Berliner Weisse

I have decided it's time to brew my first sour beer.  I have been reluctant to invite wild yeast and bacteria into my home brewery but I really enjoy drinking sour beer and hate paying the exorbitant prices for them so home brewing seems like a nice way to save some money.  I plan on buying duplicate sets of equipment and souring the beer in different rooms so hopefully that will allow my clean beers to stay clean.  I imagine there will be a slip up eventually but I think it's worth the risk.

A Berliner Weisse is a nice, refreshing, low alcohol, tart beer.  They seem like a good choice for a first sour beer as they are fairly quick and inexpensive to produce.  For this beer I am looking at a 2 month timeline from brew day to when the beer is ready to drink.  This is compared to several years of aging for other sour styles like Lambic and Flanders Red.  The trade off is that a Berliner Weisse doesn't have anywhere near the complexity of the aged sour beers.

I have had a number of commercial examples of Berliner Weisse that have ranged from just slightly tart to very sour.  These beers are typically produced using a combination of normal brewers yeast to create alcohol and the bacteria lactobacillus to produce lactic acid which creates the sourness.  The yeast and the bacteria work at different rates so there are different techniques that can be used to get the desired level of sourness by giving lactobacillus some solo time to sour the beer prior to the more aggressive yeast eating all the sugar.

In my research I found a recipe on homebrewtalk.com for producing a Berliner Weisse that has the novel approach of splitting the batch of beer, letting the lacto sour half, the yeast ferment the other half, and then combining them.  This recipe also calls for the use of a wild yeast called Brettanomyces which is one of the key contributors to the Belgian sours (though not traditionally used in Berliners).  Brett produces some interesting earthy flavors that are described as "funk" by the beer geeks.  I am hoping that by splitting the batch I will get a pleasant level of sourness and that using the Brett will impart a bit of complexity to the beer.

If this batch goes well I plan on trying some of the more complex sours for long term aging.  I am also interested in brewing a Berliner Weisse with fruit.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 6 lbs 8 oz Pilsner Malt
• 4 lbs 4 oz Wheat Malt
• 2 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Mt. Hood (Pellet, 6.1% AA) in the mash
• Yeast/Bacteria:
• Brettanomyces Claussenii (WLP 645)
• Lactobacillus Delbrueckii (WLP 677)
• Wine Yeast (Premier Cuvee) at bottling
• Water:
• 12 gal of RO water
• 1 tsp of Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp of Gypsum

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 10 gal
• Mash:
• 149 F for 90 min
• Boil:
• No boil - heat to 180 F for 10 min to pasteurize
• Fermentation Temp:
• 80 F

Results:

• OG:
• 1.027 (Target 1.030)
• Efficiency:
• 67% (Target 75%)
• FG
• 1.002 (Target 1.000)
• ABV
• 1.6%* (Target 2%)

* ABV calculation assumes 50% of sugar was consumed by lacto and didn't produce alcohol

Brewing Notes:

• 6/8/14 - Created starters for the Brett and Lacto.  The Brett starter was 1 L of half RO and half tap water boiled with 4 oz of DME.  The Lacto starter was 1 L of half RO and half tap water boiled with 10 g of powdered milk, 10 g of bread yeast, 20 g of corn sugar and 10 g of DME.  Cooled the starters down to room temperature (80 F) and pitched the Brett and Lacto.  Shook the Brett starter to aerate.

• 6/10/14 - The starters have started to settle out.  The Lacto starter has a lot of sediment at the bottom and has a cheesy smell to it - looks a bit like a weird science project - it's going to be difficult to bring myself to taste the starter for sourness levels.  The Brett has a thinner layer of sediment and smells a bit like an estery Belgian yeast - there may be a hint of funk flavor in there as well.

• 6/14/14 Brew Day - 8:25 PM to 12:00 AM including setup and partial cleanup
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to RO water
• Heated 12 gal of strike water to 156 F
• Added 10 gal to the mash tun and let settle for 10 min - temperature ended up at 153 F

• Added the grain - stirred well to eliminate dough balls - temperature ended up at 149 F
• Added the hops to the mash tun at the start of the mash
• At the end of the 90 min mash it was at 144 F

• Transferred to the boil kettle without a vorlauf step - added the remaining 2 gal of water during the transfer.  The wort is extremely cloudy due to skipping the vorlauf.

• Collected 10 gal of wort - brought it up to 180 F and kept it there for 10 min
• Chilled wort down to tap water temperatures (~85 F)

• Decanted most of the liquid off the starters.  Shook the Brett starter to get the yeast back into suspension.  The Brett starter had a flavor similar to Belgian yeast - no real funk to speak of.  The Lacto starter had only a very faint sourness to it.  It will be interesting to see how sour this beer turns out to be. 
• Transferred 5 gal to the Brett bucket by letting the wort fall a foot or so into the fermentor.  Poured the Brett starter in about half way through.  Transferred the other 5 gal to the Lacto bucket from the bottom to aerate the wort as little as possible.  Gently poured in the Lacto at the end of the transfer.
• Moved the fermentors into the 80 F house to ferment and sour
• Measured the OG of the wort as 1.022 at 85 F.  This is about 5 points under measured so the actual OG is about 1.027.

