Hello,
I have picked up home brewing about a year ago, after being introduced to it by friends in Belgium. Living in Berlin, I of course ended up looking into the local style of beer: Berliner Weiße. I want to share some of the results of my research with you.
Let me start with the sad part: there is no genuine Berliner Weiße anymore. Every single one of the Berlin breweries ended up in the hands of the Radeberger Gruppe, all the traditional Berlin brands (Schultheiß, Bürgerbräu, Kindl, Berliner Pilsner) now come out of the same tap at the beer factory in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. There is one beer left being sold as Berliner Weiße, under the brand of Kindl. This one, however, is not made according to the traditional recipe, and old Berliners agree that it just doesn't taste right.
I have looked some more into the process of making Berliner Weiße. The traditional process involves a symbiotic mixture of lactic acid bacteria and yeast. Originally, brewers used yeast harvested during production of Cottbus Bitter, which was brought to Berlin. A portion of the young beer was pitched back into the wort together with the yeast, making it somewhat of a sour mash scheme. From about 1830, the symbiosis between yeast and lactic acid bacteria became stable enough so that it could be harvested during primary, and pitched into the next batch. Brewers became independent of fresh yeast supply there.
The current holder of the chair for brewing science at TU Berlin, Dr. Methner, wrote his PhD thesis about Berliner Weiße, in the 1980s. He analyzed a range of Berliner Weiße from different breweries (which still existed back then), both using chromatograpic methods for looking at the esters, alcohols and fatty acids making up the typical taste profile of a Berliner Weiße, and looking at the microbes found during production of the beer and in the bottle. It is especially the microbiological result that was revealing to me. The first surprising result was that the lactic acid bacteria found were of the variety Lactobacillus Brevis, a heterofermentative strain of Lactobacillus (meaning: producing not just lactic acid, but other atomatic compontents as well), not Lactobacillus Delbrueckii, a homofermentative strain, as some of the literature claims and as Wyeast is trying to sell to us. Lactobacillus Brevis is notable for having strains that are resistant against alpha acids, one specific variant managed to thrive in a beer with 18 IBU. The second surprising result was that Brettanomyces Bruxellensis was found in almost all the beers. The exception was Kindl,and the chromatographic analysis confirmed what tasters always knew: there are some aromatic components missing in Kindl. Shockingly, Dr. Methner even found some bottom-fermenting yeast in Kindl, even though the traditional method uses top fermentation. Furthermore, Kindl seems to be made using split batches to control the sourness instead of the traditional mixed fermentation.
I'm now on a mission to recreate original Berliner Weiße. I have acquired some old bottles from the breweries now gone, and I have reason to to hope to be able to revive some of the microbes used in production of these beers from the bottles. Wish me luck, it might be just in time to save this style from extinction.
I have picked up home brewing about a year ago, after being introduced to it by friends in Belgium. Living in Berlin, I of course ended up looking into the local style of beer: Berliner Weiße. I want to share some of the results of my research with you.
Let me start with the sad part: there is no genuine Berliner Weiße anymore. Every single one of the Berlin breweries ended up in the hands of the Radeberger Gruppe, all the traditional Berlin brands (Schultheiß, Bürgerbräu, Kindl, Berliner Pilsner) now come out of the same tap at the beer factory in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. There is one beer left being sold as Berliner Weiße, under the brand of Kindl. This one, however, is not made according to the traditional recipe, and old Berliners agree that it just doesn't taste right.
I have looked some more into the process of making Berliner Weiße. The traditional process involves a symbiotic mixture of lactic acid bacteria and yeast. Originally, brewers used yeast harvested during production of Cottbus Bitter, which was brought to Berlin. A portion of the young beer was pitched back into the wort together with the yeast, making it somewhat of a sour mash scheme. From about 1830, the symbiosis between yeast and lactic acid bacteria became stable enough so that it could be harvested during primary, and pitched into the next batch. Brewers became independent of fresh yeast supply there.
The current holder of the chair for brewing science at TU Berlin, Dr. Methner, wrote his PhD thesis about Berliner Weiße, in the 1980s. He analyzed a range of Berliner Weiße from different breweries (which still existed back then), both using chromatograpic methods for looking at the esters, alcohols and fatty acids making up the typical taste profile of a Berliner Weiße, and looking at the microbes found during production of the beer and in the bottle. It is especially the microbiological result that was revealing to me. The first surprising result was that the lactic acid bacteria found were of the variety Lactobacillus Brevis, a heterofermentative strain of Lactobacillus (meaning: producing not just lactic acid, but other atomatic compontents as well), not Lactobacillus Delbrueckii, a homofermentative strain, as some of the literature claims and as Wyeast is trying to sell to us. Lactobacillus Brevis is notable for having strains that are resistant against alpha acids, one specific variant managed to thrive in a beer with 18 IBU. The second surprising result was that Brettanomyces Bruxellensis was found in almost all the beers. The exception was Kindl,and the chromatographic analysis confirmed what tasters always knew: there are some aromatic components missing in Kindl. Shockingly, Dr. Methner even found some bottom-fermenting yeast in Kindl, even though the traditional method uses top fermentation. Furthermore, Kindl seems to be made using split batches to control the sourness instead of the traditional mixed fermentation.
I'm now on a mission to recreate original Berliner Weiße. I have acquired some old bottles from the breweries now gone, and I have reason to to hope to be able to revive some of the microbes used in production of these beers from the bottles. Wish me luck, it might be just in time to save this style from extinction.
