Sour Cherry and Sour Apple Berliner Weisse experiment

What do you guys (and girls!) think about a sour apple, and a sour cherry Berliner Weisse? I have two Lacto starters going (one from a Wyeast pack, and one's a homemade lacto starter), and I was planning on making a 10 gallon batch.

I was going to use the home made lacto starter on 1/2 (5 gallons) and then the Wyeast starter on the other half (other 5). I'll have two mash tuns on Thursday so I'll be able to mash both at the same time. I was going to cover them with saran wrap, add some club soda on top to try and expel any oxygen, then seal the mash tuns up with tape. One mash tun will be keg with a flase bottom, and the other is a rectangular cooler.

After sealing them up, I was going to put them in a non operational vehicle, to try and keep the temp pretty steady. It will be close to 100 on Thursday (when I plan to do this), and then 90 the next two days. After two days I was going to boil each 5 gallon batch for 15 minutes, then rack off the first gallon to keep plain, and split the other 4 gallons of each batch on apples in one carboy, and cherries in the other and then repeat for the other 5 gallons.

Any advice? Should I add the apples and cherries to the mash? I wouldn't have any base that way... and I would have to choose what starter I would want to use for each fruit??? That would give the Lacto more simple sugars to chew on though.... and then after two days, boil it to stop the souring, rack to carboys, and add yeast?

I think it will be interesting, to say the least.

I wouldn't add the fruit before the boil. When you boil out the fruit you'll get pectin haze (not a big concern here) but you'll also drive off a lot of the flavor elements of the fruit.

I think instead of using my keggle mash tun, I'm just going to put the grains in a bag, and seal it up in my old extract 20 liter kettle. It's only going to be about 6 lbs of grains per 5 gallons anyway.

If I don't add the fruit to the mash, and I realize this is a sour beer, but should I worry about sanitizing the fruit? When should I add the fruit? 15/5/0/primary?

I also have some apple wood as well as cherry wood chips that I could add to the primary/secondary.... That may help add back some flavor if I do mash them???

Im no expert, but my thoughts are that dropping the fruit into the carboy will give you the best profile. The way I have been doing it is as such; put fruit in gallon freezer bag (sanitized), smash up fruit, freeze overnight, pull out to thaw, wrestle into carboy. And since I have been doing it for sour brews, I haven't been OVERLY concerned with keeping sterile, etc, but it seems to work.

Personally I always try to get the fruit as sterile as I can, even for sour beers, but you're probably ok without. Only add after primary fermentation ends.

Any update on this? How did it turn out? What one did you like better?

It's still in Primary now... I did use two different "mash tuns" for the sour mash. I used my old plastic mash tun (just made a new mash tun w/ false bottom out of a keg), and used a 5 gallon paint strainer bag from Home Depot in my old extract kettle. The BIAB version that I made, using the Wyeast Lactic starter, was spot on with my expected gravity. Th homemade starter was used in my old mash tun and I messed up the sparge. I was nervous about knocking off the manifold at the bottom (happened on my previous brew) of my rectangular cooler mash tun, so I was a little too careful stirring up the mash prior to sparging. Therefore, I don't think I got all the sugars out of the mash so that version is going to be a really low ABV (2-2.5%).

I pitched the yeast on June 24th, so it's only been about a week and a half. I'll probably rack the versions onto the two types of cherries and cider next week.

I do have a question though. I never brought the mash above 110 degrees. I had the grains in the mash tun, brought the temp up to 110, added the starter, put a layer of plastic wrap down on top trying to seal up the mash from oxygen, then poured some club soda on top to try and expell as much oxygen as I could out of the mash tun then taped mash tuns shut and sealed them in my truck for 2 days. The temp outside at the time reached 100 degrees F pretty much both days it was in my truck.

After the two days were over, I took it out, drained it, then sparged with boiling water.

Do you think I should have done a regular mash at 150 degrees or so for 60 minutes, and then stirred it until it was down to about 120/110 degrees and then pitched the lacto starter?

I have a facebook page where I document all my homebrew stuff. Here is a link to the album to see what I did....

Feel free to friend request if you have a facebook and feel so inclined. I always enjoy talking beer!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.256446281121573.42499.100002686101935&type=3&l=06df3a670f

That's a good question, I hope someone with a bit more knowledge can answer this. I a normal mash (just a bit low, @147 or so) and then added a homemade lactose starter once it was down too 100 degrees or so. Added my brewers yeast 4 days after.

Well I kegged the two base versions and have the fruit versions in secondary. The Wyeast Lacto version is pretty good. I wish it wasn't so cloudy, and had a little more color to it, but the flavor is right there. The homemade lacto, is blah. Not bad, but nothing to get excited about either.

Giving the fruit additions some additional time, and then going to bottle conditon those so it will be a few weeks before I know how they turn out...

This is what it looks like... It is carbed up better than this pic shows, but you can get an idea of the color anyway:



Here are the gallon jugs filled up, plus an experimental hard cider I made with the left over cider I used in the sour apple versions.

First two gallon jugs have 10 ounces each of wild black cherries, the next two have 7 ounces each of sour cherries, and the last two have two cups of Kaufman's Bird-In-Hand freshly pressed and flash pasturized apple cider.

I used Kolsch Yeast for the first time on this beer. I didn't realize it made such a cloudy beer! Makes me feel better about how cloudy it is though!

Flying Dog came out with a Sour Cherry Ale a few months back that was really a cherry berlinerweisse. Great beer, very refreshing.