Yogurt Fast Sour - Sauerweißbier

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Schlenkerla

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I'm making my first sour. A Berliner Weisse using a Milk-The-Funk Technique. Yogurt Souring

Milk The Funk - Alternative Bacteria Souring
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I made a 1L starter and I'm incubating the starter in my "Dash Yogurt Maker". The thing keeps the starter at 100'F

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My culture has 6 oz of Yogurt. Which is Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, Streptoccocus Thermophilus, Bifidus, Lactobacillus Casei. It should sour quickly. :D

Favorite-Products-Fage-Greek-Yogurt.jpg

I plan to mash my 6 lb 50/50 grain bill of pale malt and wheat malt tomorrow and sour it at 110F for 24 hours in a 5 gallon cooler. Come Monday I'll check the pH and do a full boil. A total 15 minutes with an oz of Mt Hood. Then chill and pitch US-05. In week from Monday I'll be racking to a keg.

I'm doing pre-sour and then boil so I don't have the risk of introducing lactobacillus to my fermentors, auto syphon, kegs or keezer.

I knew there was a reason I picked up that Yogurt Maker last year for $4.99 at Kohls.

:rockin:
 
Make sure not to leave much head space in the cooler or that air will funk up everything something serious. FWIW I don't use any hops in my Berliners. Hop flavor/aroma and bitterness all go against the style so I don't see the point. I'd rather save them for something else but thats me. Good luck on your first sour!
 
Make sure not to leave much head space in the cooler or that air will funk up everything something serious. FWIW I don't use any hops in my Berliners. Hop flavor/aroma and bitterness all go against the style so I don't see the point. I'd rather save them for something else but thats me. Good luck on your first sour!

I'm testing the cooler for holding temp. With 5 gallons it has about 1" from the top.

I'm planning to boil, chill and pitch the starter at about 115 - 120F.
 
I'm testing the cooler for holding temp. With 5 gallons it has about 1" from the top.

I'm planning to boil, chill and pitch the starter at about 115 - 120F.

You can lay saran wrap on top to help act as a barrier. I sour in a carboy so I don't know how well it works but I see a lot of people mention it in their process.
 
I use a keg. Swap the dip tube and gas in tube then you can purge CO2 from the bottom up to force out all of the oxygen. Heterofermentative strains of lacto produce CO2, so you would want to keep the pressure relief open or do like I did and drill a hole in a keg kid to attach an airlock.
 
I use a keg. Swap the dip tube and gas in tube then you can purge CO2 from the bottom up to force out all of the oxygen. Heterofermentative strains of lacto produce CO2, so you would want to keep the pressure relief open or do like I did and drill a hole in a keg kid to attach an airlock.

The cooler is full to the brim. maybe 1/4" from the top. I have a hole drilled in the lid wiith a thermometer in it.

Does this put a a lot of gas or build up a good deal of pressure?
 
Turned the heat on in my apartment not hot enough to keep lacto happy..

The temp dropped from 120 to 110 overnight. Heat is at 90F
 
The cooler is full to the brim. maybe 1/4" from the top. I have a hole drilled in the lid wiith a thermometer in it.



Does this put a a lot of gas or build up a good deal of pressure?


You are probably fine with that, I doubt the cooler seals airtight like a keg would. I also use Omega Lacto blend which can be used at room temp, so makes it a lot easier. I just pitch at around 110-110, then let it fall and check PH every 4-6 hours until it gets to where I want it.
 
Temp drop over 8 hours is only 1°F so this should be pretty good for the weekend. It's at 109°F now.

It's 92°F in my apartment. 80°F outside.

I'd do anything for beer. :p
 
Good! Use your funkinating feelings, boy. Let the funk flow through you!

Is that a star wars spoofed line?

I'm gonna do a sour kraut next, using red cabbage along with a grain bill that's gonna make it red.

I'm gonna call it "Rot Sauerbier". Which is German for red sour beer

Somehow the rot seams appropriate in more than one way. LOL
 
Is that a star wars spoofed line?

