Going to be brewing a Gose in a few weeks and seeing what you all think. I'll be sour mashing x 72 hrs, as I'm familiar doing this with Berliners. Looking to initially hit a 5.2 mash pH then hold at 150 F and let slowly fall over 72 hr. 75% of batch volume will be boiled, the last 25% of volume will see no boil & will be added to the fermenter along with the chilled boiled wort. I'll give the lacto 24-48 hr start, depending on pH readings, then pitch a 2L starter of Brett Trois. 52% Wheat Malt 31% Pilsner Malt 7% Munich 10L 5% Acidulated Malt 5% Rice Hulls 0.6 oz @ 60 for ~10 IBU 0.8 oz Salt @ 5 min 1.6 oz Orange Peel @ 5 min Will the beer remain tart from the lacto? Or will the Brett metabolize the acids into other by-products? Thoughts?
whats your target OG? personally i would nix the munich and acid malt, they'll distract from the pils flavor why boil a portion only to add back wort that has bugs in it? why not just sour ferment the whole thing?? as to your questions, if its sour originally (from mash) it will be sour later Brett T should be a good choice for this beer, but instead of the orange peel I suggest adding some cherries to the mix. IME the salt really emphasizes the cherry flavor
I would boil it all up. If you are sour mashing, why add back a portion that is still souring, to the whole beer? You'll end up keeping some lacto going in the beer at that point going forward, making the beer more sour over the course of time as well. I'd skip the orange as well, and look for something like coriander and the salt, ala Westbrooks Gose. Keep it simple. Wheat, pils, acid malt. Sour it however you'd like, boil it with some salt and coriander and ferment it out with brett if you so choose.
Yup.. Traditionally it has coriander in it as well. I'd lean towards using 60/40 wheat to pils in it as well. I tend to like my Berliners in the 40/60 arena.
I think your right, I'm gonna chop the Munich out. Shooting for 1.046 OG. Should come out to 5.0 - 5.5 abv depending on how low Brett takes it. Boil 75% of volume because the no boil Berliners I've done were very sour, the boil Berliners were a bit too timid, so I figure I'd try half and half kind of deal to strike some balance in this Gose.And I'm in FL, where local orange groves are just miles away so trying to tap into the local terroir I guess.
So you are wanting to a beer to evolve a bit in the bottle with the lacto continuing to do some slow work? Why not get it just as sour as you'd like and boil it all? Not questioning your practice, as I haven't done a partial boil and left some alone, so I'm more curious than anything. If you did oranges and salt.. and coriander, I could see that be tasty come to think of it.
Pretty much this. My theory, without digging too much into Lactobacillus, is that a partial no boil pitch will carry some Lacto over to the fermenter, whereas boiling the full volume would pasteurize the wort. I never liked, or had good results, with commercial Lacto. I would imagine that a sour mash after 72 hrs would contain X amount of Lacto cells, and doing a full no boil volume would put all those X amount of cells into the fermenter, doing 25% of the batch volume no boil would put (0.25)X amount of cells into the fermenter. I'm looking to carry over some natural Lacto, just not the whole bunch. From my experience a full volume no-boil is really aggressive, especially as it ages, a little too much and can be off-putting to those who aren't completely into funky beers.
Sounds like it might work if the beer sits around for a long while, and warm. Wouldn't work for me much, I keg, and normally consume my berliners faster than any other beer I have around.
Keg your next Berliner and throw it out in your garage for 2 months. I bet you won't be disappointed.
I wouldn't sour mash, especially considering you live in Florida and can easily find a warm place to ferment your beer, as you've stated. I also recommend not doing a sour mash as it usually has off flavors and aromas. What can be done though is use the idea of a sour mash but in fermentation, aka keep it very warm. I do this on my 100% lacto Berliners and they have a more crisp and clean flavor then the sour mashed beers. Breweries like Off Color do the same thing, they have a few gallons ferment at 110 and blend their Gose with a second batch that doesn't ferment as high to maintain quality and pH. Also I recommend doing about 1% acid malt or use as needed to balance your mash pH.
