Another Berliner Weisse thread

I don’t have an answer to your question but below are instructions from Wyeast on their recipe for Portlander Berliner Weisse:

“Fermentation: Pitch Wyeast 5335 (1 liter starter) and maintain a temp. between 80-90°F for 6-8 days, let pH drop to 3.3 (gravity will hardly drop). Then pitch Wyeast 1007 Activator (again no aeration) and let ferment at 68°F until terminal gravity is reached. Keg or bottle.”

Cheers!

 

threadjack...
I've been reading about references to sour mashes and letting the lacto sit overnight in the wort prior to actually brewing the beer, allowing the lacto to add tartness, but allowing the brewer to kill it off with a boil to maintain the expected tartness. Anyone ever used these techniques? Possibly allowing the lacto to sit for 7 days in the wort, bringing the tartness levels up and then brewing the "final product" so to speak? Or am I just confused...

 

The VP of our club does this but he lets it go as long as it takes to get to the sour taste he wants, sometimes 7 days he mentioned, then out of fermentor and into kettle to boil, back into fermentor, and pitches German Ale for a normal ferment.

 

I was wanting to do something along these lines with an IPA based recipe. Get the tartness I want, reboil the batch with some huge hop additions of citra, Chinook, and centennial, and finish it out with trinity's brett dregs. I'm glad this technique works, and I will be trying it soon enough.

 

I've done a number of Berliners using lacto fermentation, partial sour mash, and most recently full sour mash as you described. I mashed the full grain bill, cooled to about 110F, then through in a hand-full of base malt (this is in a 10 gal Igloo cooler mash tun). I covered the surface with saran wrap and let is sit in my garage (Florida in summer = very warm) for 3 days. I then sparged and boiled, chilled, and pitched an ale yeast starter (OG=1.037). This is the most sour Berliner I've made; definitely NOT lacking in tartness. It was sour to the point of being harsh at first, but has mellowed after a few weeks in the keg, and it's really growing on me. It had a bit of butyric acid (vomit) in the aroma at first, but that has also faded away. It has a lot of fruity character that I didn't expect. I'd do my next Berliner with the same method, but for me I'd shorten the sour mash step from three days to two.

 

That's what I'm wanting to hear, and I'm not too scared of the butyric acid qualities... brett turns it into pineapple flavors according to Chad. I may go this route, my garage never drops below 85 in the summer anyway and it has been hot hot hot this year. Thanks so much for the input.

 

Patience, young jedi. Bottle with more lacto/sacc and wait for a few months. My last BW was done similarly and it took 4-ish months to sour.

 

It is odd that there isn't an immediate sourness, though that's been my experience. It'll be much more complex than a sour mashed BW if you give it time.