Plan to brew a berliner this Sunday. 5 gallon batch. I have: 5.5 # Pils 3.5 # White wheat 1 oz Hallertau Belgian Sour Blend yeast I planned on mashing at 148-149 F for 60 min, and doing a 15 min boil w the 1 oz hallertau added at the start. I would like to do a naturally sour mash, by purging the top of the wort with CO2, and then laying plastic wrap over the top and leaving it for 2-3 days. Now here is where I'm confused: - How much of the mash should I sour? All of it? Only a small portion in a separate container? - Is it better to leave the mash out in the open? Or better to add uncrushed grains to the top of the wort, and leave it in a sealed off ferm chamber (for total control of temp?) - How can I avoid acetobacter and (especially) clostridium? Will keeping it close to 110-120 F do the trick? - since this is a small beer, will I need a yeast starter, or will the vial at ambient room temp be enough? Never done this before, and want to make sure I'm doing it right. I've read articles saying both; pulll a portion of the mash off to sour (like 20-30%) and then drain it and blend back into a non-soured mash... or just sour the whole thing and lauter/sparge over into the boil kettle. Thoughts? Suggestions?
Try searching for berliner on this forum. There's a huge thread I started a while back that everyone chimed in different ways and results for souring a berliner. I don't sour mash, so I can't help you that much. Other than, you'll want to keep it very warm, and sealed up. Yeast wise, you will need a fair bit of yeast. Regardless of your batch size and OG, the pH of the wort will be pretty low, that low pH will stress your yeast out to no end, causing off flavors and incomplete fermentation if you manage to under pitch. I personally would skip the sour mash.. Mash like normal, nice and low, put the volume you need pre boil into carboy with grain. Purge before and after. Add lactic acid to the carboy to drop the pH slightly to help ward off any junk, and if you can, keep it warm. Allow it to sour for a couple of days, taste as you go, purge as you open. Once it's where you like it. Boil it for a short time with a tiny bit of low alpha hops to your desired IBU's, and pitch plenty of yeast. Us05, and german ale are my favorites. Allow it to stay cool, ferment as normal, raising temp as it goes to help it finish.
I sour mashed a berliner about a month ago when we had an incredibly hot weekend here. I soured for about 3 days and pulled a tiny sample every day to taste. At ~120 degrees I threw in a half pound of leftover pils grain. I covered with plastic wrap and purged with CO2. I did not take the lid off during the souring but pulled the samples from the spigot. I kept the mash tun in the hot sun during the day and in the garage at night as the garage would stay much warmer at night than the outside air. Oh..I also put the mash tun inside my black mummy sleeping bag which I think helped keep the air around the mash tun close to 100 degrees at night. I put a wireless fridge thermometer that tracks the low and high temps inside the bag and the low was 98 with the high unreadable (meaning > 104 degrees). When I finally opened the lid and took the mash temp it was right around 105 degrees. I didn't seem to pick up the vomit/sweaty feet/vinegar taste or aroma but we'll see in the finished product. I did a starter with harvested german ale yeast from a kolsch and fermented ~62 degrees. I've let it warm up to 70 since then. I'm going on a month and will start pulling samples soon to check the gravity and also nervously taste it. I actually feel OK about it because when I push on the lid to burp the bucket a sweet and tart maltiness comes up. The problem with all of the literature out there on blogs and forums (haven't read American Sour Beers yet) is that nothing is consistent. Someone says temperature isn't important but an anaerobic environment is, some say the opposite. It gets hard to take advice on the internet after reading so many contradictory arguments. But I would say to go for it, worst case is you waste ~$12-$15 of ingredients but you'll learn something. All that being said, I don't think I'll sour a berliner like this again. I may do the method FATC1TY mentioned or just pony up the money for an actual lacto culture. From what I've read (after I sour mashed, of course) is how inconsistent sour mashing is when producing sour beers and how no batch tastes the same. edit: clarification
Recommendation: If you like sourness, avoid the white labs Lacto strain. It's been a disappointment to many.
We did the biological sour mash, basically the same as sethsticles post -- except we have a ferm chamber, so we used that set to 115 F for 2 days. In 48 hours it smelled like a sourdough bread factory. I took a sample to taste, and it was deliciously tart. Sparging was another story - as the smell quickly turned into something vomit-ish with a more pronounced sourdough vibe. After the boil (30 min) and hopping, the vomit smell is pretty much vanished. I tasted the hydrometer sample, and the tartness is spot on. We'll see how it comes out after fermentation, but so far so good. I do understand that we have the capability of controlling these things a lot better now using the methods detailed above, and I will most likely try that next time around. But I do like the idea of biological souring, and the unpredictability involved in it. Call me crazy... Also, pweis909, I used that lacto on a different beer and it turned out ok. Whole vial in ~4 gal and the sourness was pretty on point, but not tooth-melting or anything. I didn't make a starter though cause it was an early batch and I'm still new to all this ...maybe it'd be more sour with a big starter?
I've been using a wort souring method similar to what we discussed in the big Berliner thread. I've modified my process a bit so it does deviate from what we were talking about in the thread - but it is pretty easy to brew this consistently if you have a good pH meter and monitor the pH closely throughout the process.
So, this is probably me being an idiot, but is what you're describing not a sour mash? It sounds like you're saying to add some uncrushed grain along with lactic acid to a carboy. Or are you saying just lactic acid?
He is describing how to do a sour wort. Many brewer's will use this method instead of a sour mash. Usually a sour wort is faster than a sour mash. If the tartness is not to your liking than you can add Lactic Acid.
Actually, you add enough lactic acid to drop your pH to around 4.5 prior to souring. This helps ward off baddies and also helps with head retention. Using this method, you should never need to add lactic acid to increase tartness. You just let it sour until it is at your desired level of sourness and then go from there.
No, what I described was a sour wort method. I add the lactic acid to get the pH a bit lower to help ward off any nasty junk that can foul up my souring wort. I don't use lactic acid to sour the wort, or to make it more sour. If I want more sour, I continue to allow it to sour before boiling and making it a clean beer.
