Berliner Suggestions?

I am about 2 do my second attempt at a berliner. My last was a few years ago and I am doing something similar this time. Just wanted to see if anyone could add some suggestions to my process.

67% - 2 Row
33% - White Wheat

mash at 152 with a 2 gallon decoction to mash out, no sparge. Bring to a boil, chill to about 100F and pitch lacto. Hold about 100 for a few days then pitch active starter of 1056. I am also thinking about throwing in some brett with the 1056.
I have WY5335 and WLP677, the plan was to pitch both of these without a starter. I know a lot of people have trouble with 677 but it worked pretty well for me last time, I did do a starter of apple juice and dme though. Would pitching just the 5335 be better? With starter?

Only thing I would say is to ditch the L. delbrueckii, but you already knew that was coming.

Throwing any hops in? I've stopped doing it on berliners except dry hopping sometime.

No experience with 5335 but I rarely think a starter is a bad idea. I would do one.

Last time I hopped the decoction. I planned on doing no hops this time around.
I have read that lacto's growth phase is where a lot of the acidity is created. That's the reason I was planning on not doing a starter this time.
Also aeration is a question I have. I assume I should before pitching ale yeast. But I know 677 creates alcohol. Would this be problem?

I don't aerate my batches with lacto, even after pitching ale yeast. Don't know if that's a big deal but it hasn't burned me yet. And you gotta look at the tiny amount of dusting that is the lacto in the your vial, in my opinion it really needs to be grown up. I keep 1 gallon cultures of different lacto around and I've never been disappointed with them.

My first berliner was with delbrukii and I decoction hopped that as well. Turned out really good but took 3+ months. Still have some bottles that are at least 4 years old.

your plan looks sound. that being said, wyeast has a berliner weisse platinum strain coming out in april, it has lacto and brett, id give that shot too

I'm teeing up another BW and found the below article quite educational. My first was soured with lacto cultured from 2-row barley. It turned out good enough to get me a bronze (3/9) medal. It was too sour though, lacked flavor, and head. The beer was 60/40 barley/white wheat.

This time I've added some flaked wheat and dextrine malt for added head/body, and a little extra acid malt to protect the proteins from the lacto. I'm also going to kettle sour post mash out and then pasteurize the wort after 24 hours or so at 100 degrees. Lacto is coming from acid malt and yogurt for a blend. The plan is to get better control of the souring process, and let the Sacc finish the ferment.

https://sourbrewster.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/berliner-weisse-the-old-time-kettle-souring-technique/

chefchris said:

I keep 1 gallon cultures of different lacto around and I've never been disappointed with them.

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I meant to add that since I keep cultures around and dose as needed there isn't as much of a growth phase because I'm pitching a lot of slurry. But I've never been disappointed with the sourness. Last batch finished at 3.01 pH. In my opinion you should just pitch as much as possible (within reason). I don't buy into the whole under pitching thing.

It's hard to get a nice head and body on beers as acidic as these. Most berliners are 50% Wheat and it barely forms a head coming out of the tap. It is possible, though. I've got 2 beers on tap that are the same wort. One is a dry hopped berliner, the other is a gose. Berliner has a small, constantly dissipating head. Gose has great head that lasts through the last sip. Same exact wort, I just added salt and coriander to half of it. So who the hell knows what's going on.

Another good read.
http://sourbeerblog.com/fast-souring-lactobacillus/

Be sure to keep us updated. These threads are way more helpful when people report back their results.

pvtschultz said:

I'm also going to kettle sour post mash out and then pasteurize the wort after 24 hours or so at 100 degrees. Lacto is coming from acid malt and yogurt for a blend. The plan is to get better control of the souring process, and let the Sacc finish the ferment.

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What percentage of acid malt are you using? I would suggest going by taste instead of a set number of days. You don't know how long it's going to take for the lacto to even get going or how long it will take to drop the pH. It's really more of a touch and feel process. It's tricky, too, because the wort is still really sweet. The yogurt cultures seem to work really fast, though.

I'm using 3.8% acid malt to bring the estimated mash pH to ~5.4 (room temp). I'm then going to use an ounce or so of acid malt with a cup of yogurt to inoculate the wort.

The last time I tried BW I just pitched lacto ~24 hours before the ale yeast and my culture had already consumed the bulk of the available sugars. This time I am going to sour in my eBiaB kettle so I can maintain a constant temperature. I am going to target 90-100 degrees for 24 hours and see where that gets me. My hope is to come up with a repeatable time/temp souring process so I can spend more effort on recipe development and not souring methods.

