Started my first berliner

[ChrisKennedy]

I am not sure that is possible. As far as I have read, it is a pretty even conversion of percent sugar into percent lactic acid. As a result, if the Lacto d fermented 5P (which is roughly 5% sugar), you would have 5% lactic acid. 1% lactic acid is considered extremely tart.

I am thinking something else is working with the lacto. Can you explain your procedures?

 

[ryane]

jgln
Hey man no worries, I meant the comment to be a bit more tongue and cheek, guess Im not real good at doing that in a post

I have to agree with chriskennedy though, something else is going on in your BW, 1032 to 1011 lacto only?!?! was this a no boil recipe?

 

[lithy]

Mine has just carbonated and I'm going to let it sit a couple more weeks but it is already fantastic. Recipe courtesy of JoeMcPhee at Ratebeer

4lbs Pils Malt
4lbs Wheat Malt
0.5 oz Hallertau hops.

Remove 0.5 lbs of the total malt bill.
Protein rest at 120 for 30 min
Add hops raise to mash at 154 for 60 minutes
Mash out at 175 for 10 minutes
Collect 6 gallons
Cool and split into two buckets 1.5 gal and 4.5 gal
Pitch a packet of Nottingham with the 4.5 gal and ferment around 60
Dump the unmashed grain into the 1.5 gal and keep covered as close to 90 as possible
I left both for a week, the souring batch should be quite gross looking and very sour. Strain through cheesecloth and combine with the 4.5 gal batch. Let sit 2 more days and transfer to secondary.
Bottle after a week at 3atm.
OG 1.031 FG 1.006

It is a lovely substitute for lemonade as far as I'm concerned. I came a little short on my OG and mine fermented all the way down to 1.003. It will get the body most from the carbonation.

 

[jgln]

jgln
Hey man no worries, I meant the comment to be a bit more tongue and cheek, guess Im not real good at doing that in a post

I have to agree with chriskennedy though, something else is going on in your BW, 1032 to 1011 lacto only?!?! was this a no boil recipe?

I kind of took it that way but I think your comment above is not for me someone else, Evan I think.

 

[iamjonsharp]

Anybody doing a berliner with using just lacto strain figure out whether or not it was also producing alcohol (which I suppose would make it not simply just a pure lacto strain)? Just curious...

 

[PseudoChef]

Anybody doing a berliner with using just lacto strain figure out whether or not it was also producing alcohol (which I suppose would make it not simply just a pure lacto strain)? Just curious...

ohiobrewtus has one with just lacto pitched, but I don't think there's any way to determine if there is any alcohol produced without some sort of mass spec or something.

 

[jumpjet2k]

I brewed 3 gallons of BW on May 30th and had the same gravity thing... OG was 1.033, and after a few days of just the lacto sitting on it, tonight it was at 1.010 or so. It even looked like a krausen had formed, based on the trub stuck on the sides / top of the fermenter. I guess it could've been a spontaneous wild yeast fermentation, since (correct me if I'm mistaken) the lacto itself wouldn't do a whole lot to inhibit a wild yeast from doing its thing.

 

[Ryan_PA]

I just moved mine to a new carboy to condition, the gravity was at 1.008. I had a healthy quality check too, for my first berliner (and my first sour) I think I am on to something here. While it is lacking a little sourness that I would have hoped for, it is pretty close to the one I remember from last summer. It is super crisp, light and hazy, and there is an apparent sourness. I was really hoping for an o-ring puckering sourness, instead I have a nice acidic slap of the tonsils. I do not think it will devlop any more acidity naturally. I had thought I would just add lactic acid at kegging if I needed to add sourness, but I'm not gonna. I am going to let this one ride out as is.

If I had to do it over (which I will for sure), I would have taken a gallon or two of the wort, and pitched some aciduated malt on it and let it do its thing for at least a week. I would do the other 3-4 gallons the exact same way as I did for this batch.

Once kegged (or bottled) I will report back with my final thoughts on this one.

 

[ChrisKennedy]

I just moved mine to a new carboy to condition, the gravity was at 1.008. I had a healthy quality check too, for my first berliner (and my first sour) I think I am on to something here. While it is lacking a little sourness that I would have hoped for, it is pretty close to the one I remember from last summer. It is super crisp, light and hazy, and there is an apparent sourness. I was really hoping for an o-ring puckering sourness, instead I have a nice acidic slap of the tonsils. I do not think it will devlop any more acidity naturally. I had thought I would just add lactic acid at kegging if I needed to add sourness, but I'm not gonna. I am going to let this one ride out as is.

If I had to do it over (which I will for sure), I would have taken a gallon or two of the wort, and pitched some aciduated malt on it and let it do its thing for at least a week. I would do the other 3-4 gallons the exact same way as I did for this batch.

Once kegged (or bottled) I will report back with my final thoughts on this one.

Go out and buy yourself a bottle of Lindeman's Cuvee Rene. It is an awesome sour and I have had good results in my Berliner Weiss with the dregs. I added the dregs to 5 gallons of a Berliner that wasn't sour at all, while the other 5gals of the same batch had some sourness. In about 1.5-2 weeks, the keg that wasn't sour at all was a bit more sour than the other fermenter.

 

[scinerd3000]

its ironic- i just came back into town (media) to go to a wedding since i used to live here and at iron hill tonight they had a weiss. I thought it was great...it has inspired me to go try and brew this...can anyone tell me why the decoctions and also how long this needs to sit with the pelicle to become adequately sour. I have no experience with sour beers whatsoever but i would love to try this.

 

[Ryan_PA]

Yeah, that is the same one I had it at last year, out on the patio.

