AG: No hop, no boil fast sour Berliner Weisse

[Hop Bomb]

How many times have you brewed this Adam? Can you replicate it consistently?

Also, what would be a good substitute for Omega Yeast OLY-605 Lactobacillus Blend? Is there another easily obtainable blend out there that contains the lacto plantarum isolate?

I've brewed this once, so I can't speak to consistency.

There is no substitute for Omega OLY-605; they are the only ones with Plantarum.  I'd have someone buy some Plantarum and import it into Ireland and start propogating up some really large starters and sharing them as far and wide as you can to ensure that someone on the island always has the culture available for the homebrewer community.


Adam

Im doing some tests at the brewery with a probiotic that has 9 different strains of lacto in it, plantarum included. 7 of the strains are homofermentative. Hoping it works out as commercial pitches of lacto are crazy money & the acid malt 2 x 100 litre starters into 20HL isnt exactly the most consistent in how quick it sours. Some have taken 2 days, others 4, which isnt a runner in a commercial brewery. Needs to be no longer than 2 days so you can pitch on Fri eve & boil on Sunday & not effect the coming weeks brew schedule. If I get favorable results Il be doing a brew wiki article on it when its all done.

[Dr Jacoby]

Sounds great Tom. Looking forward to the results. If you ever need someone to do some yeast/bacteria experiments for you give me a shout.

[biertourist]

I thought DMS reforms if you don't cool the wort quickly after boiling? I don't see how a decoction would bypass the risk of forming DMS. If you read Ron Pattinson a lot of the traditional Berliner Weisse breweries used far more wheat malt than you did in your recipe (many used 3 or 4 parts wheat to one part barley malt). This approach might help with DMS since you would be using far less pilsner malt.

Pity about the assertive sourness. Did you sample the beer after pitching the lacto strain but before pitching the German ale yeast?

Not quite.

The pre-cursor to DMS (SMM) is in the malt itself, at temps above 140F SMM starts converting into DMS.  Boiling evolves off DMS much faster than it forms from SMM and is primarily what drives off the DMS.  (Although the DMS boiling point is actually 100F; the problem is that SMM is forming to DMS much faster than the DMS is being evolved off at the lower temps like 140F.)  Kilning during malt production actually drives off DMS, too, which is why pale ale and munich malts are very low in SMM and DMS but light lager malt is still high in SMM.

After the boil chilling down below 140F is important because as you get down into the 140-190F range, you're converting more SMM into DMS so you want to get down below that 140F range.  -BUT, if you've done a 90 minute boil already you've removed the overwhelming majority of the SMM and DMS so it's probably not as critical but still a good idea.

I don't know much about SMM levels in Wheat Malt, but you could be right about that!

Decoctions would help, especially with a triple decoction as you're pulling 1/3 of the mash, 3 times and holding it at elevated temps and then boiling WHILE STIRRING -all of this helps to evolve off extra DMS after forming it via the elevated temps.  Some german breweries bubble CO2 or air through the kettle-out wort on the way to the chiller to help evolve off just that bit more DMS.  So with a triple decoction you've already converted most of the SMM to DMS and then evolved off most of the DMS before the wort even goes into the kettle- no wonder with the full end-to-end traditional Berliner process you don't end up with many complaints about DMS even without the boil. (Personally, I'm not sure I'll ever do a no-boil brew again.)



I'm actually happy about getting a very tart Berliner- that's EXACTLY what I was going for; its actually quite difficult to accomplish.  I'm NOT happy about the DMS and I think I'm going to try a few DMS remediation techniques.  (First using my aeration stone and CO2 to bubble CO2 through the beer for 15 minutes -I honestly don't think this will work at all.)

-If this fails to scrub enough DMS (I just don't see how it can work if the DMS boiling point is 100F) I'll transfer into my kettle and set my pid controller to 120F and let it sit there for an hour while bubbling CO2 in the kettle through the aeration stone for the last 15 minutes.   This is going to waste a lot of CO2, but it's for science!   ;-) 




Adam
Adam