Tried my first attempt at brewing a Berliner Weisse style beer on Saturday, October 14, 2017. After reading everything I could get my hands on about brewing the style, I decided on a combination of methods I discovered. I went with kettle souring because I did not have a yeast blend available. I chose to use two Goodbelly Straight Shots, each of which contain “20 billion live and active probiotic cultures per serving” according to their website. I used the “Original” oat one. That is all that was available at the store. As for the fermenting yeast, I am using Safale 05 since I do not have a German ale yeast handy. We shall see how it goes.
My recipe is: 4 lbs Dingemanns pilsner malt and 4 lbs Avangard wheat malt. I mashed in at 155.8°F (targeted 155°F) and a recorded pH=5.28. Twelve minutes into the mash, the pH was measured at 5.60. I added around 0.3 mL of lactic acid to the mash and stirred well. After about fifteen more minutes, I measure the pH at 5.28. I mashed for 1.5 hours and sparged out about 5.5 gallons of wort. I stopped the sparge at Brix=1.9. Brought the wort to a boil for 15 minutes and cut the heat, put the lid on the kettle and allowed to cool to 100°F (10:06 pm) before pitching the two Goodbelly Straight Shots into the kettle. Covered and let stand overnight. The following morning the kettle thermometer read 75°F at 8:15 am.
10/15/17 – 11:15 am: pH=3.82, T=75°F, Hr=13.15.
10/15/17 – 1:15 pm: pH=3.68, T=77.5°F, Hr=15.15.
10/15/17 – 6:55 pm: pH=3.42, T=81°F, Hr=20.82.
Began the 90-minute boil at 7:35 pm, 21.5 hours after pitching the Goodbelly. I added two gallons of distilled water to the kettle to account for boil off. Added 1/2 oz of Hersbrucker hops with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. At 15 minutes remaining, I added yeast nutrient, a KICK Carrageenan tablet (Whirlfloc equivalent), and started the chiller rig cycling to sterilize. At flame out and began chilling the wort, which took about ten minutes to get down to around 50°F. The kettle contained 4.6 gallons of wort at 10.1 Brix ~ SG=1.041. I added 1.25 gallons of distilled water and mixed well. pH=3.51, Brix=8.0 ~ SG=1.032. I let the wort settle out for about an hour and a half. It was getting late. I transferred the wort to the fermenter bucket. It poured clear from the start. A nice, clean, light wort. At 11:55 pm, I added two minutes of O2 and then sprinkled a pack of Safale 05 on top, stirred well, covered and put into the fermenter fridge with an airlock. Bed time!
10/18/17 – 2:55 pm: 63 hours after pitching the yeast, there is very active fermentation.
A peek through the airlock hole reveals active fermentation.
10/20/17 – 2:00 pm: 110 hours into the ferment, still see plenty of activity.
10/24/17 – 10:15 am: Set T=20.5°C ~ 69°F.
10/29/17 – 12:15 pm: Placed fermenter in kegerator at around 39°F to crash out the yeast.
10/31/17 – 11:15 am: Kegged the beer into a corny keg. FG: SG=1.009. This gives me right at 3.0%ABV. The sample tasted fairly dry, like a white wine and smelled similar to a white wine. Very light flavored on the palette. The beer is clear and a lot lighter in color than I expected. So far very pleased. The sourness was not as pronounced as I would have thought, yet completely adequate.
Notes for future reference:
1. Reduce wort pH to 4.5-4.8 with food grade lactic acid before pitching Lactobacillus. This will help with head retention as it reduces proteolytic activity of lactobacillus. Source: Milk The Funk Wiki/Lactobacillus.
2. Target in the mash is 4.8 to preserve the proteins needed for good foam. From SourBeerNews.com article.
Some sources for future reference:
Sour Beer Blog: Designing and brewing a Berliner Weisse
Milk The Funk: Lactobacillus Wiki
Milk The Funk: Berliner Weisse wiki
Goodbelly.com: GoodBrew: LP299V Beer Recipe
Book: American Sour Beers, Michael Tonsmeire
Milk The Funk Wiki
Perspective on Brewing Berliner Weisse Style Beer, Jess Caudill of Wyeast Labs, NHC 2012 Presentation.
Historic Berliner Weisse recipe
Mashing of Berliner Weisse
