Berliner Weisse

[AJ80]

I went slightly different method again on mine - kettle souring. I pulled the bag of grain at the end of the mash, let the temp drop to high 40s and added a hop bag with around 500g of uncracked pilsner malt to inoculate with lacto. I then hooked up my OTS element to a temp controller, dialled in 40C covered it all up and left it for 48 hours. After that, I removed the grain and did a 30 min boil to pasteurise. Fermented with notto at 16C. Has been in the bottle for only 1.5 weeks, but tasted great at the end of fermentation.

Didn't bottle the whole batch though - about 9L was racked onto blueberries for something different...

 

[vykuza]

There are many ways to skin a cat.

I like my sour mash and boil method, as I feel it adds depth to the final product. I find lacto pitch, then plain sacc pitch to be quite two dimensional. Lacto and sacc pitch in combo ends up being very slow.

"Traditionally" it would have a number of different organisms having a go at the wort, including brett and others. And also very slowly. I also don't cap with a yeast floaty, or bury it in sand to age it.

I have yet to pitch brett in a BW, as I tend to keg and drink it young as a summer quaffer (not having to wait for the lacto to work, let alone a tertiary brett pitch).

 

[Blind Dog]

do I need to add the skinned cat to the sour mash?

 

[Blind Dog]

On a more serious note, how clean is the esky afterwards? Or to put it another way, can it still eb used as an esky or do I need to sacrifice it to the lacto?

 

[vykuza]

It's just fine. Would use for anything after sod perc and acid sanitiser treatment.

 

[Beersuit]

I have been doing the method fattox detailed for some time now. Ross got me into it. I have not been pitching sacc the last few I have done. Something has been getting to the wort before I get a chance to. I have been pitching Brett trios anyway to make sure it's done.

I think I might try your method Nick and see where it takes me.

 

[fattox]

Anthony - let me know if/when you bring something from this along, we can compare notes on the two methods at a club meeting, my berliner is probably gonna be due about mid January/early feb at this stage. It's just a matter of deciding which Brett blend to throw as an experiment

 

[seamad]

So...
I mashed last Saturday, fly sparged with 78C water into my HLT ( crown urn) to get 39L @ 1.041 ( will dilute down to 1.030 before fermenting). Sat night wort had cooled to 49C so I added a big SS ball with a good handful of pils, urn was covered with foil and urn lid.Urn was set to 39C, but forgot to turn element on, so Sunday was at 30C before I turned it back on, pH at this stage was 5.20. Monday was very strong vomit smell, but that seems par for the course. Yesterday ( Thursday) I checked again, very small amount of foam had escaped one side of lid, vomit smell still there ( but much subdued or I'm getting used to it ). Gravity has dropped @ 3 points on refrac ( calculator says about the same with hydo) and pH down to 3.65. Haven't removed foil yet to see what it looks like, but sample was pretty cloudy. From what I've read it seems the vomit smell should be gone, is this correct ? Should I keep going, or 20 min boil and ferment or just chuck and start again ??
cheers

 

[vykuza]

It won't be 100% gone, but it will definitely smell sweeter and slightly beery. Sniff it in the morning and decide!

 

[seamad]

Peeled the foil off this morning, there was a thin greyish/off white film over about a third of the urn which peeled off in one piece. The wort was clear, pH still the same at 3.65 as a couple of days ago, no change in gravity. Strangely I can only smell the vomit smell at a distance, when I stuck my nose right close to the wort all I could get was a sharp/acid smell, not unpleasant at all, tastes fine too so decided to boil for 20 minutes and filled 2 cubes. Will ferment 1 out and see what it turns out like.Think I'll get some lacto culture for the next one...

 

[seamad]

Well I've tried to ferment this with no luck so far. Pitched 2 packets of rehydrated yeast, first was M44 then 4 days later US05, no gravity drop at all. Only thing I can think of is that the pH is stalling/preventing fermentation ? Think it might be time to give up on this one.

 

[Black n Tan]

I would not have thought that a pH of 3.65 was to acidic for the yeast. However I do know that wyeast 1007 german ale is what a lot of people use for BW as it is acid tolerant. I used that in pH 3.8 wort and it went fine.

 

[mje1980]

I've got my first successful attempt in the fermentor now. I just pitched the wyeast lacto, waited around 36 hours then pitched the German ale. Such a low gravity beer it ripped through it in a few days.




Do any of you guys add brett to your BWs?. I plan on bottling some soon, but also splitting 8 or so litres off and adding brett c

 

[Black n Tan]

I've got my first successful attempt in the fermentor now. I just pitched the wyeast lacto, waited around 36 hours then pitched the German ale. Such a low gravity beer it ripped through it in a few days.




Do any of you guys add brett to your BWs?. I plan on bottling some soon, but also splitting 8 or so litres off and adding brett c

I added the brett directly to the bottle, 1mL of Wyeast Brett per bottle. Next time I will probably use 2mL because the Brett is there but quite subtle. Better than using it in your fermenter and risk contaminating future brews.

 

[Tex083]

Does anyone have DMS issues with there BW? I think mine has a massive hit of DMS, it has subsided after fermention but still there.
It was a Sour Mash with a 30 min boil.

 

[mje1980]

I added the brett directly to the bottle, 1mL of Wyeast Brett per bottle. Next time I will probably use 2mL because the Brett is there but quite subtle. Better than using it in your fermenter and risk contaminating future brews.

I've got 6 fermentors, 5 of them have been used for the funk haha. I just grabbed some orval so might split between brett c and the brett from orval ( b I think ).

 

[mje1980]

Does anyone have DMS issues with there BW? I think mine has a massive hit of DMS, it has subsided after fermention but still there.
It was a Sour Mash with a 30 min boil.

Is it DMS or butyric acid ? It smells a little like Parmesan cheese and vomit. Don't ask how I know

 

[seamad]

I would not have thought that a pH of 3.65 was to acidic for the yeast. However I do know that wyeast 1007 german ale is what a lot of people use for BW as it is acid tolerant. I used that in pH 3.8 wort and it went fine.

I didn't temp correct that, would be @ 3.5. I don't have any 1007, plenty of pommie yeasts. Maybe the pH is just too low for the yanky yeasts to start. It's been in the fermenter for 8 days with nothing to show, even the bad bugs are too scared to get going.

 

[motch02]

My Berliner is down to 1.002 and tastes like smokey bacon from the Brett... Thinking I'll need to drown it out with 2kg of Sour Cherries

Good idea?

 

[mje1980]

Yes absolutely add cherries to it. I've recently done this and it works very well IMHO.