I brewed this today. Mash was a little low at 147, I did a decoction to bring mash out and that brought it to 165. Collected 5 gallons of 1.034 wort, brought this up to about 200F and held for 15 minutes, then chilled to 110. Pitched white labs and wyeast lacto straight from packages into better bottle and put in my fermentation chamber set at 105F.

I used a bit of the leftover wort and created 2 starters. One with Brett(?) trios and one with a blend of Brett c and b. The plan is to pitch these with the 1056. I haven't used the trios in a long time and it didn't smell very good. Depending how this starter turns out I might not use it.

I don't have a ph meter so I will taste this periodically and pitch yeast when I feel it's ready. I plan on making a pale ale in 6 days, hopefully it's sour enough by then and I can bring the temp down.

sounds like a solid plan. I also make starters or 1 gallon sours out of extra wort. It should be sour enough in 6 days.

I check on this at about 18 hours. Definitely something going on in there. No airlock activity, sitting at 105F.

Side note, why does my picture insist on being sideways?

I took my first taste tonight. Seems to be a bit of tartness behind the sweet wort flavor, not anywhere close to what it needs though. A lot more bubbles on top.

Do you have a CO2 tank? Wouldn't be a bad idea to purge the head space when you sample. Oxygen is the last thing you want while kettle souring.

i've been running a bunch of tests on lacto which you may find helpful:

http://www.hommelhomebrew.com/?cat=27

sorry about the lack of pictures. i just moved all my stuff over to wordpress and am still fixing the images.

i'm in the middle of my third set of tests now which is a "live" probiotic (ie you have to keep it refrigerated and contains small amount of dried milk/lacto to keep it alive), a retest of WL677 and another probiotic in dry pill form that worked well once but did zilch the second time. i'll have the write up done in a few weeks. from a pure souring standpoint i've had the best results with 2-row, "live" probiotic strains and white labs 672 and 677. i don't like 2-row since in my experiment there was a lot of funky stuff going on but it's certainly a cheap way to do it. i'm getting my bw's down to <3.0 and very (throat tightening) sour within 8 days with a 7 day sac ferment after. i think the key is to let the souring get done before you pitch the sac and make sure you use a yeast that is very happy at low pH. I've had the best luck with white wine yeast (lavlin ec-1118) but german ale is good too although down near pH of 3 it seems to poop out. ec-1118 has been fine down in the high 2s. if you pitch within 24-48 hours you will likely be waiting for months or it will never get really sour but if you just wait 7-8 days you can have a complete bw in weeks. on a side note, i've been very disappointed with the wyeast main lacto strain (5335?). i have tested twice now and it sours very, very slowly even with a good sized pitch (one pouch in one gallon).

this could be since white labs delbruckeii is hetero and wyeast is homofermentative. strange but i confirmed with white labs that there pitch is hetero and my testing confirmed (white labs nice kreusen, wyeast no kreusen).

for head retention, i've had no issues but i bottle condition mine to 3.5 volumes.

Took another taste this morning. I really don't think I need to worry about oxygen exposure. Airlock is by going and the bubbly krausen has gotten near the top of the better bottle. A little more tart than my sample last night. I am a little worried I should rig up a blow off tube before leaving for work today. The krausen quadrupled in size while I slept.

Update about 15 hours later
I checked on this after work and the krausen was almost to the airlock. I got out my blowoff tube I haven't used in years and realised it's sized for a glass carboy and doesn't fit correctly in a better bottle. I didn't have time to figure something out because happy hour was calling. When I finally returned home ready to figure something out, the bubbly krausen had completely fallen.
Flavor is about the same as this morning, I took a gravity and it appears to have fallen only about half a point.

It's been about 115 hours since I pitched lacto. The last few tastes have been more and more sour. It has picked up a nice lemony flavor and aroma so I decided to pull it from my fermentation fridge this morning to cool down to room temperature. Once it hits the mid 60s I plan on pitching trios, Brett c, Brett b, and some 1056.

It seems like mostly all of the acid was developed after that small fermentation that took place in the first couple days. I thought that was the white labs taking off, but since there has been no airlock activity or or movement in the fermenter since I assume the wyeast lacto did most of the work.

soundguy said:

It's been about 115 hours since I pitched lacto. The last few tastes have been more and more sour. It has picked up a nice lemony flavor and aroma so I decided to pull it from my fermentation fridge this morning to cool down to room temperature. Once it hits the mid 60s I plan on pitching trios, Brett c, Brett b, and some 1056.

It seems like mostly all of the acid was developed after that small fermentation that took place in the first couple days. I thought that was the white labs taking off, but since there has been no airlock activity or or movement in the fermenter since I assume the wyeast lacto did most of the work.