I'm gonna do a sour kraut next, using red cabbage along with a grain bill that's gonna make it red.

I'm gonna call it "Rot Sauerbier". Which is German for red sour beer

Somehow the rot seams appropriate in more than one way. LOL
I'm gonna need you to start a thread about, ok?
 
Just stopped in to check my apartment... (wasn't there to bask in the heat and hang with my new lacto friend)

96°F inside 71°F outside.

The wort is at 96°F too.

Without opening the cooler, I detect no funk, I'm guessing that's a good thing.

I was going to yank out the thermometer and dribble some wort onto some pH paper but the my pH paper is for checking mash pH. Way to high 4.6 to 6.2. Guess I should have checked this.

Seems like it might be ready for tonight's boil off.

I've done yogurt this way and it never smelled, so I'm thinking it soured.

When I bust my wort out tonight will it be obvious it's soured if it doesn't smell?

I'm gonna try to find 3.5 to 4.5 pH paper at the LHBS.
 
When I'm done souring using Omega's lacto you can definitely pick up a little aroma. Its subtle but reminds me of an Arnold Palmer. Taste will tell you better than aroma though. Hopefully the air that got in when opening it up doesn't cause any issues before you get it to the kettle.

Edit - just realized you said you didnt open the cooler. Ignore that last part lol.
 
you, sir, are a model of dedication.

but there must be a more efficient way of heating that thing that doesn't involve heating the whole apartment...

I made a 1 liter starter and it was heated to 105, and pitched it into a wort that was about 120. The 5 gallon cylindrical cooler holds heat pretty well from what I can tell.

I turned the heat on since I wasn't gonna be home. My apartment is on the 3rd floor and has a flat roof, so it gets pretty hot without a.c. running.

I could put a aquarium tank heater in the thing. It was a last minute thought to turn on the heat.

My guess with a good active starter it soured in 24hrs. Milk The Funk says so too. Probably no additional heat required.

I didn't think the furnace would have to work all that hard either. Not nearly as cheap as shutting off the a.c..
 
Was looking online, I don't know that aquarium heaters go to 100°F. Oh well.

I got me some 3 to 5 pH paper test strips, some carapils and some DME for the boil.

Read that lacto kills the head retention, recommendations are to steep with carapils or add DME to get that back.

Do you guys do the same with your soured brews? Steep or add DME.
 
FTR - My wort was definitely soured and starting to get some weird funk going.

I started to recognize the funk from a one of my DIY Yeast from my Des Moines. It had the starting of a stringy gunk on top of my wort.

Brew kettle is heating up.
 
Once the butyric acid has been produced your pretty much stuck with it. If it's feint you might be able to use Brett to turn it into pineapple notes. Not sure which Brett does it or how to handle it but it might be worth looking into.
 
Once the butyric acid has been produced your pretty much stuck with it. If it's feint you might be able to use Brett to turn it into pineapple notes. Not sure which Brett does it or how to handle it but it might be worth looking into.

Ok thanks. That's what I was worried about...
 
I tasted it and it wasn't bad, just noting it had that an off aroma.

The boil kind of stinks... But I might be a little overly sensitive about the smell.

In the room it stinks, but right over the kettle is not bad almost undetectable. Fingers crossed.
 
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..... :D

View attachment 1469935107775.jpg
 
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!
 
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:
vV7ltpQ.jpg


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


The starter after ~36 hours of fermentation. pH dropped to 3.8
O4tZwSy.jpg


Mashing the grains (I was aiming for 152'F)
RA7pRaL.jpg


~1.024 at 127'F (my refractometer read 8 brix). OG is somewhere in the 1.032 to 1.034 range
0I1C8TP.jpg


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
iEmVcBp.jpg


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.
jnnWYjM.jpg


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.
 
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
 
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 - 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.
 
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:
ixkRbRv.jpg


The wort, post souring:
JHQFBVU.jpg


In the fermentation chamber:
BNL5Sgw.jpg
 
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
 
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