Berliner was a hit on taste, heavy cheese aroma.

You using brett with it? I have had a lot of wilds that develop (I think) butyric acid. You get blue cheese and vomit in the aroma, but not usually in the flavors. Brett will eventually eat this up and produce tropical phenols with it instead. Give it time and it will go away.
EDIT: check out Chad Jakobsen's write up on brett. I believe he covers it.

 

Low PH is another good inhibitor of unwanted organisms. Maybe you could add a bit of lactic acid after the mash to get it into the mid 4s?

 

But the PH doesn't start low, it gets there over a couple of days, right? I was guessing that some bug was able to get at the sugar early and release butyric acid before the lacto could effectively kill it off later in the sour mash. Granted I haven't actually had any success with sour mashes before, they always smell terrible, but after a bunch of research were I to do it again I would lower the PH directly after conversion.

 

I'm not a pro at sour beers, by any means. I'd still be willing to point a finger at your yeast choice and the age of the beer. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think you said how old the beer is. You know how you get that rotten egg sulfur smell from some yeasts when the beer is young, and then it goes away? I'm thinking it could be the same thing here. I just got done with a Berliner, (I'll follow up in another post once it has some bubbles), that's under two weeks old. Does it smell like cheese? Yes!

 

I've had the same experience twice, both with pre-souring methods like sour mash and sour worting with grains. It seems to be either a sign of fermentation stress on the yeast due to the harsh low pH wort environment or a pre-cursor compound produced during the souring that is then converted by the yeast into the cheesy aroma. Pre-culturing the Lactobacillus and lowering the starter wort for the culture below pH 4.5 eliminated this problem for me. P.S., adding Brett may only make things worse if it is butrytic acid. Nasty.

 

May not be cheese that you are smelling, but another familiar dairy product... real yogurt. Grab a container of good fresh yogurt from a local farmer (not the stuff in the store) and give it a big wiff right after opening. Might be the same smell.

 

I think this is a solid suggestion, and it's a bit of a cheat that I do as well. I add in around 5mL's of lactic acid 88% last time to the wort, and left it be. I haven't had any issues with off flavors or aromas, and I get it soured into the mid to high 3's.

I sour wort, instead of souring the whole mash, so YMMV.

 

From what I am reading butyric acid is produced from lacto and not brett. The brett is used to take the unwanted butyric acid and turn it into some bomb ass tropical flavors. That being said, I would use some brett with whatever sacc yeast you pitch next time and really let it go.

 

unfortunately butyric acid has a very low threshold for smell, so even time may not completely reduce the odor

there are ways around it, such as the lactic acid mentioned before, my method relies on lowering the pH but uses the bacteria present to do it, the link below describes my approach

http://ryanbrews.blogspot.com/2014/01/wild-yeast-wrangling-how-i-wild-ferment.html

 

OP - next Berliner I would take EXTRA care to sanitize the mash tun where you are sour mashing in. Just to eliminate one more possible source of unwanted bugs.

 

Read the link I posted above, it outlines the procedure Ive developed over time to handle making a wild starter and gives the reasoning behind the approach

High temps IMO arent a beneficial environment for a sour mash, as the culture is mixed (yeast + bacteria) so you can get off flavors from high temp yeast metabolism. pH is the biggest thing for inhibiting bad flavors/aromas, it kills the nasty bacteria off, adding chalk helps to buffer the acidity as well because lactic bacteria will actually inhibit themselves with their acid production

 

I make it like I do my normal starter in a 500mL-2L flask (depending on size), no airlock (you want air in there!) with foil on the top

 

acetobacter need ethanol before they can make acetic acid, in the starter wort there is very little ethanol, and even if you end up with some in the starter when you pitch it into wort and the culture begins to ferment (driving the environment anaerobic) and there is alcohol to convert, there wont be any O2 in solution, with my approach Ive personally never had noticeable amounts of vinegar form

That said, IMO just about any sour benefits from very very small amounts of acetic acid, especially small quantities are difficult for most people to differentiate from other acids (notable lactic) and IMO a small amout improves the depth of flavor slightly