berliner (the cliff notes version)

i pitched a whole packet of us-05 to 2.5 gallons of wort on sunday night and i just checked it now (friday afternoon) and the gravity is still the same.
i started fermenting at about 68 degrees and now its about 73 or so in there.

any ideas? i dont know the ph but would a low ph halt fermentation completely?
maybe @OldSock knows whats up....

 

Really low pH could inhibit fermentation. Did you rehydrate the yeast? Triply important going into a soured beer. Try a starter of 3711 if things don't budge.

 

You can't directly. You have to upload to a different site (Photobucket works well), and then link to it in your BA post.

 

ya i did rehydrate. 3711 means another trip to the LHBS which is not so local, or harvesting from a bottle of saison that i did in February.
will bringing the temp up help at all, or is the low ph killing all of the us-05 and its too late for that?

 

@OldSock and @Liberatiscioli and anyone else that could help(!)

so i pitched 1 rehydatred pack of US-05 on july 19 to 2.5 gallons of wort, OG 1.020
today afetr 2 and half weeks in the gravity dropped only to 1.012 or so.
is it finished? im unsure and i was kinda hoping it would drop to around 1.001.
would bottling at this point be asking for trouble? the beer smells and tastes great!

 

If there isn't Brett that may be as far as it'll go. Did you write up your complete process?

 

kind of. i did miss the gravity check post souring/pre-boil.
should i let it go another week to be sure its finished?

 

With over 100 posts, I think we have to acknowledge that this may no longer be the Cliff Notes version.

 

I also just popped open a bottle of my first ever attempt at a berliner last night. it's been bottle conditioning for about 4 weeks now and the carbonation is almost there but not quite. I'm going to give it another week or two and see how it is. the taste is great, though, and I'm amazed that somehow my first attempt at a sour mash seems to have worked perfectly

 

I have an old pin-lock keg that sounds like it would be a good fermenting vessel for my sour brews. I am doing more and more research and I am itching at brewing a Berliner very soon. Do I need to rig this up to where i can let the slight amount of Co2 be released on it's own as opposed to me relieving the Co2 manually?

 

n00b question: I am wanting to make a Berliner this weekend...my LHBS just got up and going and does not have a wide variety of grains yet...with that being said, I plan on doing the sour mash version as I am happier with what I've read based on the results. Now to the question, the U.S. 2-Row (not crushed) that I need is the regular 2-Row? Or is it a special 2-Row with the lacto on it?

 

@OldSock @Lukass

 

I sour wort in a keg, and don't have any sort of automatic CO2 release, except for the emergency relief valve, but it doesn't seem to ever be deployed in that mode. I do keep a pressure gauge on the gas post, and if the pressure creeps up, I release some manually.

Any base malt would do. I would avoid specialty malts, just to prevent inadvertently extracting some unwanted color.

Sour Mashing, Sour Wort-ing, and Fermenting with Lacto in the mix are all different (typically mutually exclusive) techniques. The keg is really useful for sour wort-ing. If you're doing a sour mash, and boiling after the mash, you don't need any special sort of fermentation setup. (Not even a redundant "bug" fermenter, which would otherwise ensure you don't infect future non-sours.) That's because the boil will kill the bugs in the already soured wort, and you can pitch a Sacch strain for fermentation.