Partigyle - Wheat Wine & Berliner Weisse

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Josh

WSB
Joined
31/12/05
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Location
St Clair, NSW
Tonight I cubed 40L of Berliner Weisse wort and pitched 20L of English Wheat Wine. All brewed from the one mash.

The mash
5kg JW Pilsner malt
5kg mix of Cryer and JW Wheat malt
14g CaCl2
64C - 60 mins
70C - 10 mins
75C - mashout/sparge

English Wheat Wine
Took first runnings and 1 full batch sparge to give a full boil in the kettle.

40g UK Northdown 8.1% 45 mins
40g EKG 4.8% 15 mins
40g EKG 4.8% cube

20L into the cube.
OG 1.074
Pitched with 3L starter of WLP007 Dry English Ale yeast.

Berliner Weisse
After the first batch sparge for the Wheat Wine, I cooled the grain bed down to 40C with cold water. Then put 2 cups of Pilsner malt on top of the mash. I let the grains sour mash for 2 days. Tasted a tiny bit of the first runnings today and it was mouth puckeringly sour. Then tonight I added some hot water, took a full runnings of the mash tun. Then had 2 more batch sparges using very hot water which got the grain bed up to 75C sparge temp.

15g Saaz 3.5% 60 mins

40L into 2 cubes
OG 1.030
This will be pitched with Wyeast 1007 German Ale yeast once the stir plate is free.

I shall report back when these beers have fermented out. But things are looking really promising so far. I was pleasantly surprised how easily the 50% wheat sparged. I have a braided hose and batch sparge. In the past I have had very slow runnings using this much wheat malt. I've started adding mostly barley to the mash tun first and putting most of the wheat malt on top of that. Seems to aid in runoff speed.
 
The Wheat Wine turned out pretty good. Nice body without being too sweet. It was kinda wine like, but with English style esters and hop flavour. I didn't really get a chance to try it much though. Poured a few bottles of it too early at the Taphouse Brewshare night. The last few bottles I waited for full carbonation and they were great. Unfotunately I lost a whole keg of it force carbing with a picnic tap attached to the out post.

The Berliner Weisse was really acidic, to the point where it could have been too much. It was really tasty with a touch of cordial to mellow out the sourness. The good news is I went through 40L of it in no time so it must have been alright. I sent a bottle each to Schooey and Florian if they'd like to comment.

I'll probably try this again at some stage, but only do 24 hours on the sour mash to see how that affects it.
 
Mine is still sitting in the fridge, haven't gotten to it yet. I have been waiting for weeks for the rain to stop and the sun to come out. I know from experience that Berliner Weisse is just so much better on a really stinking hot day. Looks like I might get lucky in the next week or so and will report back.
 
Cheers, thanks for the update. :icon_cheers:

Could imagine the Berliner being pretty funky after two days having emptied a mushtun after the same period.
 
I've just read about this technique in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing - it seems like a really interesting technique and definately worth playing around with. I like the idea of being able to make a smaller batch of something very big like a Barley Wine which you might not want a full batch of.

Did you plan & calculate for a particular OG for each batch, or just guesstimate by your expected yeild from the total grain?
 
I cracked my bottle open last night, and I must say I absolutely loved it. Definitely one of my highlights (if not 'the') from the lotto beers I drank so far. Yes, it was quite sour, but not too sour for my taste. Really refreshing on a hot day, and I wished I had another bottle. Tried it also with a dash of cordial, only had raspberry though, in Berlin I would prefer woodruff cordial. It really mellowed out the sourness, but I soon reverted back to drinking without it. I had my bottle sitting in the fridge for about a month before I opened it, so not sure how different it might have been from Josh's original kegs.

SWMBO had the obligatory taste as well (she hates beer), and her comment was 'that's even worse than beer'. Oh well...


This has always been on my to brew list, but has just jumped to a prominent place at the top. I have also another Berliner Weisse from Nick R in the fridge, he made his without the sour mash but with wyeast PC3191 instead. Will be interesting to see how the two compare. I have two packets of said yeast in the fridge, so I hope it turned out well.

Here are some pics I took last night:


Berliner Weisse
BW1.jpg


with cordial (excuse the Peter Rabbit cup)
BW2.jpg
 

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