Thoughts/Suggestions On My First Berliner Weisse

So I am about to take a shot at my first sour(ish) brew and after a bunch of reading I think I finally have my plan pretty much drawn out. I would love some insight/suggestions/tips from those that have experience in brewing sours, specifically Berliner's.

I picked up a Lactobacillus D. and about a handfull of uncrushed American 2 row malt today at my LHBS. I have read about doing lacto starters as well as culturing lacto off of uncrushed grain on this site: http://www.bear-flavored.com/2013/08/which-method-of-brewing-berliner-weisse.html

Aiming for brewing this Sunday, I am planning to cook up some starters sometime early this week. My plan is to do 2 starters - 1 with the pure strain lacto that i bought, and the other will be an attempt at getting lacto off of the grain. Both will be simple DME starters cooled and kept as close to 100 degrees as possible. I'll be keeping them both in 1g jugs. If the grain-lacto smells/looks right, I want to pitch both starters. If that one goes horribly wrong, I'll just pitch the pure lacto. Might be overkill, might make something unique but it didn't cost anything additional to do both of these.

On Sunday I will brew using something like a 3.5 lb Pilsner / 3.5 lb White Wheat Malt bill (There doesn't seem to be anything exotic about Berliner grain bills).
-Mash in at about 150 for 60min - some low alpha noble hops (.5oz) in the mash.
-Boil for 15 minutes
-Cool to 100 F and rack into a glass carboy that will be designated for sours
-Pitch both lacto starters and wait about 4 days (I will be using 2 small ceramic space heaters a few feet apart on each side of the carboy to regulate temperature)
-Drop to room temperature and pitch Kolsch or German Ale yeast
-At this point I may split the batch into 2 parts, one with fruit, one without.


I realize there are a half-dozen ways to brew a Berliner Weisse and some are better than others. Is there any part of my plan that is just plain dumb? I have been known to do such things in the past. Thanks in advance for the help.

A lot of guys are now leaving out the mash hops due to the fact that the big yeast labs lacto cultures just dont sour enough with the hops.
I am going to try my next without any mash hops,but dry hop instead

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Since you already bought lacto, why not just use that instead of culturing some from grain? You'll get a lot of other stuff from the grain, which isn't necessarily bad. I think you'll be fine if you build up a starter for the lacto, then pitch it a few days ahead of your ale yeast.

Yeah, I used the White Labs Lacto D, and had great results with it using this same process. I didn't make a starter. The Lacto sat for 7 days on the wort at ambient vegas summer temps (85-95). I got a nice level of sourness, perhaps a little too sour for the style. It is now a year and a half old, and has aged well. It may be slightly more sour than it was before, but the flavors are developing nicely into something slightly more complex than it was a year ago.

I would second Blizzard and say to leave out the cultured bacteria from the grain as it could introduce things you don't want. It would be fun to do that on your next batch though for a comparison (or split batch this one).

If you are interested, here is a video of my BW brew day and fermentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPEOTkAiwAo

I need to do a proper Berliner Weisse, but did try it out with some leftover wort from the MLT at the end of a brew. I had 2 litres so I through in a bit of uncrushed grain and let that go for 5(ish) days at summer room temp until I though it tasted sour enough. Then boiled for 15 minutes with a few hop pellets (remenmber only 2 litres!) and pitched some US-05 at 18°C. Turned out pretty good for a random try - the one thing I noticed is that the sample tasted a lot more sour when it was warm, so much that I thought I had gone too far. Once the yeast had fermented it out and it was pretty dry and carbonated the sourness had dropped quiet a lot. I think BW would be a style that would take at least a few goes to really figure out what it will taste like at the end from the sampels.
All in all a BW is definately on the cards!

My suggestions:

- drop the hops. There is no reason to have them, and they can hinder the lacto.
- just use the lacto and not the grain.
- do not add the yeast until you are satisfied it is soured enough. Taste it! This way you can be drinking it in a few weeks rather than waiting for months or a year.
- no need to re-boil at this point. The low ph has provided protection.
- if you want to re-use the lacto, you need to harvest it before pitching the yeast.
- the low ph is hostile to sacc yeast. Pitch twice the amount you would regularly use.
- if you want some hop character, dry hop. It is great without hops. I did use some Nelson Sauvin, at someone's suggestion on this forum, and it was pretty good.
- drink young and fresh; it is really refreshing.
- no need to dedicate the carboy to sours

Thanks for all of the suggestions guys. I decided to scrap the idea of addirional lacto from grain and will also skip the hops in the mash.

I just cooked up my lacto starter. I used my kegerator to flood the 1g jug with co2. The plan is to brew and pitch lacto Sunday and then pitch Sacc about 3 - 4 days later. Thanks again.

Make sure it is sour before pitching the yeast. Mine usually take 5 to 7 days (at 90 to 100 F) to get there, with or without a starter.

So I thought of another question that I haven't seen posted anywhere:

After a few days of just Lacto, I will obviously be pitching Sacc yeast. I haven't read of anyone aerating the wort/beer when pitching it, but O2 is important for Sacc. Do people aerate when pitching Sacc in this scenario?

That is question I still have after making several of them. Never seen an authoritive position on it.

That said, I have aerated all my BWs when adding yeast, with no issues. The yeast still need O2 to reproduce.

