Intermediate all grain home brewer here, thinking of attempting a Berliner Weisse an/or a Farmhouse Ale, read of several methods to achieve sourness - sour the mash using bacteria resident on whole grain, using acid malt or sour the wort with Wyeast or White Labs products. I'd like to introduce the souring agent after mashing that much I know. I also read to go with separate fermentation vessels, bottling bucket and wand, racking cane, tubing when sour brews are involved. Looking for advice and recipe suggestions, many thanks in advance.
Are you trying to do this quickly? Any good souring method is going to take a long time. There are ways to sour a beer quickly but they will not have the depth and complexity of something that has been given time to develop.
I decided I didn’t want to use a lacto culture because I didn’t want to introduce lacto to my equipment and I wanted to have a Berliner ready as quick as possible. Using lacto to ferment would mean a longer fermentation to get a really nice sour. I chose to sour my wort, then use a boil to kill off the lacto before pitching into my fermenter. I drained my mash tun I put it into a bucket that I bought specifically for this lacto purpose. After it cooled to 110F, I threw in a handful of grain (grain naturally carries lacto on it) and then put an airlock and lid on the bucket and put it in my fridge that I normally use for fermenting. I had put a light bulb in which I turned on and used as a heating source and it was kept insulated by the fridge, essentially creating an incubator. I maintained the fridge as close to 110F as possible because that is around the highest temperature that lacto likes to do its work without being killed (which occurs around 120F). As the wort began souring it gave off a creamed corn smell and when I took a sample it had a nice puckering sour. I was going for a big punch-you-in-the-mouth flavor so I soured it for 4 days. Warning: the berliner that I ended up with is very sour. I'm souring one right now, but I'm only going to sour half and then blend it. I added raspberries in a secondary, but I guess I didn't add enough because they are undetectable in the finished beer (but it looks cool now!)
Not necessarily, I don't have the capabilities to control fermentation temperature however,with summer approaching I thought fermentation at higher temperature or at least, warmer environment would be possible.
This seems feasible however, my big stumbling block is controlling the temperature thus far, my moderate basement has worked out well.
I think you don't necessarily need to keep it exactly at 110, more like as close as possible. I think the idea is it'll sour faster the hotter you keep it but either way you'll get sour beer.
Thanks, I thought that may be so, but, its good to receive some advice from experience, thanks again.
Souring this way can be unpredictable. Ive had very mixed results sour mashing, and Ive found I like building a wild culture to pitch into the carboy. Ive found it really helps to build a "starter" using grain and step it up a couple times before adding to your carboy. This makes sure to kill off any fecal bacteria, or butyric bacteria that would produce hot garbage/vomit tastes and aromas. You can still get quite a bretty taste going this route though, so if you'd like to keep it a bit cleaner tasting I would suggest pitching a large starter of lacto (grown in 50-50 malt/apple juice, with cac03 or baking soda used to buffer the acidity) I would also add a bit of glucose (dextrose) to your beer, as the Wyeast lacto appears to be only capable of fermenting glucose. You can add this about a day or so in advance of your yeast Also separate equipment isnt that big of a deal. If its cheap thats fine, but Im lazy and I use the same stuff for both types of beers. Everything around you is coated in bacteria/yeast right now, so if you are clean and sanitize well there is nothing to worry about.
While I was doing research for my Berliner I read a lot of posts about sour mashing. I didn't want to run the risk of an enterobacter infection so I chose to mash and then pitch lacto from White Labs and let it sit in the hottest room in my house (around 80 degrees) for a few days before pitching kolsch yeast. It's been in secondary for almost two months now and it has gotten pleasantly sour. I plan on bottling soon and have read that the sourness will continue to develop as it ages.
Forgot to answer your other questions. I bought some new equipment and used my old stuff for the Berliner. I also want to start making lambics so it made sense to me to have a sour set. As to recipes, I used 50% pilsner malt and 50% wheat malt and aimed for 1.030 OG.
Thanks for both replies, probably going to give a shot, I see its been in secondary for two months which is inline with jamescain' reply.
