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!