"Florida Weisse"

I respectfully disagree with this point. In my, albeit limited, experience with kettle souring I have found that providing as much of an anaerobic environment as possible for the lacto culture reduces "cheesy" aromatics in the final product.

 

I use plastic wrap on the kettle and purge any time it is removed, certainly gets plenty sour and none of the cheesy or vomit notes, so imho it's worth doing.

 

On a production scale, the answer is simple. Cost. A reasonably sized 2-3L pitch of 5335 would cost us over $300 for a one time use culture. In comparison, the pitch of milk fat in the yogurt might be around 10% of that quart (which is a high estimate) and comes out to .008% of our total batch size which is negligible and costs less than $4. For us, it's a win-win, but like I said, I've never tried the 5335 route and it would be a lot of fun to compare the two!

 

People that complain about 5335 not being sour are doing it wrong. I've gotten the pH down to 3.1 in two weeks with 5335. I'm not trying to discourage you from using yogurt.

 

With 5335, I boil the wort like a normal beer and sour in the fermenter. The head space is full of air. I don't kill the lacto after souring. There are no notes of cheese. I asked Wyeast if I should purge with CO2 in the lacto starter and fermenter. Their reply was it wasn't necessary.

 

In my, albeit limited experience, if you pitch Brett in secondary, it will eventually clean up the cheesiness and turn fruity. Takes a while, though.

 

Souring in a closed fermenter is much different than souring in an open kettle, which imho needs plastic wrap. In a fermenter I think you'd be fine without purging if you more or less leave the beer alone.

 

Souring the wort with grain benefits from anaerobic conditions. A pure pitch of lacto in a fermenter is a different story. I don't sour with grain.

I got the best results from Lacto Brevis so far. It provides more tangyness than 5335 at a similar pH. The next one I'll try is a triple lacto blend from Omega.

 

This presentation by Wyeast does good job explaining the most effective techniques for brewing with packaged lacto.

http://www.homebrewersassociation.o...-style Beer - Jess Caudill & Jason Kahler.pdf

It definitely works well. Basically, do a lacto starter for 5 days at 70-80. Pitch the lacto into the pre boiled wort. Let it work for 5 days at 70-80. Cool to 64. Pitch acid tolerant yeast. Keep the IBU below 10 for 5335. Brevis can tolerate up to 25ibu.

 

The scenario where I've experienced cheesiness that has been resolved by providing an anaerobic environment involved heating the wort to 190F, cooling to 110F, adding a pure lacto pitch, allowing it to sour down to roughly 3.8 ph, killing the lacto after souring by boiling the wort, chilling to ale pitching temps, then pitching / fermenting with a sacc. strain. All of the yeast and bacteria used was from wyeast.

 

The temperature range for 5335 is 60-95F and 80F is optimal. Why do you use 110F? Higher temperatures can produce off flavors that were perhaps minimized by the anaerobic environment.

None of my pure lacto beers have ever smelled like cheese. None of them ever saw temps above 85F. None of them were anaerobic. Sample size is roughly 15.

 

If you drop your mash pH to around 4.5 it will prevent bacterial growth that leads to cheesy and many other fun aromas.

 

110F will encourage faster lacto growth and generally I can't maintain temps overnight so my wort that I knock out at 110F is down to 90F within 12 hours.

 

Has anyone tried knocking out their wort into a cleaned and sanitized cooler mash tun? Then maybe covering with blankets and keeping it in a warm place? That is my plan, I should be doing my first berliner soon

 

Never tried that exactly, but it seems to make good sense to me! You could even just use a regular cooler, as you wouldn't need the grain separation capabilities of the mashtun, unless you wanted to run straight from the cooler to a fermentor, assuming complete sanitation of the cooler?

 

Yeah im sure any sanitized cooler would work, I just mentioned cooler mashtun since a lot of homebrewers seem to have them. I'd imagine if you really wanted to keep the wort at a certain temperature and you made a lot of berliners you could add an electrical heating element through the side of the cooler and keep it at an exact temp. Maybe a little over kill but would probably work really well.

 

Depends on your water profile