Berliner Weisse

[manticle]

I'm looking at doing a lacto sour peach wit and some of the souring processes in this thread seem relevant enough to save me posting a new thread.

I'm looking at something like this:


Sour Peach wit

Size: 22 liters
Color: 4 HCU (~4 SRM)
Bitterness: 14 IBU
OG: 1.047
FG: 1.008
Alcohol: 5.0% v/v (4.0% w/w)
Grain: 2.5kg Dingemans Pilsner
2.5kg Raw wheat

Cereal mash wheat?

Either food grade lactic, some acidulated or a small portion of sour mash added back in.
Mash: 70% efficiency
TEMP: 55/62/68/72/78
TIME: 5 /15/50/10/10
Double decoction between 62 and 728
Boil: 90 minutes SG 1.032 32 liters
Hops: 30g Styrian Goldings (3.5% AA, 60 min.)
20g Styrian Goldings (aroma)

Ferment out with Wyeast forbidden fruit.

Rack onto 3kg of peaches or add grain bag full of peaches to demijohn

I'm hoping for a few suggestions from the lacto guys. Preferring to avoid a lacto culture at this stage since I want some character from the FF yeast and to balance the apricot flavour from styrians and peach from the fruit with tart, refreshing rathern than mouth pucker sour.

Anybody cereal mash their unmalted wheat?

 

[brettprevans]

The food grade lactic works but is one dimensional. But good for experiments. Never used raw wheat. Sounds great tjough.
Ive got plenty of forbidden fruit yeast slurry if u want it.

 

[vykuza]

I have a white peach saison nearing the end of the keg at the moment, and I can attest that just adding peaches and fermenting them out will add a lot of tartness without any outside help.

If you want more sourness I've had a nice success adding a smack pack of lacto culture to a mash, and leaving it for 24 hours to develop and got loads of very satisfyingly balanced lactic acidity from that. As the boil puts an end to the sour mash process, the sourness is for all intents and purposes, set at that level. I've only done it once though, so I wouldn't call it a perfected science.

 

[manticle]

Cheers for the responses guys.

Should be right for the FF culture CMII but cheers.

How did you treat the peaches Nick? Any pasteurisation etc or straight rack on top?

 

[vykuza]

The peaches were blanched to peel them, chopped and frozen. Then I just thawed at room temp and threw them in the fermenter at the "end" of the primary fermentation. It kicked off again of course.

 

[manticle]

Cheers.

 

[Ronan]

Wow, blown away by this thread. 've breweed a few awitha 15 min boil and found DMS in by finished product. I think i might 'grow some' and go the no boil method.

One questionm though; i was told to begin at 40 degrees with the bacteria ,3 days prior to pitching the yeast.

Any thoughts on this process?

 

[adryargument]

Should give a good start to the lacto ronan.

So just kegged my 110L of Berliner Weisse. Quite clear and sour after 3.5 months in the barrel. No signs of pelicle in the barrel, plenty in the blow off demijohn with a distinct nail polish aroma.

Also kegged the remaining 60L of my raspberry Berliner Weisse that I started in early dec. Thick layer of pelicle and tons of nail polish paint turps death aroma. Beer under the pelicle is great!!

Very satisfied with how they have turned out. Distinct clean profile with a sour chalky bite.

Nom nom nom - driving to brisbane tomorrow with all the sour and 3 wine barrels in/on the car.

 

[OneEye]

So I'm planing on putting down a BW tomorrow and am settling on the process to use. I'm posting here because I want you guys to jump in and tell me where I'm going wrong or if I've missed something but here is the plan!

Simple 60/40 Pils/Wheat grist
Mash as per normal then run off into the kettle which I will have purged with CO2
When it gets to around 45 degrees I'll thrown in some unmilled wheat malt
I'll probably connect CO2 to my kettle tap and bubble some through to make sure there's no O2 hanging around
Cover the wort with cling wrap and then let it sit for a few days, tasting it until I get to the sourness I want
Then I'll boil her up and treat it just like a normal beer from here on out.

Bound to be missing something! Right?

 

[joshuahardie]

Won't you need to make sure that the wort is held at 45 for the length of time you want the sourness to develop.

 

[OneEye]

Yeah I have an electric kettle. Going to have an stc keeping the temps up

 

[brewtas]

Sounds good, moosebeer. You don't need to worry about the CO2, just lay the gladwrap flat on the surface of the wort.

