Hey gang, Thinking about brewing a sour on Tuesday (my 23rd birthday!) but I plan on moving in August. I know generally most sours can be fermenting for almost a year, so I'm thinking a Berliner is the way to go? I just want to bottle before I move in mid-august so I'm not transporting a glass carboy to a new apartment. Just worried that 2.5 months or so before bottling wont be enough time to get the funk and sour that I crave. Or does transporting the carboy (from Boulder to Denver, only about 45 minutes) not really matter when fermenting?
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/berliner-time-bring-me-your-best.154633/ A lot of good stuff in this thread, its a long read, but gives pretty much all the info you'll need. Should be very doable in 2 months. I'm going to brew one soon too!
The only concern I see is safety, moving around a glass carbon like that. The beer will be fine, I would just plug it with a solid stopper before transport so you don't have to worry about airlock fluid kicking into the beer. 2 months should be enough to get a descent amount of lactic tartness. Depends heavily on what your method of 'souring' is and how much acid you add, but 2 months should be good to bottle too if you don't want to move the carboy.
You should be able to have a berliner bottled up before you move. That said.. If you want funk, then you need brett. Brett will take it's time, but I see no reason that you should be able to have it bottled by then.
I'm going to get the ingredients for a 5 gallon batch of Berliner Weisse (thinking roughly 3.5 pounds of each a wheat DME and some other light, maybe pilsen DME for a total of 7 pounds DME) and then boil some light hops (hallertau or something, probably around .5 oz) for the last 10-15 minutes of the boil. Then transfer wort into primary fermenter and pitch my lacto along with berliner weisse yeast blend from white labs yeast. Do you think I should pitch lacto alone and first for a few days and THEN pitch the berliner weisse yeast blend from white labs? Giving the lacto some time to hang and do its thang before the BWyeast is added? Then I'll allow to ferment in primary for around 2 weeks or until fermentation seems to slow then rack into secondary fermenter and allow to hang out until I can't wait any longer (hopefully at least a month in secondary, would be cool to drink for 4th of July!). I plan on adding about 10lbs of fresh blueberries or blackberries or raspberries for the LAST 2 weeks it will be in secondary. Then I'lll rack into bottling bucket and bottle! Does this sound okay? Or am I better off pitching in Lacto and checking sourness levels every 12 hours or so until properly sour and THEN boil it to kill lacto, add hops to end of boil, then rack into primary and pitch berliner weiss yeast?
When you say pitching the lacto.. are you talking about a commercial culture? You won't get much sour unless you plan to keep it really warm.. like 90-100* warm. It will take more than checking it every 12 hours for sourness. I'd say your best bet would be to boil up the extract for about 10 minutes, rack it to your primary at around 120*, add some grain or your lacto culture to it, and keep it warm. Taste it each day if you keep it warm. Once it's sour enough, boil it, add your hops, chill it and ferment with a clean strain of your choice. Once it's fermented out, you can add your fruit, allow it to referment the fruit out, and then crash it, bottle it and enjoy.
