Berliner time.. Bring me your best.

Mashed on Monday and now my wort is happily souring. Thanks for all the great info in this thread.

One question, will the sourness lessen a bit when boiling ( only going to do a 15 min boil ) ?
Just want to know if I should let it go a bit longer after I like the sourness level or boil it as soon as I hit the level I like.

 

I haven't made my berliner yet, but I think someone's mentioned in here that the sourness won't weaken during the boil.
I think..

 

anyone have any experience putting a berliner in a barrel? I have a 8 gallon twice used but cleaned out now bourbon barrel that i wanted to get into the mix with some sours aging in there for a little bit of time, i'm not sure if the char in the barrel and being it's only 8 gallons will give me too much oak taste in there will be good.

thoughts?

 

I haven't done that, personally. But, I got a bottle of Ich Bin Ein in the mail from a BA last month. It's a Bulliet Bourbon barrel aged berliner weisse with peaches. It was super good.

 

Day 3. Im stuck at work so my buddy took the reading 4.1ph but he thinks our meter is broke because its giving off different readings so im getting some test strips from work and am going to check it later tonight. He said it smells like vomit but it taste clean and slightly tart. Will post back later when I test the ph agian.

 

So im stuck at work again and my buddy took a ph reading today with the test strips because our ph meter was off. The ph was 4.4 after 4.5 days at 80 degree so it seems like it might be on par with the time it took you to reach 4.0ph using just the grains . Probably going to let it sit till Wed (that would be one week souring) and boil. Ill post the progress . Quick question for you. Im going to use wlp001 California Ale yeast. Normally I make a starter but since its such a low starting gravity I was just going to pitch it straight from the vial. Do you think that will be fine considering the harsh environment for the yeast or should I make a little starter?

 

Yeah I will probably use the Grain next time and save 8$ on the vile of White Labs just wanted to give it a shot and see how it went. I'm sure if we kept the Temp in the 90-100 degrees range instead of 80 it would have soured faster but it taking a week to drop as low as we wanted kind of worked out for us and our work schedule's.

 

Here's a picture of the color pre boil. I think its going to turn out pretty nice.

 

When sour mashing, when i do no boil, I've always cleaned the mash tun really well and sanitized it with Starsan prior to mashing in. Was curious if others do this as well for no-boil sour mashes?

 

Yeah I noticed that when I first started reading this thread wich is one reason we decided to leave it around 80 instead of putting it in the laundry room that gets up to 95. Were going to boil tomorrow so ill post p.h and o.g. then. Hope it turns out nice. If it does we will def be brewing it all the time and fruiting some as well.

 

How much priming sugar do you guys use when you bottles your berliners? Really want to prevent mine from being a gusher but also want the expected high carbonation of the style.

 

The amount of sugar will depend on the volume of CO2 desired. My last Berliner I went with 3.25 and it was a bit too much. I'm going with 2.8 on my next bottling day.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

 

I know this might sound a little ridiculous, but has anyone thought about making a chocolate berliner weisse? Just a 3-4% abv sour chocolate wheat beer.

 

Alright so I got to my buddys today and the ph was 4.2. I got to taste it for the first time and it was horried. It wasnt very tart and smelled like sour cream my buddy said it completely changed. I also tasted alcohol reminiscent of sake (not sure why it would have fermented using only lactobasulis). When we boiled it smelled like Margarita Moonshine. I definitely picked up a strong alcohol aroma. Any ideas? The only thing I can think of is some how yeast made its way in some how and started Fermentation.

 

Just checked the og and it had to have fermented in the kettle.
Pre Boil gravity- 1.038
OG-1.012

Something had to cause it to ferment I cant think of any reason it would drop that low in the kettle woth just the bacteria.

 

Made a wonderful BW using the sour wort method with a few tweaks. At the end of mash capped it with enough acid malt to slightly lower the pH to keep certain nasties out.

Cooled to 110 and put the whole mash in a big ass zip loc bag (I brewed a 2 gallon test batch) with a handful of unmilled grain. Put the zip loc in a cooler filled with 110 F water (tankless water heater) and used the water and ziploc to get all the O2 out of the bag. Refilled the cooler in the morning and at night (it lost 5 degrees or less each time). After 3 days of this the sour was perfect and clean, slightly sweet with no off flavors. Brought up to a boil then cooled the heat. Fermented with WLP001. Delicious.

I killed the straight batch fast but a BJCP GM 2 told me not to change a thing. Entered a meyer lemon version and got a 39 from the same judge (6 months after bottling).

 

We kept the lid on the kettle except when we took a sample to check the ph . We didn't purge with co2 because we didnt have the equipment over their. We used soda water (just water and co2) like what you used in your batch. It stayed stable at 80 for 1 week. I'm not sure what hot in there but something sure did. The ph staled at 4.2 wich I was sure it would have got to 3.8-3.5 after 1 week. Kind of disappointing but at least it was pretty cheap. I think I'm going to change it up next time and use the grain to sour it and keep it near 100 so it can progress faster and also purge with co2. Can Lactobasulis cause fermentation? I didn't think that type of bacteria would create alcohol?