BeerBorg

Well I've let my Berliner sour with lacto for 5 days now.
It's sour! Like a nice amount of sour, pretty awesomely sour! I could almost just drink this as is honestly.
So it's time to brew it up and kill the lacto. Also got a pump for my wort chiller today, so that's awesome, got a huge cooler and 10 lbs of ice ready for my fastest chill ever.

This is my first AG, and first sour, so I'm really excited. It's gotten me back into brewing, and I have high hopes for this.

Pics!

I love a good Berliner on a hot summer day.

You will find it to be "moar sour!" after it's fermented out. Learning to judge how the sour mash will taste after it's fermented out is something you just figure out with experience.

That wort looks intense. Saw it on BookFace earlier. Glad it turned out well so far!

More sour? Awesome!
Yeah the bacteria really makes it ugly haha. I still drank it though, if I don't post tomorrow you all know why haha.

question, what would happen to the sour if you exposed it to air by not covering it with sernain wrap.

So I am assuming you used a sour mash, how did you keep the wort at the proper temperature throughout those five days? I am looking into doing a berliner weisse in a few days. I saw a recipe on the recent edition of BYO that is all about sours. The process they detail is brew it, pitch wyeast 1007 then a few hours later pitch wyeast 5335 (lacto) and 5526 (brett lambicus). Ferment at 60 for four to six days then rack to secondary for roughly 3 weeks, then bottle or keg. I am wondering, how much of a difference is it from a sour mash to using the wyeast lacto+brett. Also, how long would these have to sit in bottles if I were to go the route this recipe details and use these two packs of bacteria?

Yank it's my first one so take this info with a grain of salt, though I do know a lot about sours because I drink a lot of them.

Heat, I used a 125 watt heat bulb and a clamp light, 20 bucks overall. It kept it at 110 for a day, but it slowly dropped to around 90F over the next 5 days. It's really nice and sour now, you don't need heat to sour at all, just takes more time without it.
I'm gonna get a stronger bulb for the next one.

Lacto + Brett in the primary/secondary will infect all your brewing gear. However, it will continue to develop the sourness in the fermentors and bottle. Brett adds a really funky character to it, where lacto gives you a nice tartness. Brett takes much longer to develop and occurs naturally in oak barrels I believe.

Sour mashing allows your equipment to stay uninfected since you sour the mash, then boil it killing the lacto. It will not continue to develop however, unless you don't boil it long enough and some lacto lives and takes hold again.

Generally, sour mashing doesn't give the complexity that souring the wort will, but it takes a lot of time for that complexity to develop.

Woody I didnt' use saran wrap, didn't have any, used foil and it seemed to work. From what I understand oxygen can give you an undesirable vomit like aroma, though this is the area I'm least certain about.

Thanks! Yeah I wouldn't think Brett would be used in a Berliner, but what do I know? I am wondering if I could just skip adding the brett and stick with just the lacto pack instead. If I'm not mistaken Lacto takes much less time than Brett. That could be an option for me, I would just have to designate a fermentor for sours after that. I may also look into a way similar to yours to do a sour mash

yankfan9 wrote:Thanks! Yeah I wouldn't think Brett would be used in a Berliner, but what do I know? I am wondering if I could just skip adding the brett and stick with just the lacto pack instead. If I'm not mistaken Lacto takes much less time than Brett. That could be an option for me, I would just have to designate a fermentor for sours after that. I may also look into a way similar to yours to do a sour mash

Yeah after 5 days using lacto it's pretty sour.
I didn't use any lacto package, just threw in a bit more than a handful of unmilled grain. 2 row in my case. Let it stay warm for 5 days and now it's really sour.
Lacto is way faster than brett, and his a more pronounced tartness, but you won't get that funk that brett gives.
There's a third bacteria called pedio that sours as well, not sure how that one works but it's also long term.

thanks jivex5k, I just so happen to be cooling down my 2nd sour as I type. the first one is on day 4 of fermentation. I went the all natural way with both, meaning I did not buy locto just though in some fresh grain and left it in the mash tun for 4 days. It's one big experiment for me. both were from 2nd running's and mash. grav was 1.050 after boil. my tenps were not consistent in the tun but like I said, it's an experiment.

jivex5k wrote:

yankfan9 wrote:Thanks! Yeah I wouldn't think Brett would be used in a Berliner, but what do I know? I am wondering if I could just skip adding the brett and stick with just the lacto pack instead. If I'm not mistaken Lacto takes much less time than Brett. That could be an option for me, I would just have to designate a fermentor for sours after that. I may also look into a way similar to yours to do a sour mash

Yeah after 5 days using lacto it's pretty sour.
I didn't use any lacto package, just threw in a bit more than a handful of unmilled grain. 2 row in my case. Let it stay warm for 5 days and now it's really sour.
Lacto is way faster than brett, and his a more pronounced tartness, but you won't get that funk that brett gives.
There's a third bacteria called pedio that sours as well, not sure how that one works but it's also long term.

There are different kinds of Brett which have somewhat different characteristics. Brett C is the mellowest, and it's what got loose in my house and infects some of my summer beers every year. It's like hay and pineapple. Where other kinds of Brett give you stuff like Orval Trappist (Sweaty Horse Blanket and Leather). Lacto gets you more sour much quicker. It takes a good long time for Brett to really get it's full character in the beer. I don't sweat my summer brett infections, and I don't wait - I just bottle it and drink it young. I don't mind the hay and pinapple. Bleach bombing the fermenter has always gotten rid of the Brett in the fermenter for me. I will get re-infected at some point but that's cuz it gets blown around in my air, it's not the equipment.

Pedio... pedio is not something you want in your beer if you want to drink it soon. It can make weird stringly looking stuff that "hangs around" in your wort. It makes boat loads of diaceyl which will eventually go away, but stuff gets really rancid tasting for a while until it does.

If you want a "fast to drink sour" a pure lacto culture or the sour mash is the way to go IMHO.

An old school Berliner would have been infected with just about anything because it was a wild beer brewed in the 1600s. They didn't know jack about sanitation, bacteria, yeast, they didn't know what any of it was or how it worked really - it was all just "shit that happened and made beer!" - but because they were (and still are if you got them in Europe in a pub) traditionally consumed right away - really fresh - the only thing that really gets a foothold and does a lot is the lacto. They are not meant to be complex aged sours like a Flemish red or the like.

My bet is that modern versions are most often brewed with a pure lacto culture because again in Europe they would be consumed very fresh.

jivex5k wrote: Sour mashing allows your equipment to stay uninfected since you sour the mash, then boil it killing the lacto. It will not continue to develop however, unless you don't boil it long enough and some lacto lives and takes hold again.

You do a 90 minute boil, right? If you used Pilsner malt to drive off DMS, or could you do a shorter boil?

A regular 60 minute boil is long enough to kill off the lacto. Even 30 minutes should be long enough, but of course the longer the boil, the more peace of mind you'll have that it's dead!

I'm glad you like it! A local craft brewery had a sour stout ... I tried it in the tasting room. Sour is not for me, except Guiness Draft.

Can anyone recommend a commercial craft beer name of a sour beer? It's a style I really haven't given any attention to yet. I've read posts where some brewers will add lactic acid to their wort in order to sour their beer. I think they mentioned adding 10ml per gallon is a good starting point and in about six weeks it should be ready to drink. I'll have to try and bookmark the post I found. Just like adding oak to a stout to simulate barrel aging I guess adjusting the amount of acid to taste is the key here too.