My wife’s favorite style of craft beer is a well made Berliner Weisse. Even though she turns her nose to the wildest of wild ales and bitter hop bombs, she loves a sour wheat ale. According to Kim, “I really enjoy the acidity and lemon-like tartness. It’s a palate cleansing beer that makes me happy.” Spot on.
A Berliner Weisse is extremely light in color – arising from a grist of almost 50% wheat and 50% barley – and is low in alcohol, almost 3% ABV, with a spritzy carbonation. The tartness and acidity arises from lactic acid bacteria present during fermentation. Picture the perfect summer beer.
Historically, a Berliner Weisse wort was not boiled, allowing lactic acid bacteria present on the grain to make its way into the primary fermentation. The beer originated sometime in the 18th century, and as legend has it, was dubbed by Napoleon Bonaparte as the “Champagne of the North”, when his armies marched on to Russia (and subsequently perished). More likely, the beer has its roots from the Flanders region where brown and red sour ales were popular at the time.
The modern Berliner Weisse, being developed and perfected by breweries in Berlin during the 19th century, has artificial sweeteners added to the beer to cut the acidity, such as woodruff or raspberry syrup. By the 1950s, the popularity of the beer waned until the american craft beer movement began to resurrect the style. As a result, there are many variations of the beer, with a common lactic acid acidity. In a nod to storage of the beer in microbe-laden barrels, some American craft breweries have begun to include Brettanomyces for a more complex beer.
My personal favorite Berliner Weisse, and Kim would agree with me, is Southampton’s award winning Berliner Weisse. I was lucky enough to purchase a bottle at release day and it should be the benchmark of the style. Lemon, apple tartness, some mild funk, doughy wheat character, and an effervescent carbonation. Other Berliner Weisse’s that are more accesible include Fritz Beam’s 1809 and The Bruery’s Hottenroth.
I decided to brew this beer after Kim tried a Berliner Weisse that my friend and I brewed together at his house and asked, “Now why can’t you make this ALL the time?”. Jonathan Moxey, an award winning homebrewer and writer at Serious Eats, brewed an amazing Berliner Weisse that took first place in category at the Homebrew Alley 6 competition. To brew a Berliner Weisse, look no further to Serious Eat’s article written by Joe Postma. For my brew I decided to do something different and add Brettanomyces. Specifically, I added two strains that I isolated from Cantillon, CB-1 and CB-2.
Recipe (5 gallon batch – no boil method):
- 3.5 pounds of Wheat malt
- 3.0 pounds of German Pilsner malt
Mashed in with 1 ounce of German Hallertauer (4.8% AA) with a protein rest at 125ºF. I then raised the mash temperature to 148ºF and held for one hour. Mashed out at 168ºF and collected wort. Sterilized wort chiller and cooled wort down to 65ºF. I did not boil the wort and pitched 150 billion cells of WLP 090, two packets of Lactobacillus Delbrueckii, and 100 billion cells each of CB-1 and CB-2.
Victuals:
OG: 1.031
FG: ?? Still souring
ABV: ?? Estimated 3%
IBUs: 4
Did you ever consider pitching lacto before the yeast and letting it go for a few days? Jesse Caudill from Wyeast is a big advocate of it (see this talk: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13867448) along with putting some Brett in secondary/bottling. Also, I know that Sixpoint had good success in pitching Wyeast Lacto first before fermenting it out with ale yeast.
I have not and seems like a good idea. Thanks for the link Matt. Interestingly he states that for a good lactic character a proper pitch rate is 10 million cells per ml. For a typical 5 gallon batch, one pack would yield 1 million cells per ml. Seems like we’ve been underpitching our lacto!
I’m going to start making lactobacillus starters in the lab at elevated temps to get proper cell counts.
J
The only issue I ran into personally is making sure that the Lacto did it’s job well enough before something else set in and fermented the beer. Needless to say I’ve found my house culture is nothing I want in a beer!
I love Berliner Weisse! Pilsner malt has a lot of Lacto on it already, I was able to get away with the culture that was already present on the malt without having to add any additional cultures. I’m sure it’ll come out great!
