Carawheat percentage.

[jivex5k]

Well my friend who just got into brewing wanted to try her hand at making a Berliner, so I told her what grains I used. Should have been more specific because she got Carawheat instead of White Wheat, I looked it up on the brew day and said it should be fine, probably just a caramel berliner...

Out of curiosity I looked into it more today, seems like 15% is as high as you want to go with it...well..crap...it's 50% of the mash. Other half is pilsen....

I hope this beer turns out OK, and if it doesn't i hope it doesn't discourage her from trying again. Maybe you guys can ease my anxiety about it, not much we can do at this point though.

[BigPapaG]

Here's the Briess SpecSheet... (you may have already seen this)

http://brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDF ... lWheat.pdf

Yeah, looks like one would use it like any other crystal or caramel malt...

Up to about 25%...

But I think it'll not be very fermentable in a steep, maybe better as a part of a mash.

It's not gonna be the same Berliner you are used to that's for sure as it will add a lot of sweetness which is counterproductive in a sour...

[mashani]

Yep, caraANYTHING is just a type of crystal malt. Going to be sweet and sour beer.

I suppose that might be interesting...

EDIT: Or if lucky perhaps not. The bugs will eat stuff that the regular yeast won't given enough time. They might break up the big chain sugars unlike normal yeast. I don't know, that's uncharted territory...

[jivex5k]

Well I'll report back. Whatever it is at least it will be beer. Also she got the Wyeast Roselare blend that has lacto and brett in it so over time maybe the brett will make it tasty if it's not great at first.
She just jumped the gun basically and ordered a bunch of ingredients instead of asking me the specifics about the recipe.

[mashani]

Well I'll report back. Whatever it is at least it will be beer. Also she got the Wyeast Roselare blend that has lacto and brett in it so over time maybe the brett will make it tasty if it's not great at first.
She just jumped the gun basically and ordered a bunch of ingredients instead of asking me the specifics about the recipe.

One warning - she may want to let that sit for a long bit. The lacto will only go up to n% acidity/abv before it starts to become unhappy with its environment (I forget exact number for n, but it is not too sour to drink) and it will stop making it more sour and/or won't ferment anymore. That yeast has two different Brett strains and a Belgian strain too, and Pedio - it may stay engaged long beyond this, depending on if it can figure out how to eat the bigger sugar chains. She may want to secondary this beer and let it sit a good long time before thinking about bottling it, and then carb it lightly when she does bottle it, as the brett could keep working slowly in the bottles assuming it will eat some of the stuff. Also since that yeast has pedio in it, it's going to potentially throw off massive amounts of diacetyl at some point so if it tastes like rancid butter at some point that's *normal* and you just need to let it sit for freaking forever until that cleans up. It will. It just might take a long long time. It will also potentially become very nasty looking with stringy stuff hanging out in the beer.

The pedio is probably not going to really engage itself in the primary fermentation, it will happen later. So bottled too soon it might turn into nasty tasting stuff in the bottle and it will not clean up in the bottle so well, as there isn't enough of the other yeast there to feed on the amount of diacetyl produced and eliminate it if it happens in the bottle.

I'd probably plan on secondarying it and leaving it for 8 months or more. Really. I don't think I would use that strain for any beer I was not planning on doing this for.

[jivex5k]

Oh damn, didn't even notice the Pedio in the description....
I'm going to recommend she get a different yeast.

[jivex5k]

Well she tasted it yesterday, said it was tasting awesome so that's a good sign, super sour.
I talked to her about the Pedio and started linking her to articles. It's in her hands now, I highly recommended getting US-05, the LHBS is 15 minutes away and it's only 5-6 bucks probably, i never bought yeast alone so I don't know the price.
But, she has the information now and it's up to her at this point, I don't want to push her away from her original intention. Hell half the fun of homebrewing is making mistakes that turn out well. Who knows, she could have the patience that I don't and end up with a superb beer in 6 - 12 months.

[mashani]

If I read that right she is doing a sour mash then?

