The great magical and multi variate BERLINER WEISSE!!!!

[TipsySaint]

Hey all!!!

So I'm going to give this grand mysterious beer style a shot. I love it! I must figure out how to make it!

I think I've got a solid idea of the malts, mash and hops....

This style seems to go off the rails once we start talking about how to ferment the darn thing!

I have an incubator that can get up to 200F that holds a 1 gallon carboy and a 7 cubic foot freezer that can also heat up over 100F.

I was thinking of going with a 1 gallon sour mash and then fermenting the remaining 4.5 gallons with a Kolsh yeast then mixing the sour mash back in.

Many of the threads I have read seem to indicate that you need 1.5 gallons of sour mash, so i'm wondering, can this actually be accomplished with only 1 gallon of sour mash?

If all else fails I can just rack onto some rubarb and go from there.....

Any thoughts or ideas on best sour mash techniques that use either 1 full sour mash or do a mix would be great!!!!!!!!!!!

:fro:

Thank you so much for any help!

 

[Indianhead_Brewer]

Here's a pretty epic Berliner thread that started last year.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=385934

If anything is to be said for this style is that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

 

[dantheman13]

Many of the threads I have read seem to indicate that you need 1.5 gallons of sour mash, so i'm wondering, can this actually be accomplished with only 1 gallon of sour mash?

I've never made BW using a sour mash, but the difference between a 1 and 1.5 gallon sour mash seems negligible. Time is also a big factor, so you can try letting the 1 gallon sour mash go for an extra day. Since you are talking about blending instead of souring the entire mash, I would imagine that this will be a trial and error sort of thing that you will have to dial in over a couple of batches.

 

[Calder]

For a decent BW, you need to sour all of it. If you only sour a gallon, and then mix it with 4 gallons of normal beer, you dilute the sourness by the same amount.

 

[TipsySaint]

I'm putting this guy together tomorrow am. Right now the plan is to do a full mash and then add the uncrushed grains to the finished wort, find some way to bring down the o2 amount depending on the container (maybe a 5 gallon bucket and the balloon method) and then taste test every day. when it hits the sweet spot, rack and boil for 15 minutes (with light hop), chill, pitch kolsch yeast. Finish brew as normal....

Should be interesting....

 

[TipsySaint]

threw 1/2 lb of 2 row in and heated to about 37c and boom! sour! efficiency sucked though... like 65%......

soured up quite a bit in about 4 days.

pitched kolsch II yeast starter and we are off to the races!

Should this be a young beer?

 

[TipsySaint]

Ok so i did a second round and this time i didn't chill at all before the carboy, straight from mash tun to carboy and into 100 F fermentation chamber, will that totally screw me? HELP!!!