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Quick question: If you started with a 1.034 wort, and 5 days went by with a hetero lacto strain potentially bringing down the gravity, did you happen to collect another gravity sample to see what's left for the brett/sacc blend?

I took a gravity after the initial lacto krausen fell. It was only down about 1/2 a point. This was before the souring began to actually happen so I am going to take another gravity reading before I pitch the yeast and brett tonight.

It has been about 130 hours since lacto was pitched. The wort sat out in my cool garage and came down to 68F. The gravity is currently at 1.030, so it has dropped a few points. I gave the wort a little bit of a shake and poured out a couple jars worth to save the lacto. I decided to go against tradition and pitched a jar of wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes instead of 1056. I also added a starter of trios and a starter of Brett c and b. I set my fridge for 68F, we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

Took a gravity reading on this last night, I was surprised to see it was only at 1.008. My last berliner was at 1.002 at this time using what I think is less attenuating yeast. It is still very cloudy so I will give it another week or two try and clear up before I secondary. . Lots of fruitiness from the trios and Ardennes together.

Good luck getting it clear with Trois.

Thanks for keeping us posted on your progress. I don't imagine that a berliner is typically clear/bright, right?

stpug said:

Thanks for keeping us posted on your progress. I don't imagine that a berliner is typically clear/bright, right?

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They become clear with time in my experience. The problem is you've got close to 50% wheat and lacto which doesn't flocculate that well. And in his case, you've also got Trois in there which is notorious for not dropping out. I prefer them clear but I turn them around so fast (and I use Trois as well) that it doesn't have time.

chefchris said:

They become clear with time in my experience. The problem is you've got close to 50% wheat and lacto which doesn't flocculate that well. And in his case, you've also got Trois in there which is notorious for not dropping out. I prefer them clear but I turn them around so fast (and I use Trois as well) that it doesn't have time.

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Very good info. Thank you! This is new territory to me so any/all information is great.

soundguy said:

Took a gravity reading on this last night, I was surprised to see it was only at 1.008. My last berliner was at 1.002 at this time using what I think is less attenuating yeast. It is still very cloudy so I will give it another week or two try and clear up before I secondary. . Lots of fruitiness from the trios and Ardennes together.

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Is this one more sour than the last one? Reason I ask, is because Lactic acid has a higher density than alcohol, closer to unfermented wort. That is why when you sour with a homofermentative lacto the wort gravity doesn't change much. If it is more sour, you will have more of the higher gravity lactic acid, resulting in a higher gravity.

stpug said:

Thanks for keeping us posted on your progress. I don't imagine that a berliner is typically clear/bright, right?

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My last berliner cleared very quickly, but I used German ale yeast (007 I think). Most of the few comercial examples I've had were clear as well. This one is very different than my last and I plan on aging it a few months, it will probably drop bright in this time.

Calder said:

Is this one more sour than the last one? Reason I ask, is because Lactic acid has a higher density than alcohol, closer to unfermented wort. That is why when you sour with a homofermentative lacto the wort gravity doesn't change much. If it is more sour, you will have more of the higher gravity lactic acid, resulting in a higher gravity.

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This one seems less sour than the last one, that could be because it is still fermenting slowly though. My last one did have a significant gravity drop from the lacto, this one is about 2/3 as sour but only dropped a few points.

Edit: I really should get a pH meter to measure these things. I have a number of sours going and it would be great for mashing as well.

I finally broke down and got a meter. I use it almost exclusively for sour beers. Every time I check my mash with it the pH is always fine and agrees with the water calculator I use so I rarely bust it out on brew day.

Quick update on this. I had this sitting at 75F from the 30th of last month until the 7th, I then dropped the fridge temp down to 70 to put a pale ale in there to finish up. When I checked on them tonight I had a nice pellicle formed on the berliner. This grew sometime in the last 3 days, I haven't tasted or taken a gravity in since my last update.

I transferred this to secondary today in order to reuse the brett. 1.005, tart, fruity, and grainy. Hoping to get a bit more funk before I bottle.

About 3/4 of a gallon and a bunch of the yeast cake was racked into a 3.5% saison that was fermented with 3711.

Took a small sample of this today, gravity is still dropping. tart and a little fruity. Kind of boring though. There is a little bit of an aftertaste I don't like, I've tasted it before in commercial lacto beers. I'm hoping it is something the brett will consume with time.

I transferred this batch onto about 3lbs of blackberries. I bottled a few bottles that were left over. 1.002 before adding fruit. Pretty tart and a little fruity. The last pic is after about 48 hours on blackberries.