GatorBeer

Recipes 

I'm craving a nice berliner weisse and have decided to brew one. I'm going to be doing a 3 gallon batch and wanted to create this thread to talk about my problems/successes as I brew this. I welcome any and all discussion.

The plan:

2# 2 Row
2# Wheat Malt

Mash for 60 minutes around 150F. Sparge and collect wort in bucket. Add a handful of crushed gain and place in incubator (fridge with heat lamp) and maintain at 110F as well as possible.

I'm planning on letting this sour for 4 days but I'll be tasting daily to see if I need to do it before then.

Once it is sour enough, boil for 15 minutes and hop with hallertau. Pitch liquid kolsch yeast and let ferment. After it is done, rack onto frozen raspberries.

I'm well aware of the risk of letting the pH get too low, I will have a hard time replicating the sourness because I am souring the wort, and the extreme smells that I'm about to experience.

I'm in it for the long haul and will post here as I see fit until I get my berliner right!

Nateo

Recipes 

What you're describing is basically how I make mine, only I use two brewbelts instead of an incubator. If your Lacto is homofermentative boiling would probably be fine. I use wild Lacto from grain and it's heterofermentative, as far as I can tell. So it's producing ethanol and lactic acid. If that's the case, boiling would drive off the ethanol. So I just heat the wort to 140-150* for a half an hour to pasteurize instead of a full boil. I will boil about 1 gallon of it or so, with hops.

You're going to need a TON of yeast. I use a whole yeast cake from another beer, and generally get around 50% apparent attenuation.

__________________
To paraphrase Dr. England - "Off-flavors smooth with time. So do mountains. Brew it right from the start!"

My blogsite: http://nateobrew.blogspot.com/

GatorBeer

Recipes 

I'm using lacto from grain, so I guess heterofermentative?

I'm trying to get a very low abv beer, in the 3% range, so I don't mind driving off the ethanol.

I was going to ask about this, but I was just planning on pitching a vial of liquid yeast without making a starter because it is only a 3 gallon batch, but would you suggest a full starter?

Nateo

Recipes 

A vial of yeast won't do anything. I don't think even a starter would do much. You need seriously way more yeast than you can comprehend. Yeast is severely inhibited by low pH.

The other option is to just let the Lacto do all the work, and don't worry about yeast at all. IMO the yeast doesn't really do much for flavor anyway. After a few days at 100*-ish my gravity will usually drop from around 1.030 to 1.014-16. Then it takes a whole yeast cake to get down to about 1.010.

My next batch I'm going to try just using the grain-cultured bugs, and not pitch any yeast.

__________________
To paraphrase Dr. England - "Off-flavors smooth with time. So do mountains. Brew it right from the start!"

My blogsite: http://nateobrew.blogspot.com/

nofootbreak

Recipes 

Ive been pondering basically the same method. Didnt refalize that much yeast would be necessay... brett likes a lower ph, maybe ill try using a big pitch of brett from a 1 gal batch rather than sach.

Thoughts? Probably attempt over the weekend, partigyle with hefe from first runnings, bw second.

Not sure if the brett would super attenuate in this situation. Dont want to wait months for a bw.

GatorBeer

Recipes 

I'm going to make a starter and pitch it and see how it goes. That's what this thread is about, finding a method that works.

I will report back!

GatorBeer

Recipes 

So I mashed in last night. I hit 150F for my mash for 60 minutes, then mashed out 0.5 gal, which was a bit low. I sparged with 3.5 gal at 168F and got 3 gal out for 3.5 gal at 1.028 gravity, which is a bit low. I put it in my bucket and threw in about a small ziplock bag of grains (don't have a scale to weigh) after it cooled to 113F and put in my incubator which was around 90F. The incubator was turned off overnight but is on today and towards 102F and rising. It's beginning to smell like creamed corn which I'm very excited about.

GatorBeer

Recipes 

It's been keeping right around 100-110F for the past 3 days. I tasted it yesterday (wonderfully tart), took a gravity sample (same as OG) and tested the pH (3.36). All is looking well for a brew day tomorrow, the 4th since I started souring it.

spenghali

Recipes 

There was a Basic Brewing Radio about berliner weisse with the mad fermentationist as a guest, you might find it helpful:

http://hw.libsyn.com/p/b/2/6/b26d2cfb54c8201d/bbr03-10-11berliner.mp3?sid=94dd63088345d2ae77cd0fbca6e539a 7&l_sid=18257&l_eid=&l_mid=2477341&expiration=1332 534209&hwt=a2f197206b8196e8c77b7e5d89707e49

GatorBeer

Recipes 

I listened to that and it was mostly about using a lacto vial as opposed to a full sour mash. I want to stay away from pitching a commercial lacto blend.