If so I'd tell her to save the bug yeast and brew another batch with it - without a sour mash. Just use it and let it do it's thing for 8-12 months to build a nice Flemish Red or Brown style beer. It's going to get plenty sour without a sour mash. The sour mash is just going to interfere with the complexity that would have developed from a long fermentation/secondary of the bug farm yeast.

And use S-05 to finish up the sour mash Berliner.

[jivex5k]

If I read that right she is doing a sour mash then?

If so I'd tell her to save the bug yeast and brew another batch with it - without a sour mash. Just use it and let it do it's thing for 8-12 months to build a nice Flemish Red or Brown style beer. It's going to get plenty sour without a sour mash. The sour mash is just going to interfere with the complexity that would have developed from a long fermentation/secondary of the bug farm yeast.

And use S-05 to finish up the sour mash Berliner.

Yep sour mash under a heat lamp, been 5 days now. IDK where she is today, hasn't responded but I'll tell her this info.

I didn't realize the sour mash would overpower the funk. I was planning on throwing brett in my own sour mash down the line once I have a pipeline built. I'm still going to try it, worst case scenario I don't notice the brett and have a standard berliner.

[mashani]

Its not necessarily overpower, but it will radically change the nature of the result. The bug farm blends like that are in very specific proportions, to allow each of the intended flavors to get into the mix during fermentation and create a really complex end result. If you taste a really good Flemish red, you will know what I mean. It's sour, but a very different thing then a Berliner.

By doing a sour mash, you are letting "other stuff" like more lacto and whatever other bugs are in the grain do some major flavor adjustment to the base wort, so a lot of those complexities will get lost. So you really should just brew with them vs. use a sour mash, so that they grow and add those flavors as intended.

Now if you were to do say a sour mash and then pitch single brett strain on top of it as your fermenting yeast, then that's different - you will get the some of the brett characteristics to come through well, except that the beer will be way more sour then a straight up brett beer, and those characteristics will continue to develop in the bottle - but if you bottle it young and intend to drink young like most folks do for a Berliner then they won't fully develop, IE if you used Brett C you'd be tasting more pinapple and less funk early, where the older it gets the more it will get funky. If you intend to age some of it yet bottle young, then carb the bottles to age at a lower CO2 volume as it might drop another point or two given a long time in the bottle. Brett works slow once it goes beyond a certain point, IE when it "looks" ready to bottle. It's still doing stuff then, it's just slooow.

[jivex5k]

Ah I see. I've had a few Flemish Red's they all have a more vinegar esque sourness for the most part. I stopped by my friends house last night to let her borrow my wort chiller and got to taste the sour mash...it's really not that sour and is way too sweet. I didn't have the heart to tell her that straight up but I told her it's definitely sweeter than it should be. Carawheat doing it's work... I recommended she use US-05 instead of the blend but she's still undecided, honestly I don't have high hopes for the beer after tasting it but who knows, I hope it does work out somehow but it's all in her court now.
That's interesting about pitching a blend on a sour mash...so it could really come out like anything. Maybe it will work out somehow, and honestly tasting that wort I don't think US-05 is going to help it anyways, it's just way too sweet.

Anyways, hopefully she keeps going forward even if this one doesn't come out great, would hate to see her throw in the towel because she got the wrong grains for a recipe. Hell even I've learned from this experience, 50% carawheat is waaaaaay too much.

And yeah, for the brett on mine it would just be a single strain that I would pitch alongside US-05 after the sour mash. I'm going to do it once I have a large enough stock of homebrew to just set it in the corner for a while and forget about it while the funk develops. I won't put it on fruit at all, just straight up. I had a nice wild ale at a local brewery that seemed to have a good mix of lacto and brett, crisp tartness up front with a funky finish, it was very good. I'm shooting for something like that, but that's probably 5 or 6 batches down the road.

Thanks for all your info on souring btw, I really appreciate it.

[mashani]

FWIW, depending on how much funk you want you could go with just Brett and not bother with the S-05.

Also FWIW, a well aged authentic Flemish red/brown should develop some sherry like flavors and tart/sour cherry or dark fruit like flavors as it oxidizes with age (yes some oxidation is a good thing in these beers). I think the blend your friend bought tries to get those flavors sooner by actually using a sherry strain in the mix.