please critique my fruited berliner

Hey everyone,

I'm hoping you're willing to help me here. I was lucky to have a bottle of Miami Madness recently and I'm hoping to try and get close (maybe) to this style. Here is what I was thinking:

Mash a 50/50 blend of pilsner and white wheat at 154 for an hour. 4.5 pounds of each. I'm aiming to do 1.25 quarts of water per pound, same size batch sparge. Hoping this yields ~ 4.78 gallons in the brew kettle. Math below:

9 pounds of wheat / pilsner malt
11.25 quarts of water in the mash (2.8125 gallons)
Im assuming I'll lose 15% of this volume, yielding ~2.39 gallons after the mash (and for simplicity, same with the batch sparge step) If I'm slightly off here I'm not too worried, just trying to get roughly 5 gallons or a bit below it.

Why this size batch?
I'm in an apartment and only have access to an avantco 1800W induction cooktop, so I try and make slightly smaller batches (otherwise I can't really get a rolling boil).

From here, I am going to pour the wort into a corny keg at roughly 110 or 120 degrees and add good belly mango. From what I've read, people seem to add a carton (32 ounces) of goodbelly per 12 gallons of wort. I was thinking of keeping this ratio so, ~13.33 ounces if 5 gallons. I plan on bringing the good belly to room temperature prior to adding it to the wort.

In order to maintain proper temperature I plan on putting the (CO2 purged )keg in a large cooler (on its side I guess), filling the cooler at least part way with water, and maintaining the temperature of this water with a sous vide wand. I'm aiming to keep the water at 110-115. Im hoping this keeps the keg at ~110 for 36-48 hours. I've seen other people suggest the strain in good belly prefers a lower temperature though, so any advice would be great. Also, I was hoping not to need a PH meter but if people think this is a good idea, ill get one and aim for PH of 3.45 to 3.5 (admittedly I may not have the expertise to nail this range anyway)

Plan on reboiling after this process, any suggestions on how long? I was thinking 30 minutes instead of the full hour, but don't really have any good reason why.

After this I plan on pitching a starter of kolsch / german ale yeast, will probably just see what they have at the local home-brew shop and let ferment for ~2 weeks.


From there, I plan on racking to secondary over the following fruit for 2-3 weeks (skinned and pureed)

3 pounds of mango
3 pounds of guava
4 pounds of kiwi
1-2 pounds of passionfruit (this is comically expensive in the stores near me, thus I added the kiwi and less of this)

(I recognize that this is a ton of fruit, but: in for a penny, in for a pound )

I am currently cutting this fruit as we speak (ripe, maybe slightly past ripe), lightly pureeing it in a food processor, and freezing it. I was toying around with adding some rum or tequila to this pureed fruit to try and sanitize it a bit, but don't really want either of those flavors and figure if I don't add enough, it won't do anything anyway. If I am careful washing / handling this fruit and adding it to secondary (after there is already an amount of alcohol in the beer) would that be enough? I plan on purging the fermentation vessel during secondary with CO2 as well.


I'm sure this is way past my skill level (you can probably tell from my shaky use of terminology above) but I think the process will be fun regardless. Having said, that, I'd really appreciate any advice from some more advanced homebrewers if they / you have it.


Thanks everyone.

 

Thanks for all the responses. I think my edits to the process are as follows:

I will try and pasteurize the fruit via sous vide as @donspublic suggested. based on this method (air tight bag) I'm hoping / assuming that I shouldn't lose too much flavor or aroma.

pitching goodbelly: I think I'll take it down to 100 instead of 120 and set the sous vide (in the cooler) to ~90. based on the feedback from @CarolusP and @Supergenious

still not sure on the volume here but think my original plan should be fine. aiming for ~48 hours on this, does that seem excessive?

I still think I'll use a corny (since it will fit better in the cooler) but will utilize a blowoff tube and bucket of star san for the CO2. Still figuring out how to configure that.

I will cut the boil down to probably 15 minutes (simply because I can never really get a rolling boil so I figure the 5 extra minutes won't hurt).


Looking forward to getting started this weekend.

 

brew day is scheduled for tomorrow! thanks again for all the input. However, I have 1 more concern. I plan on mashing and then bringing to a boil post mash / sparge. My thought process here is I dont want to minimize as many outside factors as possible and only have the good belly impacting the souring process. My concern is, if I boil for only 5 minutes or so, do I run the risk of DMS production and retention. If I do a longer boil, after souring, am i able to reverse the DMS issues or would their introduction during the 48 hours of souring be a problem? thanks

 

Just an update on this:

I started this beer last Wednesday (finished around 9 PM), mashed / vorlaufed / sparged and brought it to boil for 5-10 minutes. Chilled to about 100, mixed in 4.5 ml of 88% lactic acid "pitched" 2/3 a carton of goodbelly into the kettle, CO2 purged the kettle head space (im hearing this wasnt necessary or helpful, but i figured it couldnt hurt), saran wrapped the lid onto the kettle and put it in a large bucket (picture a college party keg holder type thing), with water and set the sous vide to about 100. after a day, I decided to lower the sous vide temp to 90. the volume of this was about 4.75 gallons

In 36 hours (I couldnt wait the full 48 that I wanted due to a scheduling conflict) I tasted the "wort" and I'd describe it as a slightly more sour snapple lemon iced tea. sweeter than tart, but very clean. I boiled for ~70 minutes, adding 1 ounce of German hersbrucker hops with 30 minutes left in the boil. Chilled and pitched 1.5 packets of US-05 yeast.

Unfortunately I was out of town for the next two days so I'm not certain when exactly fermantation started but it was still chugging along this morning. Only other issue is that it rose to 80 degrees in boston on sunday / monday and my apt was 74 degrees last night (presumably hotter during the day) I'm nervous about this, but between the souring and the later fruit additions I'm sure there are countless other issues that will impact the final flavor more than a couple degree increase in fermentation temp.

Thanks again for all the input

 

The bath was for heating the kettle during the souring portion. After 36 hours of maintaining 90-100 degree temperatures with no real sanitizer or bleach or anything in the water the bath was starting to get pretty gross. More importantly, I also didn't really think to use it to keep the ferm bucket cool. As the summer progresses I think ill go with a swamp cooler (wet t shirt and bucket of water) near a window ac unit to maintain cooler ferm temps.