Berliner Weisse - Full sour wort

I'm craving a nice berliner weisse and have decided to brew one. I'm going to be doing a 3 gallon batch and wanted to create this thread to talk about my problems/successes as I brew this. I welcome any and all discussion.

The plan:

2# 2 Row
2# Wheat Malt

Mash for 60 minutes around 150F. Sparge and collect wort in bucket. Add a handful of crushed gain and place in incubator (fridge with heat lamp) and maintain at 110F as well as possible.

I'm planning on letting this sour for 4 days but I'll be tasting daily to see if I need to do it before then.

Once it is sour enough, boil for 15 minutes and hop with hallertau. Pitch liquid kolsch yeast and let ferment. After it is done, rack onto frozen raspberries.

I'm well aware of the risk of letting the pH get too low, I will have a hard time replicating the sourness because I am souring the wort, and the extreme smells that I'm about to experience.

I'm in it for the long haul and will post here as I see fit until I get my berliner right!

What you're describing is basically how I make mine, only I use two brewbelts instead of an incubator. If your Lacto is homofermentative boiling would probably be fine. I use wild Lacto from grain and it's heterofermentative, as far as I can tell. So it's producing ethanol and lactic acid. If that's the case, boiling would drive off the ethanol. So I just heat the wort to 140-150* for a half an hour to pasteurize instead of a full boil. I will boil about 1 gallon of it or so, with hops.

You're going to need a TON of yeast. I use a whole yeast cake from another beer, and generally get around 50% apparent attenuation.

I'm using lacto from grain, so I guess heterofermentative?

I'm trying to get a very low abv beer, in the 3% range, so I don't mind driving off the ethanol.

I was going to ask about this, but I was just planning on pitching a vial of liquid yeast without making a starter because it is only a 3 gallon batch, but would you suggest a full starter?

A vial of yeast won't do anything. I don't think even a starter would do much. You need seriously way more yeast than you can comprehend. Yeast is severely inhibited by low pH.

The other option is to just let the Lacto do all the work, and don't worry about yeast at all. IMO the yeast doesn't really do much for flavor anyway. After a few days at 100*-ish my gravity will usually drop from around 1.030 to 1.014-16. Then it takes a whole yeast cake to get down to about 1.010.

My next batch I'm going to try just using the grain-cultured bugs, and not pitch any yeast.

Ive been pondering basically the same method. Didnt refalize that much yeast would be necessay... brett likes a lower ph, maybe ill try using a big pitch of brett from a 1 gal batch rather than sach.

Thoughts? Probably attempt over the weekend, partigyle with hefe from first runnings, bw second.

Not sure if the brett would super attenuate in this situation. Dont want to wait months for a bw.

I'm going to make a starter and pitch it and see how it goes. That's what this thread is about, finding a method that works.

I will report back!

So I mashed in last night. I hit 150F for my mash for 60 minutes, then mashed out 0.5 gal, which was a bit low. I sparged with 3.5 gal at 168F and got 3 gal out for 3.5 gal at 1.028 gravity, which is a bit low. I put it in my bucket and threw in about a small ziplock bag of grains (don't have a scale to weigh) after it cooled to 113F and put in my incubator which was around 90F. The incubator was turned off overnight but is on today and towards 102F and rising. It's beginning to smell like creamed corn which I'm very excited about.

It's been keeping right around 100-110F for the past 3 days. I tasted it yesterday (wonderfully tart), took a gravity sample (same as OG) and tested the pH (3.36). All is looking well for a brew day tomorrow, the 4th since I started souring it.

There was a Basic Brewing Radio about berliner weisse with the mad fermentationist as a guest, you might find it helpful:

http://hw.libsyn.com/p/b/2/6/b26d2c...32534209&hwt=a2f197206b8196e8c77b7e5d89707e49

I listened to that and it was mostly about using a lacto vial as opposed to a full sour mash. I want to stay away from pitching a commercial lacto blend.

To update, I brewed this past Saturday. Boiled wort for 15 mins with 0.5 oz Hallertau and ended up with 2.5 gallon of wort into which I pitched a 500 mL kolsch starter which has gotten off to a slow start most likely due to the low pH.

