Haole punch clone recipe; tropical berliner weisse

[mesooohoppy]

Unless you're in CA, most have probably never heard of Alvarado street brewing (Monterey, CA). My gf and I went a couple of months ago (she really only likes sours). I ordered her a 'Haole Punch', she loved it and it was the best Berliner Ive ever had! Lots of tropical notes paired very well with the tartness of the BW style. My gf recently said she would like brew a batch with me; id like to try my hand at brewing a clone of this recipe and need your guy's help crafting it.

I sent one of the brewers a message on IG asking if they would be able to share some info, but I don't usually hear back from them, nor do I usually expect a response.

Heres what I do know:
-Its a Berliner Wisse with 3 IBU and an abv of 5.6% (BA says 5%; I saw a crowler pic that said 5.6%).
-Kettle soured (duh)
-IIRC, once primary is done, they use guava and passion fruit puree along with orange zest. this will probably be the hardest part to get right.

I did a quick search for a kettle soured BW recipe and liked this link as it included info for water:
https://www.mashedin.beer/blogs/mashed-in-blog/83219969-recipe-quick-kettle-soured-berliner-weisse

-The link above mentions using unmilled malt to sour the mash, id like to stay close to the original recipe and sour in the kettle. I plan to use some sort of cultured lacto and make a starter prior as I hear this is easier/predictable than using unmilled grains.
-I usually use cali liquid yeast, but the recipe linked calls for us05. I may use that; open to suggestions.
-Recipe calls for spalt hops, I also heard cluster works; probably not a big deal at 3-5 IBUs.
-I was going to boil for 10-15 minutes (whatever I need to do to reach my target IBUs); recipe calls for 15, so that seems pretty easy.
-Do I oxygenate once the boil is done? I have a wand with pure O2, will that mess with the lactic acid in the wort?

Another issue is I don't have a pH meter, and im not really looking to drop some coin on one right now. I will have to go by the taste test.

If anyone has any suggestions or info, I am all ears as this will be my first kettle sour. Otherwise I will probably use the grain bill that is linked above.

 

[crane]

Buy a pH meter. Unless you are very experienced with tasting unfermented, non carbonated, sweet and sour wort you won't be able to judge how sour the final beer will be. I guess you could just let it kettle sour for several days and hope that it dropped the pH enough, but you can buy a cheapo meter for less than $20 on Amazon. I started with one of those before I dropped the money for a good one. After calibrating them, the cheapo meter was within range of the Milwaukee meter.

 

[BeerAddikt]

I like the concept...I'm brewing an imperial blackberry berliner weisse (I'll explain the imperial part later) in the next month or so and have already purchased the ingredients. My recipe is very similar to what you're using except I add additional acid malts. Otherwise pretty much identical.

I would recommend this yeast for kettle souring (http://www.omegayeast.com/portfolio/lactobacillus-blend/). It works at a very wide temperature range so you can sour at room temp. I've heard kettle souring using malts alone is a very inexact science.

I use these cheap PH test strips to measure acidity (http://www.northernbrewer.com/ph-test-strips-wine-range). They aren't exact but get you close enough combined with tasting samples. I usually use 2-3 of the strips to make sure they all read consistently.

Also, 5.6 % is a very high ABV for a berliner weisse, hence why I call my 5.4% version an imperial. A traditional berliner would fall at about 2.8% – 3.8%.