Berliner time.. Bring me your best.

I am not sure why you would want to do that. If you want lower ABV, mash with less grain. If you take your hydrometer reading prior to souring then sour and take another reading, you can determine by what factor the reading was skewed by the presence of lactic acid. If you take another reading after fermentation is complete, you can use that same factor to determine the 'true' FG and then the resulting ABV.

I'm not sure why you'd boil out the alcohol and then blend it back with a higher ABV batch when you can just adjust your grain to get it right the first time.

 

I understand what your saying, it makes perfect sense. But would using less grain also effect the amount of sourness you'd ultimately achieve?

 

I'm confused by what you're saying.

As I understand it, the hydrometer reading post-souring is essentially your OG. The lacto from grains is homofermentative, it's taking glucose and turning it into lactic acid (no alcohol)*. So once you sour, you're only getting lactic acid, no ABV and from there you'll pitch your yeast and it will ferment sugars into alcohol.

When I use the lacto from grains to sour, my gravity usually drops from 1.030ish to under 1.010.

*From Wild Brews

 

Anyone have any advice on not doing sour mash and just pitching the bugs? I made a Berliner with a friend a month ago and pitched Brett C and lacto. As of yesterday no tartness, though I know this takes a while as I am brewing a wild ale that is about 7 months in with minimal tartness.

 

Post souring, the hydrometer isn't going to be accurate because lactic acid is more dense than water and it will skew your reading. If you took your reading of 1.010 as the true OG and then fermented it out with a sacc. strain, you'd barely even have beer. There would be very little alcohol. Is that how you would describe your Berliner?

I'm not experiencing such a massive drop in my post-souring gravity readings like you are. Doesn't look like FATC1TY did either. I have just been taking my post boil OG and my resulting FG to figure out that I'm somewhere in the neighborhood of 3%. Above, I was just thinking out loud in regard to a more accurate way to determine the true ABV but chances are I have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

I've been adding DME post souring to boost my gravity.

My question to you I guess is you talk about using a lactic acid hydrometer adjustment factor to measure your ABV, but are you assuming you're not losing any sugars? I'm trying to understand what you do, so what would your ABV calculation be for the following:

Gravity pre sour 1.040
Gravity post sour 1.030
Gravity post fermentation 1.002

What I'm trying to say is by using this method, there's not really any way we can determine the true ABV of our beers with our equipment because we don't know how much sugar the lactobacillus is converting to lactic acid, and therefore don't have a true OG.

 

I'm not assuming that I'm not losing sugars - my pre-boil, post-sour gravity readings are typically 4-5 points lower than what it was coming out of the mash. After the boil, the reading ends up being just a point or two lower than what it was coming out of the mash. I don't know how much of that is lactic acid and how much is sugar and as you noted, we don't have equipment sophisticated enough to give us accurate readings. I've read in a couple different sources that lactic bacteria will start to die off when your wort gets in the neighborhood of ~1% lactic acid. We do know that once the lactic bacteria is killed in the boil, your post boil OG and your resulting FG should roughly give you the ABV, right? I know that it isn't 100% accurate but it is likely close enough for me.

I am still wondering how your readings are getting down to 1.010, as that seems very low to me. I'd figure you'd get the ~1% lactic acid prior to chewing up 20+ gravity points.

Like I said in my previous post, I was just thinking out loud in regard to a more accurate way to determine the true ABV but chances are I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'll defer to someone with more knowledge and experience than I have.

 

Yep, I agree with all you said, thanks for clearing that up.

I guess my problem is that my gravity drops so low, whereas yours is only a couple of points and therefore you can get a good estimate of your ABV.

I'm guessing my gravity is dropping due to some wild yeast.

 

Is it normal to ferment with US05? I would have thought a german strain would have been typical.

*I've never brewed a berliner so I'm just speculating.

 

I'll use 05 if I know I'm going to do a fruit addition. For me the "cleaner" fermentation allows the fruit to shine. If making a straight berliner I'll use a german ale yeast for the flavor.

 

@FATC1TY are you picking up any DMS in your Berliner from the pils malt? I would love the flavor of pils malt in my upcoming Berliner but the 15 minute boil has me concerned.

 

I won't lie. I ran out of bottles when I bottled my Berliner weisse. I had about 3 or 4 beers left in the bottling bucket after I filled the last bottle. I'm not a homophobe, but I'm embarrassed how fast those last beers got sucked out of the bottling wand. I should have just gone over the top of the bucket for the chug. I hope yours came out equally good.

 

I've mentioned the same concern to other brewers. No complaints yet. Trust the funk.

 

Put a batch on raspberries not too long ago. Fermentation started back up and is still slowly going. Most of the fruit seems to be obliterated and without color. Pulled a sample last night... looks nice, tastes even better.

 

How many lbs/gallon did you use for the raspberry? Looks great!