AG: No hop, no boil fast sour Berliner Weisse

[biertourist]

Stats:
OG: 1.033
FG: 1.008
Color: 2.5 SRM
ABV: 3.2% -ish -actual ABV depends on how much of the sugars are used to produce acid vs. alcohol
IBUs: 0

Volume in kettle end of boil: 22.4 liters

Grist
2 kg Weyermann or Best Pilsner Malt (60%)
1.36 kg Weyermann or Best Wheat Malt (40%)

Hops
None

Microorganisms
Omega Yeast OLY-605 Lactobacillus Blend - includes lacto brevis, delbrueckii and plantarum
German Ale Yeast WLP 029 -You need a pH tolerant strain like this

Mashing
This is a very small beer with a small quantity of malt so target a thinner mash to make up for losses in the vessel. I targeted a 3 liter per kilo mash thickness.

When mashing in stir constantly while adding your strike addition and pause at 50C for 10 minutes for a short protein rest, then add the rest of your strike water -because of temp losses with this method increase the remainder of the strike water by 3 degrees C or you will under shoot your target mash temp.

--If you can do a decoction, this is actually a PERFECT beer to do a decoction on and it will help with not only clarity but also DMS later; I just can't decoct on my system.

Target a low mash temp to maximize fermentability: 63-64C works great.
Mash for 60 minutes and then raise the mash temp to 69C for another 10 minutes -if you don't have this ability transfer the liquid to the boil kettle and raise to 69C and hold there for 10 minutes.

Kettle Process
Don't boil, just raise the temp up towards boil and once you hit 97C chill the wort back down to 30 - 35C and then transfer to your fermenter.

Wort Acidification
You want the wort to be acidified down to 4.5 - 4.8 BEFORE you pitch your lactobacillus culture as the heterofermentative lacto strains like Plantarum produce protein degrading enzymes that will completely break the proteins down into amino acids and your Berliner won't have any beer head.  You can do this by adding a lot of acidulated malt to the sparge water, or you can add a small bit of 88% lactic acid just to get you down into the 4.5 - 4.8 pH range.  This pH range will inhibit the proteolytic enzymes in the lacto so that your beer still has a head.

Fermentation
Step 1: DO NOT AERATE!  Lactic acid fermentation- pitch your OLY-605 Lactobacillus blend either in the kettle before transferring or in the fermenter.  You should have made a 1 liter lacto starter for 48 hours at room temperature prior to this point. Note: You can leave the airlock on the starter for this one; the lacto doesn't need and doesn't want O2.  Warmer temperatures will sour faster but do NOT go over 90F / 35C as this is the max temperature for Plantarum.  Plantarum can sour quite quickly with a larger starter at room temperature but it will work faster in the 25-35C range.  -Insulate this guy or use a heater to keep it in the ideal temp range and it will go faster.

Wait for the wort to sour to the level that you prefer and then either bring the wort up to 80C for 10 minutes to pasteurize and "lock in" the level of sourness you've obtained or just pitch your German Ale yeast strain directly to the wort.

Step 2. After you've grown up your German Ale starter slowly add some of the soured wort to the beer over a 24 hour period of time so that it gets acclimated to the lower pH environment and then pitch it into the main batch.

Shockingly enough with the low pH the German Ale yeast will actually flocculate after a few days.  Anyone who's brewed with this strain in a Kolsh knows that it's a VERY low flocculator but in the acidic environment of a Berliner, it seems to have no issues at all.

Tips
Avoid oxygen pickup with this beer

Expect a bit of Cheerios flavor when this beer is young and again after bottling if you introduce oxygen; if you've got a counter-flow chiller or a Blichmann beer gun it would be a good idea to use it if you plan to bottle this beer.

Chill as quickly as possible from 98C down to 30-35C so you can avoid DMS formation.

Carbonate to 3.5 volumes; if kegging make sure you've got a long enough beer line to deal with 3.5 volumes without foaming like crazy.

Have loads of fun coming up with sweet syrup flavor additions to add at serving; don't make them too sugary and thick or they won't readily go into solution.

If you do everything just right you'll have a nice tart Berliner Weiss in time it would take you to make a normal ale- SHOCKING.

