It's not my favorite style, but I haven't had a TON of examples... I do want to brew it though. Any simple AG recipes for a decent one? My LHBS has some of the seasonal PC Berliner Blend from Wyeast in.. Has Brett and all that good stuff in it already.. Planned to use that I guess unless there are better easier options?
50/50 wheat and pils, shoot for an OG around 1.030 or so, mash at 150 or so. 10 or 15 minute boil, throw in an ounce of a low alpha Euro hop at the beginning of boil. I've heard good things about the Wyeast berliner blend, and actually used it a couple weeks ago, but I can't personally comment on the results of that yeast yet.
sounds easy enough.. I'm curious how sour the blend is? I'm not wanting something completely mouth puckering, but sour enough to refresh and funky enough to know it's not a normal beer... So I need to mash low, and probably avoid any stuff like crystal malts and dextrins...
Definitely subscribing to this thread. Hoping to do a few this summer and it might be my first AG attempt.
You don't want too much funk in a berliner, though I'm pretty sure the brett in the Wyeast Berliner is supposed to be pretty mild. If you want it less sour, you could get a Wyeast lacto culture and a kolsch yeast or something, and pitch the Sacch strain a couple days before the lacto. You could also cool your mash to 120 or so, throw in a handful of grain and keep it at temp for a day or 2, then give it a short boil to kill off the bugs.
So I could sour my own mash with the raw grain at the higher temp, and decide how sour I want it? Then use a sacch strain to ferment it out.
I'm in the middle of my first Berliners right now. Did a bunch of research and here's where I landed: - 50/50 pilsner and wheat malts, Tettnanger to 4 IBUs, neutral - Sour mash for 4 days at 152 - Boil for 15 minutes - Rack to fermenter and keep wort at 90 for two days - Pitch Sach. strain
I have used that yeast before and it takes a solid 7 months for the tartness to come through. not worth it in my opinion when you can do a sour mash or you can pitch a vial of lacto and let it ferment for about 7 days then pitch a german ale yeast that can deal with the low ph at that point. this was the talk on the experiment wyeast did on this beer
What's the point of this step? There's no lacto left at this point, it's all been killed in the boil.