 

[Weizguy]

So I'm planing on putting down a BW tomorrow and am settling on the process to use. I'm posting here because I want you guys to jump in and tell me where I'm going wrong or if I've missed something but here is the plan!

Simple 60/40 Pils/Wheat grist
Mash as per normal then run off into the kettle which I will have purged with CO2
When it gets to around 45 degrees I'll thrown in some unmilled wheat malt
I'll probably connect CO2 to my kettle tap and bubble some through to make sure there's no O2 hanging around
Cover the wort with cling wrap and then let it sit for a few days, tasting it until I get to the sourness I want
Then I'll boil her up and treat it just like a normal beer from here on out.

Bound to be missing something! Right?

I have achieved good acidity by adding ~5% of the grist as a sour mash to the main grist.

Perhaps you will get too much acidity if you sour the entire mash. Just keep tasting and checking I suppose.

 

[mje1980]

Les, does that mean you sour 5% of the grist, say for 24 hours, then add to the mash, and then boil, and brew as normal??.

 

[Weizguy]

Yep. I actually soured some grain for about 3 days in a stainless pot in a double boiler setup.

Maintained the heat for 3 days or so, and then took about 250-500g of that sour mash and added it to my grain at mash-in. Brewed as normal.

Made a nice soured Pale Ale as per BYO mag recipe here, as well as Berliner weisse.

 

[mje1980]

Ok thanks mate. Might be a good way to "dip me toes" haha. Might try it in a saison also.

3 days would be pretty damn sour I'd imagine?. I've left my tun overnight for cleaning and had it start souring nicely.

 

[Weizguy]

Yeah, pretty sour.

 

[OneEye]

I'm not really souring the whole 'mash' per se.... really just taking a small amount of grain and using that to sour my wort. I've just finished the mash and I'm waiting for it to cool to about 40 before I throw my stocking full of grain in. Exciting times!

 

[vykuza]

My method for this is pretty easy. I mash in an esky as normal, let the mash cool to 45ish and pitch a pack of lactobacillus. Leave for 24 hours, sparge, boil and ferment like a normal wort. Gets good results!

 

[OneEye]

12 hours in and it's already souring up quite nicely and no funky smells that I've heard about. I ended up putting gladwrap over the lid and blew co2 down the sight glass of the urn until the gladwrap swelled, let it out and then repeated a few times until I was sure there was no oxygen left so the lacto is fermenting in a relatively all anaerobic environment... eliminating those funky smells! Got my starter going so will hopefully have this boiled up, coiled and pitched tomorrow morning!

 

[spryzie]

Thought I'd mention my little experiment.

30g Ale Malt and 30g Wheat Malt in 550ml water kept roughly around 65 degrees for an hour (very rough - hard to keep such a small volume steady on an electric stovetop).

OG of 1030.

Cooled to about 50 degrees (I believe lactobacillus can survive for a little while up to 65 degrees) and poured into 750ml PET plastic bottle.

Added 1/4 cup of grain. Expelled air and sealed.

Placed in yogurt maker which is about 38 degrees.

Next morning, bottle had swelled. Took a whiff - not unpleasant like my first attempt with a yoghurt culture which smelled like vomit.

Plan on making a 6L test batch with 50/50 Ale Malt/Wheat Malt to 1030 on the weekend. Will inoculate with my lacto starter for 24 hours keeping FV at about 30 degrees (best my heat belt will do - probably better to be closer to 40). Then pitch US05 and drop to 16-18 degrees.

 

[Thefatdoghead]

My BW has been sitting in the glass for about 6 weeks now. Eric Warner is saying to ferment for 4 days or until final gravity then bottle and condition @ 15 degrees for 3 months. Save a few bottles for a year or so to sour up more.

Im not going to bottle so should I just rack it into a keg and let it condition at 15 for a year or just leave it in glass on the yeast?

 

[grimpanda]

Gav80,

Kegging and conditioning at cellar temp would be effectively the same as bottle ageing. I can't imagine sitting it on the yeast for that long would be a good thing. Lactobacillus is anaerobic anyway, so keeping it under CO2 won't slow the souring, and will help stave off acetobacter etc.

Anyway...

I just 'brewed' my first BW today. 50/50 pils & malted wheat and 30g homegrown hallertauer flowers thrown in.

