Berliner Weiss

[sdp07d]

Background on the beer:

I brewed a Berliner Weiss with fresh fruit that was frozen and pureed. It was a no boil and chilled down to ~90 degrees. I then infected it with fresh grain in order to simulate a sour mash and slowly ramped the fermenter from 90-110 over the next 4 days. The temp was then dropped quickly to 70 degrees and safale 05 was added. After another week of fermentation, it was racked into a secondary. Within a few days of arriving in the secondary, a white film began to form on top. This film formed and went away soon after. I took a sample yesterday with a friend and it tasted great so I had decided it might be time to bottle. When I woke up today, the white film is back, I'm assuming from oxygen being introduced. The white film is thin and flaky. It's been two months since it was brewed.

Is this beer ready to be bottled? or does it need to age longer?

 

[steinsato]

subscirbed, I too have a berliner weisse that has been in secondary for about 2 months now. It's been 3 months since I brewed it. Never did get a real good pelicle on it but the taste is there. I may add more lacto at some point because it isn't quite sour enough for my tastes.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

It's probably lacto. When you threw in the grain, you added lacto and anything else that was on the grain (e.g. other bacteria, mold spores, other fungus, etc.) and during those four days all of those critters had time to build up a little colony. Although the lacto and later yeast may have won and fermented the fermentable sugars, the other critters you introduced may have had the opportunity to rise up and start consuming unfermentable sugars.

 

[Oldsock]

What is the gravity currently? As the previous poster mentioned fermenting with unknown bugs can be a bit tricky since you can’t be sure what is and is not in there. If the gravity in >1.004 I’d be hesitant to bottle this early, most of my Berliners end up pretty close to 1.000.

 

[ryane]

I have to agree with oldsock, it doesnt take many pts off the FG to over carb bottles and create grenades

When adding grain to the beer you introduce many things other than sacch,lacto,brett, there are many other oxidative yeasts that are very hardy and will chew up all kinds of normally unfermentable sugars