temperature advice

[Codonohoe]

Hi all,

I've been wanting to do a sour beer for a while now and have found a Berliner Weisse recipe that looks interesting. Below is the recipe and method and any feedback would be appreciated. My main question is in relation to the sour mash. It calls for the wort to be held at 49C for 3 days to allow for the initial souring. This seems quite impractical... any suggestion for how this can be achieve with spend a fortune on special equipment? Do brewing belts allow for temperatures this high? Are there any easier ways of replicating this beer?

2 Gallon Batch (BIAB)
OG   1.035
FG   1.006

Ingredients
1.5 lbs American 2 row
1 lbs Malted Wheat
4 oz Malted Rye
8 oz un-milled American 2 row
7 grams Hallertauer hops
Safale US 05 yeast

-   Add Crushed grains to 5.6 L of water strike temp 71C
-   Rest @ 67C for 1 hour
-   After rest period add 3.7 L of room temp water to bring it down to 49C
-   Add un-milled American 2 row and let rest 30 mins
-   Remove bag and collect 7.4 L (2 American gallons)
-   Transfer to carboy, purge any head space with CO2 and hold at 49c for 3 days
-   After initial ferment stage, boil for 15 mins, adding the hops at the start of the boil.
-   Cool and pitch yeast
-   Ferment for 1-2 weeks
-   Batch prime with 36g dextrose
 

[irish_goat]

I've seen similar recipes and the brewer used a meat smoker that had a thermostat easily set at 49c. Not sure if it's necessary though.

(Shameless plug) Our Brewer Spotlight article with Declan from Yellowbelly today discusses their souring method at the end. Not sure what temp they hold the lacto at though.

[garciaBernal]

Kettle soured a beer over the weekend using a 1l starter with 3 spoons of Greek yogurt in it. There's two strains of lacto in it. Left the starter for two days insulated in the 30C's and the pH dropped to 3.5. Mashed as usual and boiled the wort for fifteen minutes to sterilise/reduce DMS. Don't add any hops at this stage or it prevents lacto from working. Add the lacto starter to the wort in the kettle at 42ish. Just insulate it well. You can afford to lose up to ten degrees in temp this way. Within 24 hours I was down to a pH of 3.5 in the wort. Now you can do a full boil or transfer to fermenter. Berliner is no boil. A pH of 3.2 might be better for a Berliner but I was kettle souring an IPA. For further reading check out http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Sour_Worting

[nigel_c]

Few ways around it. Insulation and a heat belt is an option. What I do though is, keep an eye on the kettle and give it a few seconds of power every few hours. You could do this with stc or PID but I find insulation and a few blasts of the element work great for me.
Keep an eye on the yeast you use as well. Some don't work great in the ph range of a Berliner.

[cunnol]

I found getting it up to temp with the element then wrapping it in a lagging jacket and turning the heat belt on was perfect. I did have a brew pi monitoring it as well to make sure it didn't go above 49

[Codonohoe]

cheers for the feedback. some greats looking links there