If you want, you can dry hop this and make a hoppy tart beer, once you've achieved the level of sourness you're looking for.

If you like a bit more complexity pitch your favorite Brett strain at bottling.

Final tip: Brett helps to keep hoppy beers tasting fresh for a long time as it is a voracious oxygen scavenger.  If you're going to make a hoppy tart beer in bottles and keep it around for a while, pitch the Brett.


Adam

[Damien M]

Great post! Deffo in the toodoo list!!!

[irish_goat]

Very interesting!

Wait for the wort to sour to the level that you prefer and then either bring the wort up to 80C for 10 minutes to pasteurize and "lock in" the level of sourness you've obtained or just pitch your German Ale yeast strain directly to the wort. 

Can you explain this a little more? How long should we be looking to sour it for on average? And is there much difference between the pasteurization and the pitching option?

Buxton do a lovely dry hopped Berliner Weisse that I'd love to give a go at.

[sub82]

This is fantastic! Thanks for posting! 

[Dr Jacoby]

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?

[Simon_]

On my to do list along with the Coconut Porter

[biertourist]

Can you explain this a little more? How long should we be looking to sour it for on average? And is there much difference between the pasteurization and the pitching option?

Omega quotes that in a best-case scenario: A fresh packet of OLY-605 with a 1 liter starter made 48 hours in advance, pitched to 95F wort you could get it fully sour within 12 - 24 hours.

I didn't make a starter and it took 4 days to get the sourness that I was looking for.

Pasteurization "locks in" the sour level and makes it controllable; it also means that you don't end up with any non-yeast microorganisms outside of your kettle so future infection vectors are limited.

Just pitching it will result in the lacto continue to slowly work later and the beer can continue getting slightly more sour for months.



Adam

[biertourist]

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

[biertourist]

Hmmm...  Plantarum seems to be in many probiotic cultures so maybe you CAN find another source for it.


I was investigating some interesting Scandanivian lacto cultures that are used for a HUGE number of traditional butter milks & yoghurts; the Swedes have a lacto strain that works at room temperature for buttermilk/ yoghurt making BUT its a huge diacetyl producer so I ruled it out.  I guess if you pitched a yeast strain that was both pH tolerant and really good at taking it up, you might get away with it, but my best guess is that you'd get way too much diacetyl.


Look for Filmjolk thermophilic strains, if you're going to go that route...



Adam

[mr hoppy]

Interesting post with some great tips. This looks a lot like the process Kristen England recommended for Berliner Weisse except for the wort acidification. Thought it was to style for a BW to have a fast disappearing head? I've also something very similar for a BW with good results and with goses twice with good(ish) results.

For a lacto starter I've found sticking a stir plate with a litre of apple juice in the bottom of a plastic fermentor wrapped in a few camping mats with a lizard lamp hooked up to an STC at 35-40 degrees (for WLP677 anyway) did the trick pretty well.

What's the attraction of plantarum over say WLP677 which is also heterofermentive? More friendly to dry hopping I guess?  I'd probably be wary of using a beer gun with something with brevis in it as well.

[nigel_c]

I've done similar and just added a hand full of acid malt to the mash for 3 days.
It came out nice and tart. I did a boil  with late sorachi ace and dry hopped with SA as well. I loved it and it was one of the fastest kegs I got through. Came in at 3.2% if i remember right.
Next time i do it ill sour in the kettle as the mash was a killer to drain.
I used US-05 . It took a few days to kick off but it got through it.

[biertourist]

This thing ended up MONSTEROUSLY sour.  I'd say it made it over the line from tart into sour.


It does have a fairly intense and persistent hay smell in the aroma and if I were to do it again, I'd boil it for a full 60 minutes.


My first home made fruit syrup addition has gone great (kiwi strawberry).  Blueberry next!


Adam

[biertourist]

Actually... That "hay" smell might just be a really large quantity of DMS...

I'll get it validated either way by some VERY experienced BJCP judges on the first Tuesday of July.



Adam

[biertourist]

There definitely seems to be a trend that the people that do no boil successfully also do a proper decoction mash; that decoction mash probably forms and then volatilizes off the DMS...

an infusion mash and no boil with Pilsner malt == DMS beer.


Adam

[Dr Jacoby]

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?