Berliner Weisse Comparison

I have three BW batches under my belt now and am trying to get the style dialed in using sour mash method. The first one was not sour enough, the next too sour and the last one was very good IMO. This time around I tracked the sourness using a pH meter to determine when would be a good time to stop the lacto feast.

So, tonight I purchased a bottle of 1809 Berliner Weisse to compare to my homebrew. There are a few things I would like to get some input on from you guys who are more familiar with this style. The first taste of the 1809 tasted like Brett horse blanket with a touch of a sour note/banana esters and a little residual sweetness on the backend combined with wheat grain. The 1809 does seem to also leave a bit of hot alcohol in your mouth after a few seconds of sampling. I did notice the label says 5.0% ABV which seems a bit high. The brett is just very overpowering on this beer and it even has the brett effervescent characteristic which drowns out the sourness I thought this style was known for.

Did I just get an improperly stored bottle? The score on this beer on RateBeer look great but this bottle doesn't compare to the reviews on the site.

The half a dozen 1809s I've drank over the years had no Brett or hot boozy notes whatsoever. 1809 is not sour. It has a light, lemony tartness that one could approximate by squeezing a lemon wedge into a simple wheat beer.

I've seen some people talk about an intense brett character from 1809. I've never experienced it. Maybe the brett character develops in the bottle, and you happened to get an older bottle?

1809 isn't actually that stylistically accurate. I know people can get hung up on trying to make beers similar to commercial beer, but if I were you I wouldn't compare my berliner weisses to others. It's all about how you want it to taste.