What the Berliner Weisse is going on???

[ChrisKennedy]

I just tapped a batch of berliner weisse that I made around 8 months ago. It was very slightly tart after primary fermentation concluded, so I added the dregs of a Cantillon. The FG was like 1.003 so I didn't know if there was anything for the dregs to do.

Well it has a very nice lactic sourness now. I don't know if I want to attribute it to the Cantillon dregs or if it just took the lacto a while to really take hold.

I have another berliner that also wasn't very sour after primary that is about 10 months old, but that one autolyzed or something in the keg because it smells like burnt rubber. But it is also tart.

So I am starting to go back on my previous thoughts about commercial lacto, and that if you build up a large enough lacto starter and pitch it either at the same time or slightly before a small amount of yeast, if you have a slight brightness/tartness to the beer right after fermentation is complete, in 6 months or so you should be at a nice level of sourness.

It is more patience than some might think a berliner weisse requires, and much more time than a sour mashed berliner requires, so experimentation is required to find out which character you like more.

[JohnF]

I made 10 gallons of berliner this spring. Both were pitched with bacteria 48 hours before yeast and kept warm during that time. Neither was very sour when the yeast finished fermenting, both are fairly sour now (3 months later).

One was pitched with a WL lacto tube (no starter) and the other with maybe a tablespoon of liquid from homemade yogurt (the yogurt was started a few generations prior with Fage). I'm not sure if it is the multiple bacteria or what but the yogurt version is the more sour one and I prefer the flavor profile. The yogurt one has a lot of lemon going on, the white labs one has an apple thing going on. I'll probably do the yogurt thing in the future but the WL is pretty good beer too. Note that the amount of solids in the WL tube was probably greater than the volume of yogurt liquid I used so there were almost certainly orders of magnitude more cells.

The WL one, several weeks after fermentation stopped, started to get a krausen again (definitely not a pellicle) this is when it started getting sour. The yogurt batch never showed any additional activity but it got more sour over time too.

[brewinhard]

Thinking of making a stepped up 2 L starter of Lacto and cooling the wort to 95 degrees or so for pitching. Let it ride for 24-36 hrs and pitch a tube of WL029 German Ale yeast as it cools to pitching temps along with dregs from a Fantome Hiver I recently purchased.

[ChrisKennedy]

I pitched the dregs of a Fantome Pissenlit into some starter wort and it smells like a buttery mess, so I don't know how useful the lacto is in Fantome without isolating it.

Cuvee Rene dregs smell cleanly tart and delicious though. I would consider that as well.

[brewinhard]

Could the "buttery mess" in your starter wort have been pediococcus in addition to lacto in the famtome dregs spitting out diacetyl? Does Fantome use pedio even? Would it be wiser/more effective to toss in some lambic dregs instead?

[ChrisKennedy]

Could the "buttery mess" in your starter wort have been pediococcus in addition to lacto in the famtome dregs spitting out diacetyl? Does Fantome use pedio even? Would it be wiser/more effective to toss in some lambic dregs instead?

Sure, I absolutely assume that a pedio is causing all the butter. This isn't a problem if you are pitching it into a lambic or something, since you are going to give it plenty of time and the brett will uptake the diacetyl and there will be none left in the final product.

But for berliners, where you want a shorter turn around and there may or may not be any real brett activity, I would avoid any diacetyl producers if you can help it.

I say all of this, but throwing dregs into a beer that is 1.002-1.003 is a whole lot different than throwing it into starter wort that is 1.030. I mean, I am sure Cantillon dregs have plenty of pedio in them and I never went through a sick phase or any butter that I can recall with this current berliner.

So if you are just adding dregs, you will probably be fine. I am just hesitant to pitch the grown up Pissenlit dregs when it smells so buttery.

[11amas]

If you are getting butter, pitch some brett, it will eat up that diacetyl.

[ChrisKennedy]

If you are getting butter, pitch some brett, it will eat up that diacetyl.

Yeah I know, but this long drawn out process is far from ideal for a berliner weisse and I would rather avoid that altogether by simply not using the built up dregs from the Fantome.