sour hefe recipe input???

[coreygrado]

so i was thinking about making a sour hefe so to speak, critique my recipe please! also, ill be pitching Saccharomyces, but i want to sour it or possibly use brett. please help. recipe below. its pretty much a kellerweis clone with kellerweis yeast harvested from the bottles themself. any help or input would be awesome! thanks!

6.5# 2-row
4# wheat malt
.5# Munich malt
.5oz Pearle at 60 mins

Mash 60 mins at 152.

What bugs and when should i pitch?

 

[coreygrado]

also was thinking about adding some orange peel to it? any inputs, never done a sour wheat or anything of the sort. just 100% brett beers and such. thanks!

 

[metic]

I've never done anything like this, but something that might be worth thinking about: if the yeast is a typical hefe yeast, there is a good chance that it is a POF+ strain that will produce phenols like 4VG (clove) etc. Any brettanomyces will probably accentuate these, or transform them into the more medicinal/smokey/barnyardy flavours people associate with brett, so you'll end up with a very funky and phenolic beer. Maybe that's what you're after, in which case go for it: a ferulic acid rest will probably increase them even further. If you're looking for something more fruity, or just something more restrained, you might consider using a different sacch strain.

 

[coreygrado]

Ok cool. What other sacch strain would you suggest?


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[coreygrado]

Or should I go with what I had planned and pitch some lacto at the same time as the sacch? Never really messed with lacto so help me out here.. Haha


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[coreygrado]

gonna just go with a berliner weisse with that kellerweis yeast. hopefully it turns out good. ill let everyone know. still would like inputs. just pitch lacto and pitch the keller a couple days afterwards. ill go with a vial of WLP677 go with a 1L starter for a couple days on a warm stirplate. what do you think? still think the lacto and the hefe yeast will produce too much POF? thanks alot!!!!

 

[sweetcell]

Do not put the Lacto on a stir plate. Lacto doesn't like oxygen.

 

[Rob_B]

I've done a 1 gallon test batch of a sour Hefe. Just took a gallon off a batch of a pretty basic Hefe that was fermented with WB-06 then pitched bottle dregs from a Jolly Pumpkin beer, it turned out great. I think your recipe looks fine for something like this.


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[metic]

gonna just go with a berliner weisse with that kellerweis yeast. hopefully it turns out good. ill let everyone know. still would like inputs. just pitch lacto and pitch the keller a couple days afterwards. ill go with a vial of WLP677 go with a 1L starter for a couple days on a warm stirplate. what do you think? still think the lacto and the hefe yeast will produce too much POF? thanks alot!!!!

Lacto shouldn't increase the phenols, but as sweetcell said, you don't want to put the lacto on a stir plate. Grow it up separately in some apple juice.

The POF+ thing might not be as big a factor as I suggested: Jolly Pumpkin's Weizen Bam sounds like the kind of beer you're trying to brew, and the one time I tried it it wasn't overly funky. I was going from things that Chad Yakobson has said about controlling flavours from brett (see p.7 and 35).

 

[coreygrado]

Ok. Thanks! I meant I had a heated stir plate that I would put it on and not stir the stir bar and pitch the sacch a couple days beforehand correct?


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[metic]

pitch the sacch a couple days beforehand correct?

Do you mean pitch the sacch into the starter, or into the beer? Depending on how sour a beer you want to make, you might want to think about pitching the lactobacillus first, or pitching a large amount alongside your sacch: this will get you a pretty sour beer, like a berliner weisse. If you're looking for something less pronounced, you could pitch the sacch first and the lacto afterwards: you'll still get some tartness/sourness (especially if you're pitching something aggressive like dregs from JP along with the lacto), but it might take a while.

 

[sweetcell]

might be worth reading up what other folks' experiences have been with that strain of lacto. i seem to remember hearing that many, if not most, brewers thought the lacto from WY and WL to be pretty tame (read: underwhelming). if you're planning on making a traditional berliner with traditional levels of sourness, you'll probably want to pitch the lacto first and let it run for several days until desired tartness is achieved - then add the sacch.

 

[coreygrado]

Is it ok to leave my lacto starter in the hot sun during the day ? In San Diego it's been hitting about 90...


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