Super thick beer

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shlobs

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Hi all
I have recently started playing around with lactic/wild fermentation. I was aiming to make a stronger version of a berliner weisse, similar to the moondog mullet series in Australia. I use partial mash, wheat and pilsner base with some rolled wheat and acid malt thrown in. I also put in about 2.4kg of mulberries with brew length of 24L. O.G. Was about 1.044. Fermented with a sour mix I made up by culturing dregs from a cantillon Kriek and moondog perverse sexual amalgam with some malted grain thrown in. This as actively fermenting when I pitched it and I rinsed the grain in water as well as the bottle and chucked that in as we'll to try and dislodge some yeast from the malt. Also put in a pack of safbrew wb at the same time. Fermented at low 20C, fermented quick and hard no airlock activity after 3days gravity at 1.010. I left it for 2 weeks and no extra activity or drop in gravity. Bottled last week, pulled a glass off to try, was flat and sour and slightly thick in the mouth. Now forming a pellicle in the bottle, cracked one today to try and the beer is super thick. It taste fine, needs to condition a bit longer to get the bubbles going, it is nicely sour but the body is super thick. It is almost glutinous I stirred it with a fork and lifted it up and the beer was trailing off the fork, like a syrup would. The only thing I can think of is that it is lipopolysaccharide being produced by the bacteria but I can't find any reference to this anywhere. Has anyone seen something like this before? Do you think it should be ok? I have had something similar in a commercial beer before which was brewed with sourdough but it was nowhere as thick as this.
Cheers for any help or advice
 
Maybe your beer is "sick" from pedio and in the process of becoming"ropey"?
 
Thanks badlee. I guess I was searching with the wrong descriptors. Will it become "well" in the bottle. Is it the pedio breaking down its own LPS during this process or is it yeast or lactobacillus doing this. I guess if it pedio that does the cleanup there shouldn't be an issue with bottle bombs but if it is sacch or heterotrophic lacto I may be in for a surprise
 
Brett will typically break down the "ropey"ness of the beer. The only concern is that if you were really @ 1.010 when you bottled you are going to get way more than .003 drop in gravity before it clears up. That of course means that you are going to have gushers if you are extremely lucky, and bottle bombs if you aren't.

Sorry to say it man, but you bottled WAY too soon.
 
Sounds like this beer would go good with breakfast....
Yes, bring on the pictures!!! I really need to see this.
 
Here are pics. First is of beer being drawn up with fork, you can see the ropes. 2nd is just the beer. Third is pH reading

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Wow! I don't think I have ever seen anything like that. It seems to fit the description of 'Ropey' that I have read, but could't imagine it really happening.

Supposedly, the microbes in the beer will get rid of it, but it could be 6 months or so.
 
It is not super tart. I think the low pH has knocked off the safbrew wb yeast so conditioning is taking longer than normal given the high ambient temp we have at the moment in west aus. This is leaving some residual sweetness which is masking some of the sour and the low carbonation probably helps this as well
 
You have a exopolysaccharide complex there. The bacteria from the sour mix and or the wild stuff from the grain made the beer gooey. I've had this happen when I bottled a non-brett beer that I somehow contaminated with bacteria. So I poured the beer back into a fermentor under the flow of CO2 and added a brett culture. It took six months but the slimey consistency of the beer cleared up. The only thing that really gets rid of the exopolysaccharide is brett. It can take six months to a year at room temp for it to break down in my experience. I've had beers that were fine when I bottled but got viscous again in the bottle. I just let them sit for at least six months before I really try drinking them again.

Hope that helps and explains what you have there.
 

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