Kettle soured Berliner weiss

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Sadu

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I'm having a go at my first sour and thought a Berliner Weiss would be an easy starting point. I'm kettle souring by tossing grain into the wort and leaving at 100f until pH drops to 3.4ish. This is a 1 gallon batch so I can afford to lose the pound of grain if something goes wrong. After souring in the kettle I will boil for 15 mins, add 4 IBU of hops then pitch s-05.

Question. Am I correct in thinking that all the sour bugs are killed in the boil I can follow normal sanitation practices on the cold side? Ie no problem using my normal plastic bucket and racking hoses etc?

Thanks in advance, apoligies if this is a dumb question.
 
Yes. You are correct. Technically, you don't even have to boil. Boiling is a great visual to let you know it's hot enough, but holding at 180° for 15 minutes is more than enough to kill the little buggers.

:mug:
 
Awesome, thank you.

It's been souring 9 hours now and the pH is at 5.3 (not sure what the original wort pH was but mash pH was 5.5). Seems like it hasn't really started. It got a bit hot overnight (115f), not sure if that affected anything.

I pitched another handful of different base malt in case the first lot wasn't crawling with critters. Guess I'll test again after work and see where things are at.

I suppose if I'm not getting any natural souring I can always add lactic acid and sour it that way, I understand it's not as good but would at least give me a baseline for comparison.
 
How reliable is it, really, to count on the grain to inoculate your wort with lacto? I'm planning my own Berliner and would love to get away with this.
 
How reliable is it, really, to count on the grain to inoculate your wort with lacto? I'm planning my own Berliner and would love to get away with this.

In Brewing Classic Styles this is listed as one of 3 methods, the advantages being more complex flavours than souring with lactic acid and the disadvantage is that it's harder to control the degree of sourness. And accidents can happen which require dumping the wort.

The other big advantage is that it doesn't require any flash liquid yeast pack.

The batch is costing me approx USD$1.50 (1 gallon) - so really if it doesn't work then no harm done and if it somehow tastes good then this is insanely good value. Even at 5 gallons you aren't going to cry too long if it's a dumper.

But since my last post (now 17 hours since pitching grains) the pH is down to 3.85 so the bugs are in there and working hard :rockin:
 
I couldn't get this to go any lower so I finished it off with some lactic acid. It's fermenting now.

Gotta say this extra souring step was FUN. Can't wait to see how this comes out and this recipe is about half the price of my next cheapest recipe.

What is a good next sour to move onto after this? Something that is ready in reasonable time and a logical next step?
 
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