Did a step mash, 50c for 30mins, 63c for 75mins, 68c for 15 mins, 74c for 10 mins.

The mash is cooling down now - when it drops below 50 i'll throw in a handful of uncracked pils and incubate for a couple of days.

Once those lactic critters have done their job I plan on doing a sparge to collect my total volume to go straight into the fermenter.

I'm wondering though, if using the normal 74ºC sparge will significantly reduce the lactic bacteria...? Am I better off just doing a luke-warm sparge, or even a cold one (which would have the bonus of dropping the wort down to pitching temp)?

I plan on fermenting with US-05 and kegging, and letting it be a beer that continues to develop sourness over time.

It almost feels like cheating, making this beer... if it works out well I can see myself doing it again many times in the future.

 

[Thefatdoghead]

Sounds like a plan. Get it off the yeast and condition in the keg. I can always CPBF some bottles if I need to.

Thanks mate.

 

[ricardo]

I'm planning my first Berliner and was after a bit of advice, I have a RIMS systems and after a lot of reading i think i'm going to mash at 65 until conversion and then throw 10% Acid malt to lower pH to about 4.5, turn off the burners and let cool to 43 whilst recirculating. I'm then going to transfer the 10 gallons to the kettle for souring, my questions are

1) If i don't make a starter for the lacto how many vials of the white labs would i need to pitch to get it into the pH 3.5 range? I'm planning on holding at 43 with a temp controller for 2 days.
2) Alternatively i was planning on throwing a big handful of crushed grain in there instead of using the vials, would this release any tannin when i hold for 10 minutes at around 27 for pasteurization?
3) Use a mixture of grain and the vials?

Cheers in advance

 

[Black n Tan]

Have a look at the attached presentation by Jesse Caudal, head microbiologist at Wyeast. it he recommends pitching the lacto a few days before the yeast at 10 million cells/mL. Wyeast packs contain somewhere in the order of 20-30 billion lacto cells, so at the recommended pitch rate is only enough for 2-3L. Even at a itch rate of 5 million cells per mL this is only enough for 4-6L batch. So if you follow their advice, it would make sense to make a starter.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/presentations/pdf/2012/1616-09%20A%20Perspective%20on%20Brewing%20Weisse-style%20Beer%20-%20Jess%20Caudill%20&%20Jason%20Kahler.pdf

 

[ricardo]

Have a look at the attached presentation by Jesse Caudal, head microbiologist at Wyeast. it he recommends pitching the lacto a few days before the yeast at 10 million cells/mL. Wyeast packs contain somewhere in the order of 20-30 billion lacto cells, so at the recommended pitch rate is only enough for 2-3L. Even at a itch rate of 5 million cells per mL this is only enough for 4-6L batch. So if you follow their advice, it would make sense to make a starter.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/presentations/pdf/2012/1616-09%20A%20Perspective%20on%20Brewing%20Weisse-style%20Beer%20-%20Jess%20Caudill%20&%20Jason%20Kahler.pdf

Many thanks for that, very useful

Has anybody tried souring by chucking in a hand of crushed grain?i found this article where the author took notes at a lecture on Berliner given by a German brewer and this was his preferred method, sadly it doesn't mention the amount of grain required

http://sourbrewster.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/berliner-weisse-the-old-time-kettle-souring-technique/

 

[spryzie]

See my post above. Unadulterated grains work but make a "starter" rather than ruin a whole batch if it doesn't work.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Went with the wild method - I mashed in 1/4 of the grist, once it got down to room temp, chucked in some raw grains and let sour for 2.5 days.

One the day of total mash in, I mashed in the remaining 3/4 and after an hour, dropped to room temp, put in the now soured 1/4 and let it sour overnight. Nice but not overdone pellicle formed.

Pasteurised it next day (I'm a sook) and chucked in hops. Rehydrated S33 yeast and it was off and trying to climb out of the fermenter in a few hours.

 

[ricardo]

I think i will go the lacto starter route instead of wild.

I found an interesting snippet from Kristen England https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=10195.0 where he states that he makes a starter to 1.025 with 50% glucose and 50% malt extract (2oz\quart).

Would this be a measurement of 1 oz glucose and 1 oz malt in 2 liters of water to get this gravity, does that work out, Ive never used glucose in a starter