Taking a sample for a gravity reading I got to taste it. The difference from day 2 to day 4 sourness was overwhelming. It is now mouth puckering-ly sour, but not in a bad way. Very high hopes for this beer.

Got a couple of questions... I'm planning a Berliner Weisse soon too:

1) Since you did a "wort souring" how did it sour increase when the bugs should be dead by the 15 minute boil?

2) If you say 15 minute boil do you time the boil when you start the flame or when the first bubble appear?

I soured for 4 days before the boil, so I had bugs souring, then the boil killed off the bugs but left the sour. This way I'm not introducing any bugs into my system (even though I clean and sanitize enough to not really worry about this). So the sourness at my boil is the sourness I'll have in the finished product.

My boil was once I got a rolling boil (bubbling).

Did you check the gravity after the 4 days (or after the boil and before the yeast pitch) to see how much the lacto had dropped it?

I checked and found that my gravity hadn't dropped (post mash vs post boil). It was 1.028, which surprised me because I expected the lacto to drop it.

Lacto will eat sugar but not drop your gravity because lactic acid and sugar have virtually identical densities. Nateo's 50% attenuation may well have been 90%; the yeast can't eat lactic acid and his hydrometer can't tell the difference between acid and sugar. With a 150F mash of all pale malts, there won't be very many dextrins in the finished beer, whatever your lying hydrometer might tell you. The pH of berliner weisse is in the same ballpark as unfermented apple juice, so brewer's yeast shouldn't be greatly inhibited.

kingwood-kid said:

With a 150F mash of all pale malts, there won't be very many dextrins in the finished beer, whatever your lying hydrometer might tell you.

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What do you mean by this? From what I just read, dextrins are non-fermentable, so I'm going to end up with a highly fermentable wort and since this shouldn't be inhibited by pH, it should almost ferment fully out?

GatorBeer said:

What do you mean by this? From what I just read, dextrins are non-fermentable, so I'm going to end up with a highly fermentable wort and since this shouldn't be inhibited by pH, it should almost ferment fully out?

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Correct on all counts. The lacto will eat what it can for as long as you let it. The yeast will eat most of what's left. Yeast can eat sugars the lacto can't, although it can't eat everything in your wort. When you measure your final gravity, it will look like it hasn't fully fermented out, because the hydrometer essentially reads the lactic acid as sugar. You would have to have more advanced equipment than most of us possess to get a true measure of how many sugars are left in the wort.

Berliner Weisses are supposed to be extremely light and tart (like if you forgot to add sugar to instant Kool-Aid), so low residual sugars are a good thing. Of course, they are often sweetened with fruit syrup at serving to counter this.

kingwood-kid said:

Lacto will eat sugar but not drop your gravity because lactic acid and sugar have virtually identical densities. Nateo's 50% attenuation may well have been 90%; the yeast can't eat lactic acid and his hydrometer can't tell the difference between acid and sugar.

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Interesting, I never considered the density of lactic acid vs the fermentable sugars because I've read about many BWs that have fermented out to below 1.01. So I did a check on what you're stating, the density of glucose and maltose are 1.54 g/cm^3 and the density of lactic acid is 1.2 g/cm^3. Density of ethanol = 0.789 g/cm^3.

So the hydrometer can certainly tell the difference, just not as big of a difference as between maltose and ethanol.

kingwood-kid said:

The pH of berliner weisse is in the same ballpark as unfermented apple juice, so brewer's yeast shouldn't be greatly inhibited.

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When I use the sour wort technique, my pH drops into the 2.3-2.5 range. If you think yeast isn't inhibited at that pH, you must not make many wines.

Nateo said:

When I use the sour wort technique, my pH drops into the 2.3-2.5 range. If you think yeast isn't inhibited at that pH, you must not make many wines.

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Your assessment of my wine-making experience is spot-on.

My quick google search turned up an average pH of berliner weisse of 3.2 to 3.4, and wine of 2.9 to 3.9. Your sour wort is almost 10x as acidic as the berliner range. I can see where your yeast would be inhibited. I've never had a problem getting my sours to ferment, but I'm sure I haven't gone as sour as you have.

