Berliner Weisse style with pedio (or other pedio recommendations)

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skeezerpleezer

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I am new to brewing sour beers, I made my first Flanders red a couple weeks ago. I plan to do another sour this week and rack onto that yeast cake, in hopes of a more sour beer.

I have also been pondering a Berliner Weisse style beer for awhile, leaning toward sour mashing part of it, then adding it to the rest of the mash a few days later, boiling, and fermenting. It sounds like this is a fairly quick turnaround, which is what I was wanting. I will probably still do that... any recommendations there?

Now the real point of this post. I was at Brewmasters warehouse earlier today and they had some expired Wyeast Pedio (about 11 months old) for $2.50, which I figured was worth grabbing. First question is how viable is this? I assume I should not do a starter, is this correct? I was also wondering what would happen if I did a normal (non sour mash) Berliner style with this instead of Lacto. Would it work ok? taste bad? If its not recommended, is there another way I can/should use this yeast without using lacto/Brett/etc?

thanks in advance!
 
I believe wyeast doesn't recommended Pedio for Berliner Weisses because it doesn't do well in a low gravity/nutrient wort. I had a friend who attempted to do a BW with pedio and it never soured, and there's a least one thread on here where someone had the same problem. (With that said, I'm sure someone has made a fantastic berliner weisse with pedio)

If you have a spare growler, it might be worth trying to grow the pedio for future use. It'll probably still be viable, but might take some to take off. I believe Vinnie at Russian River recommends 80% wort 20% apple juice for bacteria starters.
 
Pedio takes a LONG TIME to sour (10 months-18 months) and should never be used without Brett of some kind due to diacetyl production. Lacto takes a short(er) time, but won't sour if the IBUs of the beer are too high.

For a Berliner, that you want sour and ready to drink in 1-2 months, you have to use Lacto...Pedio won't get you there.
 
Just curious, does pedio produce C02?

I only ask because I have a oud bruin going. I never pitched only pedio before a culture but I did last night because the wort was still a touch too warm for yeast. I figured hell with the beer going to be about 10% I'd add some bacteria right off. So I added a tube of what was isolated pedio (from what I could tell on the microscope). By mid afternoon today I had significant C02 production at which point I added the actual starter I had prepared for the beer.
 
smokinghole,

How did that turn out for you? I was curious what would happen if trying to pre-sour with pedio instead of lacto, and you method seemed similar to that. thanks!
 
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