Awesome! I’m sure this will turn out great and is really true to style. Keep me informed.
J
I am aother fan of Berliner Weisse. Went with the bugs on the grains as well and got a sour beer at the end. Then spilt the batch and added some Bretts to one share. Luckily, the share with the Bretts got way more sour than the one without it. I would not recommend doing the spontaneous mash souring if you can’t vent your basement. A very distinct vomit-smell develops… but vanishes after one day and a beautiful lemony smell remains.
A traditional Berliner Weisse (in Berlin) is made with Brettanomyces anyway. There is a German dissertation about this. The author studies the profiles of traditional Weisse and concluded, without Brettanomyces no traditional Berliner Weisse. He could even identify and isolate B. bruxellensis in several old Berliner Weisse bottles. A guy in Berlin (a homebrewer) just kicked-started his Berliner Weisse brewery to recreate the real Berliner Weisse in Berlin with the isolated Brettanomyces.
I am sure your Berliner Weisse will turn out very well. The lactos and Bretts will do the job.
Have a link to that dissertation? This would be an interesting read.
J
Unfortunately, it only exists as a printed version and is not published. However, a friend of mine managed to get a copy of the whole dissertation and that is where I got my version from. I googled for the dissertation (with “Über die Aromabildung beim Berliner”) and found a broken Google books link. Maybe you are more lucky than me. A lot of books at Google are not accessible for us in Europe…
The full citation: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank-Jürgen Methner: “Über die Aromabildung beim Berliner Weißbier unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Säuren und Estern”, Dissertation an der TU Berlin, 1987
Good luck and cheers, Sam
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How did this beer turn out?
Check out the review:
http://sciencebrewer.com/2012/12/21/homebrew-review-kims-berliner-weisse/
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I’d like to do a sour here and there, but since I am not planning to brew them often, I don’t want to commit to extra fermenters or gear (I’m a student living in NYC – I’m sure you can sympathize). Did you use your usual gear for brewing this? Did it have any noticeable consequences on future brews?
As a note, I’m expecting the answer to be that you could use the same gear and experience no ill effects. The one time I tried to spontaneously ferment something, it took nearly two weeks for anything to show up in the wort and when it did it was just a little bit of mold (which got tossed). It’s put me somewhat at ease about anything nasty (or at least wild yeast) getting into my beers. Maybe this attitude isn’t so applicable to pitched bugs, though.
As you note, there is no need to worry about cross contamination if your sanitation is sound. The only thing that I keep separate is anything that could get scratched and hoses. For example, I used to ferment in 6 gallon buckets but after cleaning with sponges scratches will eventually appear. This where bacteria and wild yeast can reside. Better bottles are fine to switch between the two. My cleaning regimen is oxiclean first (for a couple of days) followed by starsan. Never had a problem. I have a dedicated autosiphon and tubing just for wild brews.
As for brewing wild ales – just do it! You will be pleased. A Berliner Weisse is the easiest of sour ales to brew since there is no boil, just a mash. This of course is very conducive to NYC apartment living. Brew one now and you’ll have the sample in perfect condition for next year’s Homebrew Alley competition!
BTW, as for mold, not much cause for concern. This points to a sanitation issue, and unless it had a real shag carpet on it, probably won’t damage the beer. I would simply rack the beer without disturbing the mold. If it tastes funny then toss it. Remember, the alcoholic content and acidic nature of beer does not lend to anything pathogenic growing in your beer.
Out of curiosity, where are you a student in NYC?
J
I’m in the first year of a physics PhD at NYU.
I’m only doing partial mashes so far, but soon I should be getting a proper tun and will try to have a go at some AG if I can hack it on my stove with two kettles. Alternatively I’ll just step down the batch size. Thanks for the advice! I ought to be replacing my tubing soon anyways (it’s starting to discolor just a bit, despite trying dry it well after cleaning and sanitizing), so I’ll just pick up an extra set next time I’m at the shop.