Berliner Weisse Help

Why do you want it at 3.0-3.1?

 

What's your recipe, and how many gallons?
Maybe use a little less hops.

 

Not sure what is going on with the boiling and pH, but...

So you taste the beer when it is 3.1 and you think, "I like this." What happens if you don't boil and drink it as is?

 

I understand how you sour. But if you want to perceive the sourness a bit more, maybe add less hops.

 

You want to kill the lacto? What's the point of that.

Do you really want bitter and sour together? Seems like a clash. How much hop are you adding? Consider dry hopping?

I never did a sour like you are doing here. That pH seems low, though. My gut instinct is that it's the hops that are raising the pH, but it is a total guess. Basically, I'm thinking they add some surface area for adsorption of hydrogen ion. Normally, when you have a pH of 5.3-5.6, as in a non sour wort, hops will lower the pH (they release more hydrogen ion than they adsorb), but in a solution that is more than 100x more concentrated in hydrogen ion, they adsorb more than they release. This explanation is a somewhat simplistic view of chemical equilibrium and sorption dynamics, but after being awake for 20 hours and recently having a shot of Maker's Mark, and being 25 years removed from my graduate course work in aquatic geochemistry, I haven't found a flaw in it yet. Sorry, I'm just spinning my wheels, thinking aloud, etc.

 

Clarity of sleep ... any break materials in your boil could also act as ion exchange sites that pull H+ through adsorption processes too. Albeit, your boil is only 15 min -- I'm guessing that most of the particulates are hops.

 

My assumption is that he wants to lock in the sourness level and keep the lacto out of the fermenter. I did the same thing when I brewed my first Berliner last week, and that was my reasoning anyway.

 

I do the same thing for mine. I normally do 10 min boils, but I had no idea that boiling and adding hops actually raises the pH some.

I guess you could do a 1-minute boil on it - enough to kill the lacto and that's it. If you do it the 'no-boil' way then you'll just have to have a dedicated fermenter for souring, or make sure you clean the hell out of it after using. You can always dry hop it halfway into fermentation.

 

The lacto would need something to eat. If I wanted to drop the pH post-fermentation, I'd add some lactic acid.

 

Lactic acid is the thing Lactobacillus makes to make your beer tart.

 

Of course. I was being obtuse. I have been considering a similar approach but for different reasons -- wanting to stop the lacto before it gets too sour. I overcame my concerns about contamination by dedicating fermenters to sours. That was a while ago, and therefore no at the forefront of my brain.

 

I was speculating above on the reasons this might be true for a wort that starts out very sour. For a wort that starts out in the normal non-sour range, boiling lowers the pH. This is partly due to evapo-concentration and partly due to chemical changes that release hydrogen more ions to the wort.