southdenverhoo
Member
OK, so here was the plan, based on a bunch of reading, primarily this forum, Northern brewer, Michael Tonsmeire, and Chad Yakobson or people reporting on things Chad has said or written, such that I can't pinpoint the genesis of the idea, not that it is a particularly new one.
Basically, not a sour mash or a kettle sour or anything, but a 100% lacto ferment for a few days followed by the addition of Brett B and C to ferment the beer, a pale ale, the rest of the way out.
mash was 67% belgian pils (7 lbs) 19% light munich (2 lbs) 9.5% weyermann Acid malt (1 lb) .25% crystal 45 (.25 lb) and .25% carapils .25 lb). OG was 1.052.
Chilled to 100 degrees F and pitched 2 vials of WL 677 lactobacillus.
Waited 6 days (136 hours actually) and pitched one vial brett B and 1 vial Brett C.
At this point, a couple things surprised me. First, the gravity: 1.018, this thing is already down to, in just under 6 days, with nothing but lactobacillus. Somehow I thought it wouldn't do this much and that there would be a lot for the brett to eat through. Not so.
Second, it's only mildly tart, not really a surprise based on what others have written and posted. It is definitely tart though, more tart than a beer I did the other way around (100% brett fermentation with lacto added after a couple weeks and then aged 6 months) and I have a feeling it will get more perceptively tart after carbonation.
Third, there is a bunch, like an inch and a half or more, of trub and I guess flocced-out Lacto? Somehow I didn't expect that. I thought in fact that maybe I somehow contaminated this with saccharomyces? The lacto ferment itself looked, at it's height, just like the picture Tonsmeire posted of his 100% lacto Berliner Weiss on Mad Fermentationist.
Fourth, I don't know, it didn't taste all that "alcoholic". Just had a sip, sealed and refrigerated the rest of the sort of turbid sample so I can pour off the beer tonight and taste it separate from the trub. (sample drawn from bottom valve of Williams Brewing better bottle knock off). From 1.052 to 1.018 should yield 4.38% abv I think. I wonder if lactobacillus fermentation doesn't yield as much alcohol per quantity of sugar consumed, as sacch or brett, so I have to figure out a new way to calculate abv? Anybody have any idea about this?
I bought a pH meter but haven't calibrated it yet, that's a project for this weekend, so no info on pH, yet; I'll update later. The idea was that the acidulated malt would lower the pH sufficiently to optimize the lacto ferment, my understanding from either Tonsmeire or Yakobson that a pH of 4.8 was ideal and that 10% (or more) of acidulated malt could do the trick, but I did not measure wort pH for the reason mentioned above.
The plan actually is to dry hop this, possibly in the keg. The intent was to be hop-forward but not particularly bitter...(Oh, the hops were an ounce of Styrian Goldings at 3.2%AA, for 60 minutes, plus an ounce of 11.0 Falconer's Flight and an ounce of 11.2 Mosaic at knockout, for total IBU of 14 using Tinseth, per Beer Tools)
Basically, not a sour mash or a kettle sour or anything, but a 100% lacto ferment for a few days followed by the addition of Brett B and C to ferment the beer, a pale ale, the rest of the way out.
mash was 67% belgian pils (7 lbs) 19% light munich (2 lbs) 9.5% weyermann Acid malt (1 lb) .25% crystal 45 (.25 lb) and .25% carapils .25 lb). OG was 1.052.
Chilled to 100 degrees F and pitched 2 vials of WL 677 lactobacillus.
Waited 6 days (136 hours actually) and pitched one vial brett B and 1 vial Brett C.
At this point, a couple things surprised me. First, the gravity: 1.018, this thing is already down to, in just under 6 days, with nothing but lactobacillus. Somehow I thought it wouldn't do this much and that there would be a lot for the brett to eat through. Not so.
Second, it's only mildly tart, not really a surprise based on what others have written and posted. It is definitely tart though, more tart than a beer I did the other way around (100% brett fermentation with lacto added after a couple weeks and then aged 6 months) and I have a feeling it will get more perceptively tart after carbonation.
Third, there is a bunch, like an inch and a half or more, of trub and I guess flocced-out Lacto? Somehow I didn't expect that. I thought in fact that maybe I somehow contaminated this with saccharomyces? The lacto ferment itself looked, at it's height, just like the picture Tonsmeire posted of his 100% lacto Berliner Weiss on Mad Fermentationist.
Fourth, I don't know, it didn't taste all that "alcoholic". Just had a sip, sealed and refrigerated the rest of the sort of turbid sample so I can pour off the beer tonight and taste it separate from the trub. (sample drawn from bottom valve of Williams Brewing better bottle knock off). From 1.052 to 1.018 should yield 4.38% abv I think. I wonder if lactobacillus fermentation doesn't yield as much alcohol per quantity of sugar consumed, as sacch or brett, so I have to figure out a new way to calculate abv? Anybody have any idea about this?
I bought a pH meter but haven't calibrated it yet, that's a project for this weekend, so no info on pH, yet; I'll update later. The idea was that the acidulated malt would lower the pH sufficiently to optimize the lacto ferment, my understanding from either Tonsmeire or Yakobson that a pH of 4.8 was ideal and that 10% (or more) of acidulated malt could do the trick, but I did not measure wort pH for the reason mentioned above.
The plan actually is to dry hop this, possibly in the keg. The intent was to be hop-forward but not particularly bitter...(Oh, the hops were an ounce of Styrian Goldings at 3.2%AA, for 60 minutes, plus an ounce of 11.0 Falconer's Flight and an ounce of 11.2 Mosaic at knockout, for total IBU of 14 using Tinseth, per Beer Tools)
