Sour Mash and Pitching Lacto???

[BenjaminBier]

MMkay so here goes another Berliner Weisse thread.

Lately the local tap rooms have been getting some nice sour ales on tap, the distributor must have their hands on some. It seems like Duchesse and Jacobins Rouge are alternating at different bars back and forth.

It's been my first chance to drink sour ales and I'm hooked! Now it's time to brew one. Wifey says brewing with stinkies is a go! As long as the first batch is her favorite sour, the Berliner Weisse.

After scouring every old thread at HBT and other forums, it seems like there are two camps - sour mash or pitching a starter made with commercial lacto.

I really really wanted to try making a sour mash to see what that's all about. I also want to go for the consistency people say comes of pitching lacto. So why not both? Too sour? Too Funky? Off-style? I'm finding out!

Made a mini sour mash just to see what it's like before we commit for realz..

Pitched 1/2# pils into 1/2 qt hot tap water. Covered with foil, sealed tightly. Held at 100F with a heating pad. Smelled like hot underpants after day 1, after day 2 it started smelling like sourdough and honey. Wifey says it doesn't smell half-bad. pH was down to 4.0 after 48 hours.

Made 1040 DME wort, split into two batches. Decanted / strained 1/2 cup liquid from mini sour into one wort. Waking up Safale 05 in the other.

Pitched rest of sour mini-mash into triple decoction mash. Smelling yum yums! After 12 hours, taste is a clean with somewhat mild but lingering sour, kind of like sauerkraut washed in water. After work today I will sparge and no-boil directly into a carboy.

The Lacto Starter has a pellicle after 36 hours. Smells citrusy and a little musty, nearly identical to the mash but without the grain scent. I'll be pitching this tonight and will update!

edit: noun/verb agreement

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I have a sour mash going myself. I've done one before.

I've never had a problem with the sour mash souring the wrong way but one problem that does come up is trying to replicate the sourness from batch to batch because sour mashes will sour at different rates depending on how long you let them sit, temperature, etc.

It's also possible for other bacteria to get in there and try to compete with lacto.

Let us know how your project turns out.

 

[BenjaminBier]

Thanks for the support, R.A.M.! Were you able to get the amount of sour you wanted? And did you do anything different/special the 2nd time? Did you boil your wort?

Does anyone know if there is any published info about how quickly lacto will convert sugars? Is there lagtime similar to yeast / nutrient issues / etc? I soured my entire mash and did not boil, just sparged with 180F water and poured everything straight into the carboy, 1.030. Put an airlock in it and had a full pellicle by morning. The SG dropped to 1.020 within 48 hours. "Is that normal"?

Here's the carboy 12 hours after racking to primary.

My buddy and I tasted a sample of this and it is flipping fantastic. Puckering, but fantastic. Very clean, tart, lemony, seems just right. /knock-on-wood

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I tossed both of my sour mashes into the beginning of the boil. It drives out all of that rotten creamed corn smell from a sour mash so you just get the sourness. I find it is not as tart as a beer that has had straight lacto poured into it. It doesn't get crazy sour like letting it sit on lacto or pedio but the pH definitely goes below 4.8 after a couple days. Probably somewhere mid to low 4's.

My thought on yours is that at 180F it probably went hot enough to kill the lacto in your sour mash so you were working with the lacto starter once you threw it all together. Bacteria tend to work a lot quicker than yeast, so if you added a full starter to the wort there was a lot of lacto to chew through it very quickly. I'm not incredibly surprised your gravity dropped that quickly.

 

[BenjaminBier]

Just a little update here, just past two weeks in the primary.

After looking at the pellicle after 12 hours, I decided not to double pitch Lacto afterall. Still holding on to my lacto starter. At this point I'm not 100% sure what to do with it. I am thinking I will make a second batch of BW using this starter in my sour mash.

This lacto starter was made from the sour mash from my first batch. If I use it to jumpstart my next sour mash, can I expect any continuity from one batch to the next?

Here's how I made this starter:
Sour mashed 1/2 lb pils in 1/2 qt hot water
24 hours later made 2qts 1.040 Light DME wort and let cool.
Pitched 3 Tbs of the liquid out of the sour mash into the DME wort.

Here's what it looks like now, about 3 weeks later. It smells remarkably similar to the main beer. Drawing a taster out of the starter is tempting... but I don't want to affect it too much since I want to use it in a future batch.

Plan is to make another full batch sour mash and pour this starter straight into it. Hopefully the lacto character will be continuous from the first batch to the second.

And here's a hydro sample from the main beer in a glass. Tastes amazing, like a sour kick to the face that quickly fades into citrus and hay. SG 1.006 and dropping, pH 3.4.

 

[Nateo]

What did your pH finish at? I've got a Berliner Weiss going but my pH is 2.3 and that seems awfully low.

 

[gstrawn]

how did this turn out? Im looking into doing something similar