I did not do a decoction for this one, but I would imagine it is done to modify the flavor and maybe add some more complex sugars for the bugs.

There is no pelicle with a BW because of the type of bugs used. I am not a sour expert, but I believe it is formed by brett, and since the BW is mainly soured by lacto d, it should not crust over.

 

[flyangler18]

Lactobacillus will most definitely form a pellicle.

My BW uses European Ale and L. delbrueckii

 

[ryane]

Not sure what you have in there, but it isnt all lacto, It looks like you have some sort of oxidative yeast in there,

The only reason a pellicle forms is becasue the bugs like small amounts of 02, so they form at the surface where they may get some, lacto on the other hand doesnt really care one way or the other, so it grows throughout the wort

Did you add dregs etc to this? Whats your recipe, I always love hearing about others experiences with wild beers


Decoctions add a lot of flavor in a really light beer like a berliner, I really suggest you do one if you make the beer, afterwards youll really be able to understant what a decoction brings to a beer

 

[scinerd3000]

so essentially when the pellical drops is it considered done and does the sourness change over time for this type of beer? i also know they have to age rediculous amounts of time to get the desired level of sourness but should i chose to age in bottle or kegs will it continue to sour over time?

 

[Ryan_PA]

Lactobacillus will most definitely form a pellicle.

Well that is definitely a pellicle, but I am not sure that it was caused by lacto. I thought brett was the primary bug in developing a pellicle. I would not mind being proven wrong, but even Vinnie C seems to back this notion up in his PowerPoint presentation here: http://www.beertown.org/events/hbc/presentations/VCPresentation.pdf

For example:

Brett forms a pellicle- a lumpy white film yeast that coats the top of the beer in fermentation. The yeast cells form chains that can float on the top of beer making use of atmospheric oxygen, thus, Brett is an oxidizing yeast. The pellicle will form in the fermenting vessel (porous or non-porous) and help guard against oxidation during the long aging / fermentation time. The pellicle also guards against acetobacter.
Leave the pellicle in tact.
A pellicle can form in the bottle as well

There is a slide on Lacto, particularly lacto D, and there is no mention of pellicle forming at all. I would imagine if that was a charictoristic of the bug, Vinnie would have noted it.

Again, I may be wrong since I am making some leaps with my assumptions, but I am not convinced the pellicle in that better bottle is from lacto d.

 

[Evan!]

I got no pellicle in my b-weisse. I pitched less than half a tube of lacto-D into my wort, no sacch-C, and it fermented out in several days, looked like a normal ale fermentation, but without a thick krausen...just a collection of bubbles up top. Nothing even resembling a pellicle.

 

[flyangler18]

In my experience (and I've done two or three BW using the same recipe), Lactobacillus + Sacch will, given enough time, form a pellicle though it looks quite different from a Brett pellicle.

The picture posted above was after approximate 3-4 months of aging in secondary.

 

[scinerd3000]

what about the second question...how can you tell if its done? Assuming i dont have bret in the culture of lacto i use and i dont get a pellical, is there anything besides gravity to tell when its finished? What worries me are bottle bombs and that it wil attenuate below 1.003....

 

[flyangler18]

what about the second question...how can you tell if its done? Assuming i dont have bret in the culture of lacto i use and i dont get a pellical, is there anything besides gravity to tell when its finished? What worries me are bottle bombs and that it wil attenuate below 1.003....

Lactobacillus isn't a super attenuator like Brettanomyces, and it is inhibited by pH. Bottle bombs aren't a concern, in my opinion.

 

[scinerd3000]

Lactobacillus isn't a super attenuator like Brettanomyces, and it is inhibited by pH. Bottle bombs aren't a concern, in my opinion.

thank you- thats what i wanted to know.

Anyone who has bottled there- how has it aged in bottle? Does it stay good for a while or does it decline quickly since its wheat and low alcohol? I tend to take forever to go through my beers so i want to make sure this will stay good for a while...my hef turned kinda crapy since i took to long to drink them and i dont want to make that mistake again

 

[PseudoChef]

Only two Brett beers here, but I have never had a pellicle drop. One is going on 14+ months. I'm getting ready to say "f- it" and bottle 'er up.

 

[ryane]

thank you- thats what i wanted to know.

Anyone who has bottled there- how has it aged in bottle? Does it stay good for a while or does it decline quickly since its wheat and low alcohol? I tend to take forever to go through my beers so i want to make sure this will stay good for a while...my hef turned kinda crapy since i took to long to drink them and i dont want to make that mistake again

It does quite well in the bottle, all the berliners I have done get much better around the 3-4mos mark, as the meatiness from the wheat is starting to dissipate a bit then

 

[Ryan_PA]

In my experience (and I've done two or three BW using the same recipe), Lactobacillus + Sacch will, given enough time, form a pellicle though it looks quite different from a Brett pellicle.

The picture posted above was after approximate 3-4 months of aging in secondary.

It appears you are correct. I traded emails with Vinnie, and he essentially says the same as you:

Ryan,

Lacto does in time create a pellicle or at least a pellicle like cover over the beer. It will ferment sugar out, but, I’m not sure of how much if any alcohol production is created, I’ve seen Lacto only drop the SG of wort, but, at the time we didn’t have a lab so I couldn’t check for ABV in the lab. But, yes, it can drop the SG. It is actually a really good test to see how Lacto affects the flavor, you’ll see that it is a thin flavor, that is why I like Pedio as it is a richer flavor.

Take care,

Vinnie

The other point, about lacto and ABV is in responce to the post by Evan about if Lacto ferments.

I have to admit I was wrong in my previous post contradicting flyangler18. Hope this helps others.