Berliner was a hit on taste, heavy cheese aroma.

Refer to bear-flavored.com for the exact procedure for culturing Lactobacillus from grains. I tried three different malts - wheat malt, pilsner, and acidulated malt - to see which one provided a culture that I liked. The acidulated malt was very harsh but the other two were pleasantly acidic with a lemony flavor similar to sour yoghurt. Neither was fond of hops so I have stopped hopping my Berliner weisse recipe when using this culture.

 

have you read American sour beers? or seen his web site?
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/

TONS of great info there, and I was just reading the book after farmhouse ales (book). about to do my first experiments in this area, saison and then sours.

 

Recently I've had better results brewing Berliner Weisse and other quick sours by pitching ale yeast first in the bulk of the wort and culturing/fermenting a soured portion with a wild Lactobacillus. I made a Lichtenhainer with 100% beechwood smoked barley malt (rauchmalt) at 1.040 OG and 3 IBU. I pitched WY 1007 into 4 gallons of the wort in a 6 gallon carboy, allowed it to attenuate, and then added 1 gallon of soured wort (OG of soured portion down to 1.028 and a pH of 3.0). The pH of the clean portion was already pH 4.2 so adding 1 gallon of the sour beer brought it down to pH 3.4. The WY 1007 finished fermenting the residual sugars from the sour portion and the beer was finished in two weeks. I may carb with wine yeast because I don't know how well the WY 1007 will behave in the bottle at that pH. We'll see. FWIW, I've only ever had good results pre-souring the entire batch of wort by using a 100% Brettanomyces fermentation (WLP 644 Brett trois) after souring with Lacto.