Berliner weisse sour mash: how tart do you go?

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ocluke

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1.5 days ago I began a Berliner Weisse in which 100% of the souring will take place in the mash.

Grains were mashed and the wort temperature was lowered to ~100°F. Unmilled grains were added in after the wort temp reduced to ~100°F to inoculate the wort. The temperature has been maintained at 100°F.

Here's my question:

When utilizing the mash for 100% of the souring, how sour should the wort get before sparging? I will be leaning on a sensory analysis for judging the wort because I do not have a pH meter.

It would seem that from a sensory perspective the sourness profile would need to be extremely tart for the concentration, due to the fact that the mash runnings will be considerably diluted in the finished beer?

I have about 5.5 gallons of water in my mash for a 13 gallon batch. Beersmith shows that I will fly sparge with 13.5 gallons of water to achieve a pre-boil volume of 16.29 gallons. This calculates to 2.79 gallons of the sour mash runnings transferring to the boil kettle. 2.79 gallons is only 17% of the pre-boil volume of 16.29 gallons. That's a lot of lactic acid dilution!
 
I'm currently at 62 hours at 100°F. I may just call it and move on to sparging and boiling if I don't get any dissenting opinions.
 
Mine was nice and tart after 24hrs but we varied a bit. I used 10% acid malt and pitch lacto(grains) at 119f let drop to 100 and maintained that temp for 24 hours.
 
Mine was nice and tart after 24hrs but we varied a bit. I used 10% acid malt and pitch lacto(grains) at 119f let drop to 100 and maintained that temp for 24 hours.

I have done exactly as you have done (10% acid malt with 20 minutes to go in the mash, then pitched unmilled grains to inoculate after dropping the temp to 105). My mash is currently nice and tart. It's about exactly as I would like my Berliner Weisse to taste.

The real dilemma I am having is wondering just how diluted that lactic acid profile is going to be in the final beer after fly sparging. The runnings in the mash are only a small fraction of the finished volume of the beer. Make sense? It's making me wonder if I should let the mash get intensely sour before arresting lactobacillus lactic acid production.
 
I had mashed with about 5 gallons for a 10 gallon batch, while it was diluted & tamed down somewhere was plenty of lactic tart/sourness. I had actually planned to use a little lactic acid to enhance the beer some but felt it didn't need it.
 
I normally figure 0.25 qt/lb for water retention by the grains but the rest should find its way to the boil
 
True, but you should figure that the original mash water will be the rinsed out of the grains during the sparge. At the end of the boil there will still be a few gallons of water in the grain, but that's the *last* of the sparge water, not the good stuff full of sugar and lactic acid.

Or am I missing something?
 
It's quite possible that my 17% calculation is low, given your reasonable argument that the sparge water will replace at least some of the water absorbed by the grain. I think there is room for an experiment there. Even so, there was over 13 gallons of sparge water, which still translates to the mash water being a minority percentage of the final wort in the fermenter.

That said, I boiled this evening after a 3 day mash (I didn't want to risk off flavors from undesirable bacteria and yeast). I was pleasantly surprised when I took a taste from the hydrometer sample post boil... the final wort had a good amount of lactic sourness. Even with the residual sugar still in the wort, it was almost perfect for my taste (this coming from an avid gueuze drinker). I'm not sure how the math works, but the mash sample wasn't considerably more sour than the post boil sample.
 
I did a Berliner Weisse a couple weeks ago with the intent on getting it as sour as possible. I let the wort sour instead of the mash though. No-boil, no-hops, 7 day 120F wort rest with no Sacch (CO2 purged). pH got down to 3.3 after the 7 day rest and that's when I pitched the Sacch. It wasn't as sour as I expected after the 7 day period but it still had all of the sugar left according to refractometer readings.
 
I have no doubt you will make a tasty beer, but if you are diluting 4:1 I suspect it will not be anywhere near as sour as you want.

Ideally you want to sour the entire batch (either sparge and then sour, or add the sparge water to the mash and sour), and you want it to go until the lacto decides to give up. When the PH gets low enough the lacto will move into it's dormant phase.
 
ocluke, any update on this from last year? i'm going to dilute my berliner wort by half after a sour mash. How did yours turn out after diluting that much?
 
I don't think there is much to worry about, as pH is a logarithmic scale.
If your sour wort has a pH of about 3.5 diluting by half will give you a pH of about 3.8.

I don't think you can take that into consideration when souring the wort by taste.
 
ocluke, any update on this from last year? i'm going to dilute my berliner wort by half after a sour mash. How did yours turn out after diluting that much?

Yes, I have I since brewed 2 additional batches in addition to the one I was working on at the time of this post. What I found was that the sour taste profile does come through post fermentation. I do not have a scientific explanation for why the sour flavor perception persists. I use a very soft water profile with essentially no bicarbonate, which might help keep the sparge water from raising the pH. Another contributing factor might be that once the sugars are fermented and the beer dries out, the perceived sourness raises.

My current sour mash process is about 105-110F for 2-3 days (typically 3).
 
I use a very similar technique. I end up souring the whole mash @1.25qt/lb which leaves me about 60% of the total water coming in during the sparge, post souring. As was just mentioned, when you dilute by 60%, you're not diluting the ph by 60%.
I also found that checking the ph of the sour mash every 12 hours, that the decline in ph becomes more gradual. I.e., you might go from 5.5 to 3.9 the first two days, but then only hit 3.7 on day 3. So, if you're expecting a large sparge volume, I'd say don't be afraid to give it another day if you're on the fence about sourness.
My next plan is to do a split batch sour mash and sour wort and compare those two side by side.
Cheers!
 
I mean a pre-boil, sour mash and wort. Backstory- I brew at work with some other guys on shared equipment, so I try to keep most bugs in check, but recently started 1gal experiments at home. So, when I do the two pre-boil sours at work, I'll probably bring home some sour wort to start a 100% lacto ferm(have to secure hetero) and a brett/lacto as well. 4 berliner side by side-watchout!
 
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