Yogurt Fast Sour - Sauerweißbier

[Schlenkerla]

I've heard that post souring boil can look and smell pretty weird.

Posted in your sour kraut gose thread, after reading the whole thing today.

I'm dreaming of taking polish sausage, splitting it, filling it with red kraut and wrapping it tightly with bacon and baking it.....

Mocking up a tri-plane.....

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[Schlenkerla]

Drinking my Berliner Weisse Sour. Turned out good! At the moment a little flat but its only been on gas 24 hours. However its cold and has a clean sour taste. I'm happy with the results!

 

[Schlenkerla]

Picture of this beer in a Prankster Goblet. - This is 3 weeks from when I made the starter!!!!

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[TandemTails]

I figure this is as good of a thread as any to post my progress as well. I'm using a very similar idea to Schlenkerla's original post. I changed a few things up and maybe some others can try or post their own different techniques.

The goal is to make a 2 gallon batch of Berliner Weisse using the yogurt starter method and then sour the wort before boiling and pitching US-05.

The method I used to create a starter can be found here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=587744. One change though... I used lemon juice instead of lactic acid to drop the pH of the starter.

The carbonated water and type of yogurt I used:

The starter in a kettle with a heater and temp controller set to 105'F

The starter after ~36 hours of fermentation. pH dropped to 3.8

Mashing the grains (I was aiming for 152'F)

~1.024 at 127'F (my refractometer read 8 brix). OG is somewhere in the 1.032 to 1.034 range

Filled two 1 gallon carboys to the absolute top to keep any air out and had some extra wort so I filled a 64oz growler about 95% and then topped off with carbonated water to purge oxygen

Put it all in an electric smoker hooked up to a temp controller set at 118'F (the coils stay warm for a while and shoot the temp about 5-10'F over target which is why it's set a little low). I'm aiming to keep it around 120'F for 3 days.

The pH of the wort to start with was 5.5. After the wort sours to the 3.8 range I'll do a 15 minute boil to kill the lacto, adding about 7g of my homegrown cascade hops. I'll then cool and pitch US-05. After high krausen I'm planning on racking off about a gallon and leaving it alone and then to the rest of the batch i'll add 3-4 lbs of apricots I picked and froze from a tree in our yard.

 

[sancycling]

Interested in reading more. I'm drinking a Berliner Weiss kettle soured with Swanson's Lacto Plantarum. Would like to try the yougurth method to compare

 

[Schlenkerla]

TandemTails - Good Idea to use carbonated water.

I saw you used lemon juice to lower your starter pH. Why did you think this was necessary? Just curious.

You posted a good follow up of what I did. I hope your beer tastes as good as mine. I will do a fruited weisse next. I wanted to see the what plain yogurt weisse is like taste-wise. You would never guess yogurt by the solid sour taste.

 

[TandemTails]

TandemTails - Good Idea to use carbonated water.

I saw you used lemon juice to lower your starter pH. Why did you think this was necessary? Just curious.

You posted a good follow up of what I did. I hope your beer tastes as good as mine. I will do a fruited weisse next. I wanted to see the what plain yogurt weisse is like taste-wise. You would never guess yogurt by the solid sour taste.

I did a lot of reading before starting this brew and came across a post that said lowering the pH to 4.5 helps the lacto take hold and prevents other bugs from getting a start. I'm not sure how necessary it was, but squeezing a little lemon juice into the starter isn't a very time consuming task, haha.

 

[Schlenkerla]

Thanks, That's a good idea.

 

[TandemTails]

Just took my sour wort experiment out of the electric smoker, gave it a 20 minute boil (adding 7g of homegrown cascade hops at 15 minutes) and then cooled to 77'F to pitch the US-05 I made i starter of two days ago (poured half into a jar for later use).

I added half a gallon to a 1 gallon glass jug and 2 gallons to a fermentation bucket. I'll leave the half gallon alone and then add about 4 lbs of apricots to the 2 gallon bucket after high krausen.

3 days at 120'F dropped the pH from 5.55 to 3.75. So far the taste and aroma is extremely clean and fresh. No off flavors or aromatics at all. The boil brought the OG up to 1.038. Really looking forward to trying this after fermentation!

Measuring out the hops:

The wort, post souring:

In the fermentation chamber:

 

[Kalman1021]

I used Nancy's plain organic yogurt in combination with a 1.040 light pilsner malt (DME), kettle soured in a 32oz growler at 104°F for 36 hours. Mashed in, extracted and put that culture in the carboy ( I kept the wort at around 90°F) and let that sour for 48 hours. Then I just pasteurized it at a boil for 10 minutes, then proceeded with my normal brewcess. Hope yours turned out good

 

[TandemTails]

Just added 3 lb, 11 oz of frozen apricots from the tree in our yard. I added them to a large muslin sack and then did a quick starsan dunk and added directly to the fermentation bucket.

OG was 1.038. Current gravity is 1.010 (just over 3% ABV) after 48 hours of fermentation. I'm estimating it'll drop another couple of points which should put me right around 3.5% ABV

I'm going to let this sit undistrubed for a week and then i'll prime and bottle.

 

[Schlenkerla]

That bag looks like carrots!

 

[burninator]

@TandemTails I'm so glad to see I'm not the only making beer in old icing buckets. :rockin:

 

[TandemTails]

@TandemTails I'm so glad to see I'm not the only making beer in old icing buckets. :rockin:

Can't beat free

They work fine if you're only going to ferment in them for a few weeks. I like to rack off into glass if i'm going to age or secondary a mead or cider though.

 

[TandemTails]

Well, adding the apricots kicked up fermentation again over night. Woke up to some beer on the top of my fermenter and my airlock full of murky liquid. At least it didn't really start gushing and fill my fermentation chamber or something. At least the smell is pleasant

 

[burninator]

Can't beat free

They work fine if you're only going to ferment in them for a few weeks. I like to rack off into glass if i'm going to age or secondary a mead or cider though.

Yep, a portion of every sour beer I brew lately goes into one of these buckets for a few days or weeks, with fruit or dry hops.

 

[Schlenkerla]

The other day, I think Monday, I drank my sauer bier with tablespoon of Oregon blueberry pie filling in every glass. Dropped it in the goblet and filled the sucker. Almost killed a can of pie filling...LOL

I was feelin' no pain Monday night. I woke up thinking its Tuesday already..... WTF happened.

 

[Schlenkerla]

This beer is quickly becoming my new favorite beer. Sour, light, fizzy, and refreshing in this summer heat.

 

[Schlenkerla]

My Berliner Weisse

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