"Florida Weisse"

Sounds about right to me, just make sure you do anaerobic fermentation with the lacto strain. Throw that in the garage or something for hot temps. But sounds like you got it under control.

 

If you can, I would purge the wort of mash (however you are souring) with CO2, then maintain either an airlock or if mash maybe Saran wrap or some sort of layer to trap CO2 in and prohibit oxygen ingress.

 

Just to be clear, you're planning on souring the wort in the kettle or fermentor rather than the mash, right? If so, this is a pretty similar method to what we do except that we actually sour with an unpasteurized yogurt on a 10bbl system rather than trying to buy a full pitch of 5335. I will recommend a pasteurization step after you have your full kettle volume so that 5335 is doing all your souring work. With the luxury of time on your side, you don't need all the risk of the natural lacto from the grain even though they can produce acidity quite quickly. Also, I'd recommend a solid oxygenation and dose of yeast nutrient to ensure a healthy primary fermentation. Most yeasts get a little weirded out in a low pH environment. Expect a little higher than normal sulphur note during fermentation but it will clean up with time.

Cheers!

 

@TomTown , just one yogurt for 10bbl? Any interest in detailing the type of yogurt? Or is that proprietary?

 

It's a full quart of yogurt but yes, just 1 container. We usually see a pH drop to 3.7-3.8 if we just let it go overnight (18ish hours) or if we're double batching and/or looking for extra acidity, we'll let it go over the weekend and see a pH more in the neighborhood of 3.4.

Not proprietary as far as I know, easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?

http://www.nancysyogurt.com/index.php/organic-yogurts/organic-whole-milk-yogurt

Cheers!

 

Well... this particular method (we haven't tried other methods) of kettle souring wreaks havoc on protein bonds in the wort. This means our whirlfloc doesn't behave the same way and our trub piles (which are normally tight cones in the center of the kettle after the whirlpool) end up making little mounds all over the place. This means that more solids are transferred to the fermentor and our clarifying agent (biofine clear) also doesn't work very well as it works by bonding proteins together until they are too heavy to float and thus drop out of suspension. Therefore we end up with less than clarity then we'd like. Just for comparison, most of our normal beers are brilliantly clear without the use of filtration or centrifuge.

Long story short: the positive of quick acidity far outweighs the slight aesthetic negative.

Additionally, it does make these beers non-vegan which bothers a small percentage of people.

Cheers!

 

OK...I'll bite...what is a Florida Weisse?...WY 5335 appears to be a straight Lacto culture and a Weisse usually has malted wheat...and Florida...well, you gotts ya Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and a lot of old Jewish women : )...some kinda Berliner/hybrid style ? : )

Sounds kinda like you want to do a sour mash AND add a culture also ...I'm confused/been drinking : )

I would think you could...but probably not drink until Winter at least (would be nice to see a recipe)...maybe the Yogurt would be faster???

 

Throw it all in! I would imagine a quart container would be way overkill as that has become our rate into 10bbl but I would go higher than just scaling down from 310 gallons to 5 or 10. Maybe 2-3 oz would be sufficient? I haven't tried on a homebrew scale but that would be my guess. Best of luck! Let us know how it goes!

-Cheers

 

I believe it's generally characterized as a lactic berliner weisse fruited with native Floridian citrus.

 

Your original plan will work fine. My understanding is you planned to pitch lacto into a clean boiled wort in a fermenter. Let it sour for a few days. Boil to kill the lacto. Finish with s05. This will work fine. I haven't used s05 in this manner, so can't comment on its performance. Wy1007 will work for sure.

You don't need to cover anything with saran wrap (that is for a different technique). You don't need to make the fermenter anaerobic, but it wouldn't hurt to purge the head space with co2. You don't need to boil it a second time to kill the lacto. Boiling a second time is something you do when you inoculate the wort with grain that contains a wide variety of microbes, some of them not so pleasant.

Nancy's yogurt works. It contains 11 lacto strains. I doubt you will find it in Florida. Using another yogurt might work. It also might not work very well or at all depending on composition.

If you proceed with 5335, my advice is to make a 1-1.5L starter at 70-80 for 4-5 days, then pitch the whole starter.

 

Didn't think about Nancy's maybe not being available in FL. You can throw your zip code in here and see.

http://www.nancysyogurt.com/index.php/finding-nancys

 

You're in luck, Whole Foods carries it.

 

If you use the yogurt, boiling after souring sounds like a good idea. Not needed with 5335.

Riddle me this. Why would anyone want to put milk fat in their beer when a pure lacto culture intended for brewing is available? Frankly, it sounds disgusting, but I will still probably try it on a one gallon batch someday. One whiff of sour milk = insta-puke and a full batch drain pour.

 

I think I've heard people mention on this forum to use 0% fat yogurt, and only use the thin watery part that separates on top to make a starter out of. That should keep most of the actual dairy out of it.