Berliner Weisse

[Henning1966]

I am planning to do the same you have done in the next week junket just got all my stuff from austin homebrew last thursday. Spent the weekend visiting family so hopefully this week i will get the lacto starter made and the base beer done sunday.

[Junket]

Nice, Henning. Maybe we can do a swap if the beers come out tasty. Once cool thing about this BW method is that it makes for shorter (though more) brew days. Yesterday was a 15 minute boil with no hop additions, and I only had to cool down to 120, plus I left the wort in the kettle and didn't have to sanitize and rack to a fermenter. Then again, I'll need to do all that in a few days.

[brewinhard]

I brewed up JZ's BW earlier this spring complete with a 15 min boil and pitched European Ale yeast and 1 packet of Lactobacillus at the same time into the fermenter. After initial fermentiation subsided I racked the beer to a keg for aging and hoped for the lacto to take hold. I let it sit for about 3 months and only noticed a minor start towards sournress. Just finished the last of it (bottled) after about 5 months total time and the beer was a bit different from before but still no sharp sourness as is desired in this style. I think next time I will do a whole sour mash with at least 50% of my grains or maybe more and then ferment with some brett strain. Everytime I entered this beer into comps they always commented on how there was no brett aroma. Strange....I did not know brett was a part of a good BW.

JUNKET-

I understand you made a sour mash starter which you then added to your main mash. My question is this: did you add it back to all of your mashed grains and let it sit to sour well for a couple days or did you sparge your main mash and then add your soured starter to the runoff wort in your kettle and let that sit for a few days to sour? How did things go for you anyway?

[Junket]

Yeah, I don't think of Brett as a defining style characteristic of a Berliner Weisse. The BJCP guidelines assert that a mild Brett aroma and flavor is optional. Personally, I like the clean sourness that I've found in the BW's I've tasted. It's comparable to a good, fresh squeezed lemonade. I haven't yet found a BW with Brett. I have, however, experienced a comparable situation with Saisons - Brett is not a defining characteristic of that style either, but I have come across examples with some Brett, and I certainly did enjoy them. That doesn't make me look for Brett in all Saisons though.

I have noticed that many people (including some Brewcasters in the early days) confuse and/or lump together the characteristics of different "bugs and critters" - bacteria and "wild" yeasts. For example, I don't think that Brett on its own creates a very "sour" flavor; it is most noticably a unique barnyard characteristic that I don't exactly notice in products other than beer. Lacto, on the other hand, certainly does create flavor that is sour in the way that is similar to sourness in other foods and beverages.

Brewinhard - to answer your question:
I added the soured starter to the wort in the kettle after a 15 minute boil, not to the grains in the mash tun, for several reasons. My mash tun is anything but sanitized, and I know the nasty smell of spent grains that have not been dumped for a few days. I simultaneously didn't want to put my wort at risk in a funky mash tun, and I didn't want to make the mash tun more funky if the batch went bad. In addition, I figured that I could boil the wort (before adding the starter) for 15 minutes to sterilize, controlling/preventing other bugs and critters that the wort might have picked up during mash and lauter. I also wanted to keep the wort + sour starter as close to 120 F as possible, and I figured I could do that with a heating belt and SS kettle (my mash tun is an insulated cooler). I was totally wrong about this - I can only hit 90 F, but next time maybe I'll use an electric burner or something.

I'm 24 hours into the souring process, and the plastic wrap that was laying on the surface of the liquid has now bubbled up. I tried to sniff it to judge the sourness, and all I got was a sharp burn in the nose, like when you open an empty corny keg and immediately sniff it, getting a painful whiff of pure CO2 (anyone else do this...EVERY TIME?) So I'm guessing that I have some kind of vigorous anaerobic thing going on in there. Tomorrow I'll taste it and be prepared to boil to stop the Lacto action. That's when I'll hop it and pitch the ale yeast.

[HopRunner]

ive never had DMS in any of the ones ive done. I'd like to know why though

After reading this thread I went back and listened to the BW episode of the Jamil Show.

How come you can get away with using Pilsner malt and a 15 minute boil??? If it has to do with the bacteria then why did I boil my Flanders Red and Brown for 90+ minutes? I thought I did that to remove DMS.

If I add the Lacto culture first and then three or four days later add the yeast will there be a decent level of sourness in the beer by the time the yeast completes fermentation?

It would be rather cool to have a sour beer ready to drink in something close to a regular ale time line.

I'm glad you guys are doing this. I am very curious to read how things turn out.

[Phil]

i'm dyin here. they still haven't gotten oregon fruit puree back in stock at b3 so i had to brew a "normal" beer.

[Junket]

Update:

My souring wort has been sitting at around 90 degrees for 48 hours. It has clarified a bit (started out pretty milky) and there is a ring of scum around the kettle that looks almost like flocculated yeast. The taste is fantastic - a very clean sourness at just (or maybe just above) the level that I had hoped. There might be a hint of a sulfury or horsey wild yeast in there, but it's not in the forefront at all. There is already very little sweetness left, even though the wort had a really flavorful sweetness before I pitched the sour starter. The "beer" is almost drinkable right now; it tastes significantly cleaner than the starter (which was made from the same wort, but had a handful of unmashed grains thrown in).

So now I will boil for another 15 minutes to stop the lacto and wild stuff, add some hops, then will cool and pitch my European Ale yeast starter.

[mediumsk]

ive never had DMS in any of the ones ive done. I'd like to know why though

After reading this thread I went back and listened to the BW episode of the Jamil Show.

How come you can get away with using Pilsner malt and a 15 minute boil??? If it has to do with the bacteria then why did I boil my Flanders Red and Brown for 90+ minutes? I thought I did that to remove DMS.

If I add the Lacto culture first and then three or four days later add the yeast will there be a decent level of sourness in the beer by the time the yeast completes fermentation?

It would be rather cool to have a sour beer ready to drink in something close to a regular ale time line.

I'm glad you guys are doing this. I am very curious to read how things turn out.

yeah I don't know whats up with the 15 minute boil and no DMS. It's just one of those things i did with advice, sans testing.
I feel like flanders reds and browns probably benefit a bit from the long boil, color and melonoidin wise

my first berliner weisse was the BCS one and i was underwhelmed , I can't speak to competition results but i feel sour mashing to be a much more repeatable process, the flavors developed from the yeasts/bacteria of the sour mash are pretty great as well.

as far as quick turnaround goes... ive brewed and served this in under 3 weeks, and thats bottle conditioned.

I would love to see ICKY's opinion. Ive heard he has brewed quite a few