Lactobacillus starter for berliner weisse

[Klickitat Jim]

I have my first 5335 starter going now. At about 48hrs it's foaming bright white big bubbles. Interesting stuff. I'm going to let it roll till Friday. I'm going with 50% pale 50% Munich, no bitter charge, just a couple ounces of Willamette at 10. Going to give the lactic a week at~ 80° then chill to 65° and pitch 1332.

[Ozwald]

Yesterday was brew day. We pitched the lacto starter in 2 of 3 carboys of the wort. Today the carboys are bubbling away, so either my lactobacillus got infected with yeast, or WY5335 will produce a krausen like foam and bubble.

A friend took the third carboy home to pitch and pitched yogurt whey instead of WY 5335. He's going to bring it back when it's time pitch the WY1007. could be interesting.

That made me chuckle. "Damn yeast is infecting my bacteria!"

[Bad Goat Brewing]

The krausen has fallen and there is only little air lock activity. I took a sample and pitched the brett today. I'm a bit dissapointed, it's not nearly as sour as i was hoping. My Apparent attention of 72% might be keeping some of the sour from coming through. hopefully i'll lose a couple more gravity points.

[cdburg]

How big was your starter? From what I've experienced, if you go much below what Jess Caudill recommends (1,000 ml starter for 5-7 days at 70F-80F), the Lacto has a hard time getting a good sourness in a decent amount of time. I've added raspberries or sour cherries to batches that didn't get sour enough. The acidity from the fruit helps the sourness, and it also adds complexity. That might be an option for you.

Right now, I'm enjoying mixing two Lacto primary batches - one fermented first with Wyeast 5335 Lacto then Wyeast 1007 German Ale with pureed raspberries added at high krausen and the other fermented first with Wyeast 5335 Lacto then The Yeast Bay's Beersel Brett blend. The Lacto and raspberry half has a lower pH, so there is more tartness, but the Brett half adds some complexity.

[Bad Goat Brewing]

Update if anyone is intrested.

The Yogurt way didn't turn out tart at all

When i first put the wyeast 5335 and Brett carboy on tap it was funky with a good tartness. Unfortunately, lot of the funk seems to have disappeared with the cold conditioning. It's still good, but the flavor too simple for my preferance. I need to work on getting the Brett to assert it's self more. next time I think I'll try pitching the brett with the ale yeast.

[Klickitat Jim]

I've read that lacto prefers simple sugars and reproduces much slower than sac yeast, so the next time I make a lacto starter I'm going to use 2L of 1.030 cane sugar syrup, non stir plate at about 90º for 7 days, then pitch the whole shebang rather than stalling and shocking it with the cold crash and decanting method.

[brewinhard]

I've read that lacto prefers simple sugars and reproduces much slower than sac yeast, so the next time I make a lacto starter I'm going to use 2L of 1.030 cane sugar syrup, non stir plate at about 90º for 7 days, then pitch the whole shebang rather than stalling and shocking it with the cold crash and decanting method.

I did not cold crash last time I made a starter with the lacto. Instead I just carefully decanted and added fresh wort on top and or pitched into my 5 gallons of wort. +1 to no stir plate and used an airlock instead to minimize oxygen. If you are only pitching 1 pack of lacto I would not start with a 2 L starter as that seems to be a lot of wort for a slow growing bacteria to tackle and lower the pH in a reasonable amount of time to inhibit other organisms from growing. I would do a 1 L starter first, let that go for 4-5 days at 90-95F, then decant and go to 2 L for another 5 days or so. Decant, and pitch.

[Bad Goat Brewing]

Update:

When i first bottled the Berliner I was pretty happy with it. It had good German malt flavor, but a little light on the tartness. I bottled it and put in a 60 degree basement hopping it would get a little more tart. Well it did, and it cleaned it's self up somehow. It taste like someone put lactic acid in a budwieser, its supper sour with almost no other flavor. It's pretty disappointing. not sure what happened, maybe the Brett dried the beer out and without that sweetness it's just bud-like acid bomb.

*edit* i just remembered I entered this beer in a homebrew comp over a month ago. It will be interesting to see the score on it if they ever mail out the score sheet.