What the Berliner Weisse is going on???

[brewinhard]

PBW soak with hot water, rinsed well, and starsan should be just fine with NO worries. Any hoses/tubing/siphons/etc. should be used and kept separate from your "normal" beers.

Chris,

What have you done when you ended up with a berliner that wasn't quite sour enough? Whack it with lactic acid? Sour mash some extra wort and blend in?

[ChrisKennedy]

PBW soak with hot water, rinsed well, and starsan should be just fine with NO worries. Any hoses/tubing/siphons/etc. should be used and kept separate from your "normal" beers.

Chris,

What have you done when you ended up with a berliner that wasn't quite sour enough? Whack it with lactic acid? Sour mash some extra wort and blend in?

I have done lactic acid for one batch that didn't turn out sour enough.

But I have brewed about 40gal of berliner at home, and actually drank about 10. The first batch came out great, and drank it a bunch. The next batch came out not sour, and I am still sitting on it, and will eventually dump it. The next batch I did up with brett (half with C and half with L), the half with C smells and tastes like strong cheese, and the brett L half tasted great and I drank it.

I brewed another set of berliner weisse that I added Cantillon dregs to when it turned out not sour, and then brewed a dark berliner weisse with those dregs, and it currently is sitting with a very fluffy pellicle in the fermenter.

I have a starter of WL Lacto going right now at 98F, and I just began a starter of acidophilus pills tonight. I am going to brew another 10gal batch soon and pitch half with the starter of WL lacto that I will build up a few times to get the population of lacto as big as I can possibly get it, and half with the acidophilus starter.

I hope the acidophilus turns out well, because it is really easy.

For me, if a berliner weisse at home turns out not sour enough, I will just chalk it up to a screw up and start over. But lactic acid is a good substitute for the real thing, but not good enough to make it worth skipping over a natural fermentation completely.

[brewinhard]

I will be brewing one soon with the following techniques:

about 1 wk before brewday make a 1-1.5 L starter (no aeration) with WY lacto at 95 degrees (or the closest I can keep it)

brewday (single batch sparge)

mash grains 149 for 90 min. with 1.5 qt/# ratio with low AA mash hop

add just under boiling water (or so) to raise to 170 for 10 min. mashout and to reach total kettle volume for a no boil (5.5 gallons)

recirculate and collect runoff (5.5 gallons) into kettle

quickly cool to around 90-95 degrees with chiller

rack carefully to carboy and add lacto starter (do not aerate wort)

let ferment in warm water bath (once again as close to 90 degrees or so as possible) for minimum of 48 hrs.

after 48 hrs, let cool to ale pitching temps (70 degrees or so) and pitch WY 2565 kolsch yeast with small starter

If this doesnt sour enough I have a bottle (or 2) of Fantome dregs to add to the brew to sour it up more in the keg

Any thoughts?

[ChrisKennedy]

I would do a starting step with the lacto, maybe around 300-400ml, and then go into 2L or so. Give each at least 4-5 days I'd say.

I would consider doing a decoction with some mash hops, just to get an IBU or two in there.

I would build up a large enough slug of lacto that you can pitch it and the yeast at the same time. Pitching the lacto first is a way to compensate for underpitching it, but I think it is better to not underpitch in the first place.

I would consider using a strain like US05 or 001 or 1056, just because it seems slightly heartier than kolsch, and with the pH drop (particularly if you pitch the yeast after the lacto) you will need as hearty a strain as you can get. I have seen yeast die after pitching it into sour mashed wort.

Edit: I would also not depend on additional bugs to give you your sourness if you fail with the lacto. Takes too much time, and there will be so little sugar left that you would need to add some to get any sourness.

For me, if the berliner weisse doesn't come out sour enough (and it has happened to me many times), I am glad to know it quickly so I can try again. I haven't dumped any yet, and even the ones I added bugs to aren't sour at all. So I will be dumping them shortly and starting a whole new range of berliners with different experimentations.

[ernieball]

I'm actually planning to rack my first B Weisse to a keg this weekend.

Used JZ's recipe from the style book. I prepared two 1L starters:

1338 for 2 days
5335 for 4-5 days

both at 70F. Used starters because I brewed the beer about a 1.5 months after I purchased the packs. Pitched the flasks at the same time and it kicked off pretty quickly. Did the primary in a bucket at 67F and the beer's been sitting in my closet for the last month.

Still haven't tasted it though. Hopefully the extra time for the Lacto should be good enough for the souring. Should be interesting. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

[brewinhard]

I followed the same method last time and even gave the beer an additional 3 mos aging warm to increase lacto souring and still the beer was VERY underwhelming with its sourness. Let us know how things work out for you!

Thanks for the tips Chris. I know you have been working on nailing this one for awhile. Now you got me on the bandwagon too!
So,
+1 on the american ale yeast for strength

Questions?
1. Is a lacto starter stepup simply b/c they are slow growing?

2. What is the worst case scenario if pitching the lacto before the yeast instead of together?

3. Can the lacto starter be cold crashed (I know its fluffy as hell)?



-brewinhard

[ChrisKennedy]

1. Slow growing yes, but also so you don't overwhelm a small amount of bacteria with a large amount of wort. Might not be necessary, but just like with yeast, I feel like it might help if you start with a more proportional amount of wort based on how little bacteria you are starting with.

2. OldSock would be a little better equipped to answer this one because he has tasted a worst case scenario, but what can happen is that the wort pH gets so low that it screws with the fermentation of the yeast. So you can have incomplete fermentations, weird off flavors, stuff like that. Of course, sour mashes work, so this might be a bit less of a problem than I put forth, provided you pitch enough of a strong, healthy yeast.

3. Lacto can be cold crashed, but I would be conservative about how much of the supernatant you pour off before pitching because it is so fluffy/dusty/cloudy what have you. It takes a while to settle, and even then it is super easy to disturb.

[brewinhard]

How important do you think it really is to make the lacto starter at warmer temps (95 degrees)? Theoretically, if a huge lacto starter is pitched along with ale yeast (5:1 say) wouldn't the fermentation temps have to be kept cooler, like around low 70's at best?

How big of a decoction can I pull? Was thinking that after I let the mash sit for 60 min. I could runoff 2 L of turbid wort into a small kettle, add the hops and boil for 15-20 min. to drive off some DMS and isomerize some hops into IBU's. Add that back to the main mash along with just under boiling water to hit mashout temps. Sound okay?