I've done the opposite, never aerated my sour wort before pitching yeast. I've only done one BW though. The fermentation was very clean and very active. I did rehydrate the yeast with Go-Ferm. I think I might have gotten away with it because BW is such a low gravity and US05 packets have a high cell count. I wouldn't change my process when using this method of brewing BW.

so i brewed my bw today. everything went well, no issues. even managed to hold the temp in the 90s range. just one thing - i pitched lacto, no sacc (yet). it looks and smells like normal fermentation. im not sure what exactly i expected, but something different. is this normal?

jmmarvel said:

so i brewed my bw today. everything went well, no issues. even managed to hold the temp in the 90s range. just one thing - i pitched lacto, no sacc (yet). it looks and smells like normal fermentation. im not sure what exactly i expected, but something different. is this normal?

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Check back on it in a few days - it should start smelling nasty if what I have read is true, and my experience is "normal"

Ive used the sour wort method a couple times. Pitch the lacto onto the wort after mashing. Maintain a temp in the 100-110*F range for 1-2 days, THEN boil the worth, which kills the lacto, freezing your sourness level, and you can even hop it if you want. Taste test the souring occasionally after 24 hers.

I have a 5gal pot with a 900 watt thermal wire wrapped around it. I just plug the thing into my PID/SSR that's runs my ferm chamber and set it to 105*F.

Also, I pitched 90% of the lacto vial on the wort The rest I dumped into 10 oz bottle of preservative free apple juice, to start a new culture.

i checked on it today and it was warmer than it should be. i backed off the heating pad and will try to cool it off a bit. the smell is mostly normal fermentation with a slight sourness. it is in my bedroom as this was the only way to hit the target temp for these few days. not looking forward to a nasty smell. thanks to everyone for their help so far.

jmmarvel said:

so i brewed my bw today. everything went well, no issues. even managed to hold the temp in the 90s range. just one thing - i pitched lacto, no sacc (yet). it looks and smells like normal fermentation. im not sure what exactly i expected, but something different. is this normal?

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Completely normal! On my sour fermentations (including Lacto only) I tend to get a lot of DMS-like aromas early on. For the berliner weisse, after you pitch the yeast and it gets going, it will clean that up as it's fermentation ends. If the smell isn't bothering you now, you won't have to put up with gross aromas down the line.

As far as your temps go, Lacto isn't a little cry baby like Sacch is. As long as you aren't going over 120F, you'll be fine. Temperature fluctuation is also not an issue with Lacto in my experience.

mattd2 said:

Check back on it in a few days - it should start smelling nasty if what I have read is true, and my experience is "normal"

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jmmarvel said:

i checked on it today and it was warmer than it should be. i backed off the heating pad and will try to cool it off a bit. the smell is mostly normal fermentation with a slight sourness. it is in my bedroom as this was the only way to hit the target temp for these few days. not looking forward to a nasty smell. thanks to everyone for their help so far.

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If you used a commercial culture of lacto you will not have any nasty smell. That comes from clostridium found on grain.

Weezy said:

Ive used the sour wort method a couple times. Pitch the lacto onto the wort after mashing. Maintain a temp in the 100-110*F range for 1-2 days, THEN boil the worth, which kills the lacto, freezing your sourness level, and you can even hop it if you want. Taste test the souring occasionally after 24 hers..

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If you have a heterofermentative stain, you will be boiling off the alcohol created by the lacto. You could potentially boil off half your potential alcohol. If you have good sanitation, there is no need to boil when using a commercial strain. I never have.

Calder said:

If you have a heterofermentative stain, you will be boiling off the alcohol created by the lacto. You could potentially boil off half your potential alcohol. If you have good sanitation, there is no need to boil when using a commercial strain. I never have.

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Not killing the lacto is more of a sanitation risk. This and the fact hat your locking Ina sourness level are the whole point of his method, which is used by probrewers and others. I don't need to worry about any equipment infection whatsoever with this method.

I use non-alcohol forming wl677. Its never concerned me though. These beers are more about the art and the taste buds then worrying about whether the beer is 4.8% or 5%. The process is repeatable and controllable, which is what matters.

Weezy said:

Not killing the lacto is more of a sanitation risk.

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How is that? The ph of the wort is low enough to protect it until the yeast start making alcohol.

The lacto will stall at about 3.8 to 4.0 ph, so it will not get as sour as a Lambic. Unless you are checking ph every hour, it would be difficult to halt souring at a partcular level. Once started, most of the souring is done within 24 hours.

Equipment contamination... not the wort. The beer is fine. The only thing live lacto touches with my method is the kettle which will be boiled. No hoses, no pumps, no fittings, no fermenters....

So i pitched my wyeast kolsch yeast starter about 1 week ago. there is still a foamy thick krausen at the top. fermentation has slowed down considerably - 1 bubble per 15 seconds. i have not tasted it or taken a gravity reading. I gotta say im a little surprised about the krausen considering fermentation has died off drastically. ive never used kolsch yeast before. how normal is this? i can add a picture in a bit if necessary.

Here is the fermenter w my Berliner. Thick and frothy up top but barely any activity in the airlock. Sacc was pitched a week ago.

Here is a close up. ipad camera sucks. Or Im a crappy photographer.