Any idea what the normal yeast strain is in the blend? I'm thinking about making a BW this summer (first try with sour beers), and I actually enjoy a slight touch of hefe yeast character underlying the acidity. Any suggestions?
I recall reading somewhere very reliable that the yeast used is WLP029.
Apparently it wasn't too reliable! The description on their site indicates a German Hefe yeast. Chris White just finally got back to me indicating that it is NOT WLP029, and is in fact a proprietary strain. If I understood him correctly, it is a strain that they simply don't offer in a yeast-only product without lacto.
Perhaps it is sourced from one of the two Berlin breweries still making a Berliner Weisse, although that is just hopeful speculation. I suppose it could also be sourced from a foreign craft/revivalist version, although judging by the sources used for other style-specific yeasts, this seems to be even unlikelier. So maybe it's just a great hefeweizen yeast from a brewery that doesn't even make the style... but that doesn't make a ton of sense as they already offer great examples of hefe yeast.
So I'd say it's either the first scenario where it's from an authentic brewer (or as authentic as you'll find today), or it IS one of their currently offered strains, and I misunderstood Chris White. But the only way I possibly could have, given the specificity of the question, would be if his response was deliberately ambiguous (ignoring the context of the whole thing) in order to mislead, but from hearing him speak, reading his book, and everything else I know about the guy, I find this to be unlikely, but if anybody knows something about the guy that I clearly don't that would support the idea of him not just keeping the source of the yeast a secret (which is very understandable), but being totally misleading to a point just short of being able to be called an outright liar, that would be interesting to know, and would make it all the more likely that it's just a hefe straim they already offer.
I see HopNuggets primaried his batch for three weeks. How long are you other guys keeping this thing in primary?
Whats the verdict for extended secondary versus bottle aging?
Bulk aging keeps it far more consistent, which is helpful for gauging the sourness of the whole batch to determine appropriate consumption time. If you are priming with sugar, you are also creating a slightly more alcoholic environment, only half a point ABV or so, but lacto still don't like it, and that's in addition to the added acidity from dissolved carbon dioxide, and that carbonic acid will be present with any method of carbing. And wasting an entire bottle every time you want to test where it's at seems rather wasteful.
As for my fermentor times, I brewed this in early February, and racked into a glass carboy, hoping to bottle by mid-June and drink early July. Although the reality is that planning for a certain amount of time in the secondary (or wherever you plan to let it age/sour) is a great recipe for a lousy beer. You taste it every once in a while, and when the sourness is at a level you really like, then it's ready. Just like yeast, bacteria don't give a damn how long you think they should take, or you want them to take - the question of how long always makes me cringe. You know from reading the posts that it takes months, and half a year is not unusual... the most accurately questions of this nature can be answered are still, at best, very wide ranges of ball-park figures, as in whether it's a matter of days, weeks, months, or years, and the thread should have made it plainly clear that we're talking a matter of months here.
Learn to listen to your beer, it will tell you when it's ready! Trying to reverse these roles and attempting to tell IT when it's ready is never going to work, trust me.