Berliner Weisse Mystery Revealed

[ChrisKennedy]

You could just wrap it in a heating blanket or something, though those can get quite a bit hotter.

You can sour a mash as high as 130F. I would just try to keep it as warm as you can, preferably in that 100F-115F range.

I would also consider going longer than 36hrs. Using a corny keg, I recently sour mashed for 96hrs with no noticeable funk in the nose or taste of the final product. The pH took that long to level off.

[brewinhard]

Chris,

do you remember what the pH finished at for that one? I am really looking forward to tapping into my 15 gallons of various BW I have aging in kegs. They are going on anywhere from 4-6 mos right now. I did add some sour dregs to them just to funk and sour them up even more though. I guess i am a cheater....

[thatguy314]

Can you pitch a commercial lacto culture into the mash to speed up the FX of a sour mash?

[jwatkins56550]

Very interesting & insightful. How long before you will taste it again? I would like to learn the rate of increase in tartness compared to time, from your batch, to judge my batch.

I would imagine I will try to pretend it doesn't exist for at least a month. According to Wyeast, it "generally requires 3-6 months of aging to fully develop flavor characteristics." I'm also a wuss when it comes to popping open fermentors more than I absolutely have to, so I doubt I'll taste it any more than monthly.
.

Ahh the beauties of souring in a corny keg...so easy to sample...

[ChrisKennedy]

Chris,

do you remember what the pH finished at for that one? I am really looking forward to tapping into my 15 gallons of various BW I have aging in kegs. They are going on anywhere from 4-6 mos right now. I did add some sour dregs to them just to funk and sour them up even more though. I guess i am a cheater....

Which one? The sour mashed one? I have my notes at home, but I believe that the final pH was 3.7 of the sour mashed one. But the sour mash was done at room temperature, so I don't know if I could get a few more points lower if I was warmer or not. I am going to rebrew it in the next couple of days and will keep it at around 110F to see if I can get a lower pH faster.

Can you pitch a commercial lacto culture into the mash to speed up the FX of a sour mash?

I am not sure any increased speed (which I would assume would be pretty slight) would be worth the expense for the culture.

[Alchemywunderkid]

So I just pulled a sample of my 4 month old BW that used Wyeast's 3191 Berliner Weisse Blend. It has a mild tartness and gentle grainy/bretty aroma. It's quite thin on the mouthfeel side, but I would have expected that. The aftertaste reminds me of extremely dilute lemon water in that it has an lightly puckering astringency. This is my first sour beer, so I'm stretching for descriptions for an in-progress beer.

I'll let it go for a few more months as I'd like to see a more aggressive sourness develop. Plus, I really don't want to go back to bottling so I'll put that off for as long as I can stand.

Anyone else have a beer going with this blend? I'll update again in a few months when I pull another sample.

[jm]

Anyone else have a beer going with this blend? I'll update again in a few months when I pull another sample.

Mine is coming up on six months. Hadn't looked at it or sampled it 3 or 4 months so I just did. Holy cow the pellicle on that thing is getting thick. Taste is not so impressive; total yawn to be honest. The other half of that batch got some regular old yeast (German ale I think) and a pack each of Lacto. and Pedio. and is getting quite sour already.

[Brandon]

Mine did really nice. Won a 1st place with it at 5 months old. Still have 5 gallons of it in another carboy. I did a no boil mash hop version. I think it was a 1.034 OG that fermented to 1.001