Perhaps commercial brewers make theirs a higher pH because they are more concerned with reliability than extreme acidity. Your beer probably tastes better.

kingwood-kid said:

My quick google search turned up an average pH of berliner weisse of 3.2 to 3.4, and wine of 2.9 to 3.9.

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Are those pH values given for degassed samples? I assume they are. I think the biggest issue is that during fermentation, CO2 in solution forms carbonic acid, lowering the pH even further, pushing a low pH even lower. From my observations, my fermentations are much slower, and finish much higher, when the pH is under 3. The lowest pH I've measured during the most active part of fermentation is 1.6.

IMO too much CO2 in solution is the main reason so many people have problems with stuck ferments on applewines and meads. Sure the must starts in the 3-4 range, but once fermentation starts, the pH drops off a cliff. Unless you do something to correct the pH, your yeast will throw a lot of sulfur and fusels, and limp along with a slow and sickly ferment for weeks or months.

Nateo said:

Are those pH values given for degassed samples? I assume they are.

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I haven't been able to find an answer to this. Every mention just throws out the same figure so reliably it makes me think they all go back to the same single source, not that there are a lot of commercial examples to provide much of a range of samples.
My reckless, uninformed and wild guess is that 3.2 is what one would measure at the end of fermentation with whatever CO2 is dissolved. I think your wort is probably something of a pleasant outlier. Have you tried an acid-tolerant wine yeast?

kingwood-kid said:

Have you tried an acid-tolerant wine yeast?

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The issue with using wine yeast is that I'm only aware of one yeast (1116) that can ferment maltotriose. I've fermented "regular" pH wort with wine yeast, and it leaves the wort cloying. 1116 attenuates pretty well in wort, but I don't think it's particularly acid-tolerant.

I've done a similar method for my sours, mash low, pitch raw grain, sour for 2-4 days, then boil to kill bugs/fix sourness, and ferment with beer yeast (generally US-05) and have had good dry beers with a very sour taste. Never seemed to have problems with attenuation, nor very slow ferments.
Hope yours turns out.
Cheers.

8 days after pitching yeast my gravity is 1.008 for an ABV of around 2.6%. I'm going to get some frozen raspberries and rack the beer onto them. Any suggestions on how to best do this? Blend them up and just chuck them in? Or just put them in as is?

You can just put them in as is. Larger fruits you would want to break up into raspberry-size pieces. Raspberries will fall apart into their individual drupelets anyway. You may ultimately want to filter the seeds out of your beer. I could see mine, but didn't feel them while drinking.

One more thing, and I'm going to search but is it 1 lb of fruit/gallon? I think I've heard that number, but not sure. Just wondering how many raspberries I should buy.

That's kind of the standard, but it varies a lot by what fruit you're using, what you're adding it to, and what you like. Raspberries are on the stronger end of the fruit spectrum, if that helps inform your decision.

So I ended up mixing 2 cups water with 20 oz frozen organic raspberries and heating it up to 150-160F for 10 mins, then cooling and pitching. I know I'm likely to get haze because I heated it up, but I'm not too worried about it. After 12 hours this is what my fermenter looks like:



Pink beer!

Tasted a sample yesterday after being on raspberries for a week. I'm not getting much raspberry, but wow is it sour. Mouthpuckeringly so. I think the 4 days of souring was a bit too much. I will probably bottle this weekend if the gravity remains the same (1.008).

Cool, so you basically did a "sour worting" technique. 4 days = maybe too much - good to know. I think I may do 2 batches, one with a more traditional lacto starter + yeast pitch and another 2 or 3 day sour worting. By all accounts, the sour worting seems to be a quick way to the end result - I'd like to compare complexity and results vs the longer lacto+yeast pitching.

Has anyone tried splitting the batch, getting half way too sour, and clean fermenting the other half, then blending from there? Seems like that could solve a few problems.

spenghali said:

Has anyone tried splitting the batch, getting half way too sour, and clean fermenting the other half, then blending from there? Seems like that could solve a few problems.

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Check out this thread it discusses this same situation and many more

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/berliner-weiss-many-ways-385934/