Berliner Weisse advice

[Capn Ahab]

I just tried a bw that's been say in FV for a week and a half; it's down to 1.005 from 1.030, so all good there, but it's nowhere near sour enough. I used the white labs bw blend that I had to build up in a starter as it was out of date. Does making a starter mean that the saccaromyces gets way ahead of the lacto? The starter sat at ambient temp and lactic works best at higher temps, so that would be my guess.

Options:
Add lactic acid to taste.

Repitch a fresh lactic culture and keep it as warm as poss.

Get it up to about 30 C and leave it a couple of Weeks.

Anyone got an opinion or advice on this?

Taz, did the sourness develop any further in yours?

cheers.

[Taz Ales]

In my opinion the WL blend is pretty poor. From what I understand, the lacto needs to kick off first because the yeast will win out and start producing alcohol quite quickly, which lactobacillus can't tollerate, hence the reason why most BWs are either sour mashed or started with lacto and then yeast added after a few days.

You could try adding lactobacillus, but the chances are the alcohol will kill it off. Hitting it with some lactic acid might be worth a try.

For future reference, there are several ways to sour a Berliner Weisse:

1. Sour mash.
Basically a fucking long decoction. Mash, then leave for 4-5 days (preferably with as little exposure to oxygen as possible), hold your nose and bring it back back up to decoction temperature (with hops added). No boil.
Also, some people throw a handful of grains into the fermenter to transfer some of the bugs, but it's not recommended because you have no idea what you'll get.

2. WL blend
Mash with hops. Sparge and then bring up to 80C for a few minutes to kill off anything in there. Ferment with the whitelabs blend.

3. Cultures
Mash with hops. Sparge and then bring up to 80C for a few minutes.
Add a lactobacillus culture to the fermenter and leave for 4 or 5 days. You get the weirdest frothy krausen, and the aroma coming out of the airlock is phenomenal. Add a yeast to convert the rest of the sugars to alcohol.

As for where to get a culture from:

3.1. Yoghurt. Get a live yoghurt (full fat is best: Yeo Valley, etc), sanitise a cheese cloth, chuck all the yoghurt in the cheesecloth (folded over to several layers if possible), then squeeze the whey out leaving the curds behind. You should end up with half a glass of yellow liquid to pitch.

3.2. Lactobacillus culture sachet. Basically a sachet that you use to start your own yoghurt plant. You can buy them online. Astonishingly you can't buy them in the better food company, which I thought would sell that sort of thing. They looked at me blankly when I asked.

[Capn Ahab]

Thanks for that - nice and comprehensive.

As for where to get a culture from:

3.1. Yoghurt. Get a live yoghurt (full fat is best: Yeo Valley, etc), sanitise a cheese cloth, chuck all the yoghurt in the cheesecloth (folded over to several layers if possible), then squeeze the whey out leaving the curds behind. You should end up with half a glass of yellow liquid to pitch.

3.2. Lactobacillus culture sachet. Basically a sachet that you use to start your own yoghurt plant. You can buy them online. Astonishingly you can't buy them in the better food company, which I thought would sell that sort of thing. They looked at me blankly when I asked.

I would have thought the separated whey from a kefir culture might do too. I have read somewhere that kefir contains a mixture of bacteria including at least two strains of lactobacillus, so I imagine yoghurt culture, dry or harvested, will be a mixed bag. I'm planning a gose and will probably use the white labs pure lacto culture that is made specifically for beer and is tolerant of stronger concentrations of lactic acid than the wyeast culture. I think you're right that the berliner weisse blend is rubbish; all activity in the fv is way over, so lactic acid is probably the only way forward, unless I brett some of it for a laugh.

[I_used_to_brew]

What about a Mesophillic cheese starter culture, they contain - according to the packet "Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris, Lactococcus lactis subsp.lactis biovar. diacetylactis and Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. cremoris)."

Cheap and readily available.

[alikocho]

To be honest, a handful of crushed grain thrown in will give you a goodly amount of lactic culture.

[Capn Ahab]

To be honest, a handful of crushed grain thrown in will give you a goodly amount of lactic culture.

Post-fermentation though?

[alikocho]

To be honest, a handful of crushed grain thrown in will give you a goodly amount of lactic culture.

Post-fermentation though?

To be honest, what you need to do is measure not just the terminal gravity, but also the pH. This will tell you whether you have dropped below the point at which a further lactic culture will be effective in doing anything. This is the likely cause of your lack of souring - the yeast doesn't necessarily overtake the lactobacillus, but it drops the pH too fast for the lactobacillus to get enough time for souring. This is why some brewers pitch the lacto first, or ferment a split batch and blend together.

If the pH is already too low, then as I see it you have three main options to sour further

brew another one, with the aim of making it sour enough for you to blend batches

add lactic acid (but it will taste like that's what you did, most likely)

add a tart fruit like raspberry to it.

[Capn Ahab]

To be honest, a handful of crushed grain thrown in will give you a goodly amount of lactic culture.

Post-fermentation though?

To be honest, what you need to do is measure not just the terminal gravity, but also the pH. This will tell you whether you have dropped below the point at which a further lactic culture will be effective in doing anything. This is the likely cause of your lack of souring - the yeast doesn't necessarily overtake the lactobacillus, but it drops the pH too fast for the lactobacillus to get enough time for souring. This is why some brewers pitch the lacto first, or ferment a split batch and blend together.

If the pH is already too low, then as I see it you have three main options to sour further

brew another one, with the aim of making it sour enough for you to blend batches

add lactic acid (but it will taste like that's what you did, most likely)

add a tart fruit like raspberry to it.

This is when I regret still not having bought a pH meter. Anyone got one I can borrow?

I was erring towards the aging it on fruit - I have frozen raspberries and also dried hibiscus flowers which should both add some sourness, but it's all rather moot now, as I stacked it off my bike yesterday and broke my collarbone in two. I shall be one-armed for 4-6 weeks. Huzzah!

[Taz Ales]

Been there, done that, and it wasn't fun.

Fortunately it's a pretty quick healing bone, but you'll have to endure the sensation of being stabbed in the arm every now and again as the nerve gets trapped. You have my sympathy...


...having said that, I'll still probably take the piss next week.

[steve crawshaw]

Hope it won't affect your drinking arm?
I broke my collar bone at school and didn't even notice it. I'm that hard.
steve