OVHA Chat

Looking to brew up a berliner weisse and was wondering what is the best way to sour things up. I have read several articals and was looking for a few pointers. I have read that the White Labs blend does not get sour enough and doing a traditional sour mash is a bit unpredictable. I was thinking about doing a standard mash and a 15 min boil and then pitch a tube of ale yeast and a tube of Lactobacillus. Let it ferment for 5 days or so ant then add some more wort, bottle and then age for 3-4 months.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I decided to sour the mash in the tun. Did a 90 min mash @ 148° and then a reverse temp infusion and dropped the temp to 120°. I then laid several layers of plastic wrap on the top of the maps to seal out the O2. Stuck the tun in my my fermentation fridge with a heating pad to hold the temp @ 100°.

I did this back in 2012 by letting the mash sit overnight

Well after 2.5 days @ 100 deg in the fridge I decided to boil tonight. I pulled the plastic wrap off the top of the mash and was hit with a very interesting smell. Not bad but not good. Smelled like a really funky sour dough starter with some fresh grain and a little lemon thrown in. I recirculated the mash for about 10 min and then drained off to the boil kettle. I then sparged with 1.5 gallons of 175 deg water to rinse the grain. Being that over 50% of the grain bill was pils I increased the boil to 45 min to boil off as much DMS as possible. I added 1oz of hallertau with 15 min remaining in the boil as per the original recipe. Chilled to 65 deg and pitched German Ale yeast from a 3 liter starter. The wort was very acidic @ 3.8 ph. I figured the yeast is going to be strained so I wanted a big pitch. Tasting a cooled sample it was pretty tart. Not "lock your jaw" sour but decent.

Looking to order some raspberry and woodruff syrup from this german deli to serve with the beer...

http://www.germandeli.com/Gbber-Himbeer ... fl-oz.html
http://www.germandeli.com/Gbber-Waldmei ... fl-oz.html

John D is the Berliner master. He does sour mash.

Tart, citrusy goodness... very good with the raspberry surype as well...

I just did a 2.5 gallon stove-top batch. I did a normal mash, brought the wort just to a boil and cooled to around 100° F. Pitched Wyeast lactobacillus delbrueckii and let it sour in the oven at ~100° F for a few days until it was nice and tart. Boiled again for 15 minutes with hops to reach 5 IBUs and pitched a tube of European ale yeast (no starter)...so far so good...

If I make it again I may try a different source or strain of lacotbacillus.