• 6/15/14 - The Brett half of the batch is bubbling away the morning after brewing.  There is a pretty strong Brett funk smell from the fermentation.  No activity in the airlock for the Lacto half at this point.
• 6/16/14 - The Brett half is still bubbling - the Lacto half never started.  There is a pungent cheesy aroma in the closet where I'm having them ferment - not real pleasant.  This is feeling more and more like a science project.  I decided to open up the fermentors to see what's going on - there's obvious fermentation activity in both which is a good thing.  Both are covered with a thin layer of white foam.  The lacto starter never really built up foam like this so it is interesting that the lacto half is foamy - didn't expect it.  I wonder if it might be souring a bit more than the starter.

Lacto Half - Brew day + 2

Brett Half - Brew day + 2

• 6/30/14 - It's been two weeks since I checked on this batch.  The cheesy pungent aroma has subsided quite a bit.  Opened the fermentors and found that both batches have developed a bubbly film which I am assuming is a pellicle - both look really gross but the Brett one is particularly disgusting.  I was intending to perform a taste test but could only bring myself to pull a very small sample the lacto half with a spoon (I did my best to inflict minimal damage to the film).  It has a slightly tart flavor at this point which I think could be quite nice.  The aroma is sort of a mix of tropical fruit and citrus - also pretty nice.  The Brett half aroma is a bit funky but also similar to a Belgian yeast.  So, I will give these two more weeks to sour up and then mix the two batches for further fermentation

Lacto Half - Brew day + 16

Brett Half - Brew day + 16

• 7/11/14 - It has been about two weeks since I last checked on these beers.  I am going to mix them in a couple days.  I took a sample of the lacto half with a turkey baster.  It had an interesting cheezy flavor but no real sourness or even tartness to it.  It also still has a slight cheezy smell.  The brett half has developed a very pleasant fruity smell.  I didn't want to mess with the pellicle to taste a sample.  I will try it this weekend during the transfer. 

Lacto Half - Brew day + 28

Brett Half - Brew day + 28

• 7/12/14 - Measured the gravity of both halves at 1.000 at 79 F.  Per my hydrometer reading this is under measured by about 4 points so the actual gravity is 1.004.  The brett sample has a fruity flavor that's fairly similar to a Belgian yeast.  The lacto sample had a very slight tartness to it.  Both are pretty thin and watery in their current warm and flat state.  The flavor profile is pretty muted - neither half is very flavorful.  As it is now these are seeming like pretty boring beers.  I am hoping they gain a bit more character over the next 4 weeks.  Transferred the batches to secondary (with a new dedicated sour racking cane) and then mixed them between a 5 gal and 3 gal better bottle.  I will be driving across the country with this batch so I have attempted to limit headspace by filling up to the neck of the better bottles.  Ended up with about 1.5 gal extra as a result.  I put a half a gal into a growler that I may try to dry hop and dumped the extra gallon.
• 7/19/14 - A week after combining I checked on the combined fermentors and found that each had developed a new layer of krausen.  No way of knowing if this increase in fermentation activity is due to the lacto or the brett.  I would guess the brett but am hoping it's the lacto to develop a bit more tartness.

• 7/24//14 - The airlock on the 5 gal better bottled half filled with krausen (no big pressure build up fortunately).  I cleaned it out, refilled, and put the airlock back in place.  It could be my imagination but it seemed like the beer is developing more of a tart aroma since doing the transfer.
• 8/3/14 - Drove this beer across the country in the back of my truck.  The airlocks pretty much ran dry at some point along the way.  The beer still smells pretty good - haven't had a chance to do another sample tasting yet.
• 8/22/14 - Collected 8.5 gal and bottled with 11.7 oz of priming sugar (shooting for 3.25 vol of C02) and wine yeast.  Ended up with 85 bottles.  Measured Final Gravity as 1.000 at 72 F - per my hydrometer calibration this is under measured by 2 points so the actual FG is 1.002.  The beer has developed a bit more sourness in the last month.  The sourness is light and clean which seems about where it should be as the beer is very dry and very thin.  I think this is going to be nice and refreshing.
• 10/31/14 - Tasting Notes - A very refreshing beer that is easy drinking with a pretty low ABV but that still has a fair amount of complexity.  A bit more sourness would have been nice but that actually could have detracted from that complexity.  I don't think I would use the White Labs 677 again though - it produces interesting flavors but I'm really looking for more lactic acid on the next one.
• 4/6/15 - The bottle of this beer that I had tonight had a much more pronounced sourness than all the previous bottles.  Very interested to see if all my remaining bottles (~20) have this increased sourness.

Lessons Learned:

1. There is some mixed information on the internet regarding the behavior of the Lacto culture used in this beer.  The Mad Fermentationist used the strain in a 100% lacto Berliner Weisse back in 2012 based on the understanding that it could also produce alcohol.  The While Labs page for WLP677 does not mention this behavior - could potentially have changed strains over time.  He didn't get a whole lot of sourness in the beer.  The source recipe calls for the addition of some lactic acid at the end of process to up the acidity a bit.  It will be interesting to see the level of acidity I get and whether I'll feel that additional lactic acid would enhance it.
2. Bottling an 8.5 gal batch of beer is a lot of work - almost 2x the work of a 5-6 gal batch due to having to do 2 rounds of bottling.  This one has really motivated me to work towards a kegging setup in the near term.