mate's place to experiment with using it as a mixer for some bourbons we had. That introduced a bit more head space into the bottle I had it in.
I had some other things going on so came back to it a few days later, open the bottle & there was a fizz sound. I was prepared for the worst but it turns out that it has pleasantly soured with no discernible off flavours, (to me at least).
I was pretty happy with that & made up my standard size batch of wort, (only 10 litres), added my sour culture. I have left it for 4 days, (bit longer than usual as I wasn't maintaining the really high temps that apparently lacto likes) & the whole batch has soured nicely.
However, my starting gravity when I first pitched my sour culture was 1044 which has now dropped to 1031. From an online calculator, this is a drop of slightly over 1.7%. I don't know if there are any strains of lacto that produce that much alcohol. I suspect that I have some wild yeast as part of my spontaneous culture. When I took a sample, there appeared to be quite a lot of fine carbonation in my brew which would push me even more towards the wild yeast theory.
The dilemma I have is whether to perform a boil & then pitch my clean german ale yeast like I was originally planning to or not. I can live with losing some alcohol as the style is supposed to be low alcohol anyway. I actually quite like the taste as it is at the moment too though.
I don't know how much the flavour is going to change after doing a boil & fermenting with the ale yeast.
Similarly, I don't know how much I can expect the flavour to change if I let a mix of lacto & wild yeast run it's course under controlled, (lower) temperatures.
Any personal experiences/advice?
I'll probably make a call one way or the other tomorrow as the level of sourness seems pretty good. If I can't be confident that the level of sourness won't just keep increasing to the point where it can strip the enamel off your teeth, or poopy/vomit flavours won't develop, I'll probably go the conservative route & try & kill my existing culture to give the ale yeast a clean field to play on.
I did keep some of my original culture in some bottles in the fridge. If some of you experienced guys are confident I have wild yeasts as part of my culture I am happy to be drawn into other sour beer shenanigans...maybe start heading down the lambic path?
I haven't really done any research on making lambics at home as I thought I would start with a simpler style & was a bit scared off by the idea of potential bottle bombs, bad infections, extreme wait times that might still result in terrible beer.
Anything anyone has to offer is appreciated.
Have been thinking about making my first berliner weisse for quite a while but not everything has gone to plan.
My original idea was to culture some lactobacillus after making a small mash from grain (pilsner) malt. I boiled the mash I made for a full 60 minutes, chilled it, then took it over to a mate's place to experiment with using it as a mixer for some bourbons we had. That introduced a bit more head space into the bottle I had it in.
I had some other things going on so came back to it a few days later, open the bottle & there was a fizz sound. I was prepared for the worst but it turns out that it has pleasantly soured with no discernible off flavours, (to me at least).
I was pretty happy with that & made up my standard size batch of wort, (only 10 litres), added my sour culture. I have left it for 4 days, (bit longer than usual as I wasn't maintaining the really high temps that apparently lacto likes) & the whole batch has soured nicely.
However, my starting gravity when I first pitched my sour culture was 1044 which has now dropped to 1031. From an online calculator, this is a drop of slightly over 1.7%. I don't know if there are any strains of lacto that produce that much alcohol. I suspect that I have some wild yeast as part of my spontaneous culture. When I took a sample, there appeared to be quite a lot of fine carbonation in my brew which would push me even more towards the wild yeast theory.
The dilemma I have is whether to perform a boil & then pitch my clean german ale yeast like I was originally planning to or not. I can live with losing some alcohol as the style is supposed to be low alcohol anyway. I actually quite like the taste as it is at the moment too though.
I don't know how much the flavour is going to change after doing a boil & fermenting with the ale yeast.
Similarly, I don't know how much I can expect the flavour to change if I let a mix of lacto & wild yeast run it's course under controlled, (lower) temperatures.
Any personal experiences/advice?
I'll probably make a call one way or the other tomorrow as the level of sourness seems pretty good. If I can't be confident that the level of sourness won't just keep increasing to the point where it can strip the enamel off your teeth, or poopy/vomit flavours won't develop, I'll probably go the conservative route & try & kill my existing culture to give the ale yeast a clean field to play on.
I did keep some of my original culture in some bottles in the fridge. If some of you experienced guys are confident I have wild yeasts as part of my culture I am happy to be drawn into other sour beer shenanigans...maybe start heading down the lambic path?
I haven't really done any research on making lambics at home as I thought I would start with a simpler style & was a bit scared off by the idea of potential bottle bombs, bad infections, extreme wait times that might still result in terrible beer.
Anything anyone has to offer is appreciated.