Recipe: Berliner Weisse au Naturale

I always thought I didn’t have the patience to brew sour beers.  3 years for a blend lambic?  Forget that.  I’d drink it all in a week.

Recently I discovered that you can brew a a pretty fine Berliner Weisse in a just about a month.  No sour mashes or lactic acid additions needed.  An honest lactic fermentation.  And because I’m cheap – no $10 packets of commercial lactobacillus culture either.

The lacto comes from a bit of raw grain added for part of the fermentation.  Some people insist that  souring the beer in this way is too inconsistent and not repeatable.  Then again when these beers were being developed 150 years ago, the brewers didn’t call up the yeast lab to have a  pure culture sent over.

Brewing Notes

• When you mill the grain, hold back one half (0.5) lb in a separate container.  We’ll use this grain to inoculate the sour wort.
• There is no boil in this recipe, which was apparently quite common for Berliner Weisse brewing.
• The Northern Brewer forum has a pretty long thread on brewing Berliner Weiss.  The technique is a little different from this one, but it’s worth a read.  You can find it here.
• Berliner Weisse is commonly served with a shot of Raspberry (Himbeer) or Woodruff (Waldmeister) syrup.  Raspberry is easy enough to find at the grocery or specialty food store.  GermanDeli.com carries Woodruff, but they seem to be out.  When I find another source I’ll pass it along.

Berliner Weiße mit Schuß (Himbeer)

All Grain Recipe

Batch Size: 6.00 gal
OG: 1.033 SG
FG: 1.004
Color: 2.8 SRM
IBU: 3.6 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 0 Minutes

Ingredients
4.00 lb                Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)
3.50 lb                Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM)
1 oz (28 gm)        Mt. Hood [6.00 %]  (60 min) (Mash Hop)
1 Pkgs                 US-05 (Safale #US-05)

Mash Schedule
30 min        Protein Rest         122.0 F
45 min        Saccrification        152.0 F
10 min        Mash Out             170.0 F

Directions

1. Add the hops during the saccrification rest.  There is no boil for this recipe.
2. Run off and sparge as into your boil kettle as normal.
3. When you’ve collected all of the wort, cool to about 100ºF.
4. Run off 2 gallons of wort into one fermenter and add your remaining grain.  Seal this fermenter with an airlock, do not aerate. Stash this fermenter in a warm place.  90-100ºF is best.  It will become quite foul in both appearance and odor.  This is ok.
5. Continue chilling the remaining wort to pitching temperate (64ºF).
6. Run off 4 gallons into a second fermenter.  Aerate and pitch this fermenter as normal.
7. After 7 days Rack the beer from both vessels into a secondary fermenter.
8. Allow the beer to sour for at least another 2-3 weeks – longer if you can.  The gravity will drop a couple of more points and the sour character will develop further.
9. When the beer tastes sour enough to you, keg or bottle and aim for 3.5-4 volumes of carbonation.  The high carbonation will also augment the tart character of the beer.

Extract Recipe

For an all extract version, use 5.5 lbs Wheat Liquid Extract.  Steep the hops for 60 minutes at 155ºF and add the extract anytime you like during the steeping.  No need to boil.  Cool the wort and follow the fermentation schedule outlined above.  You will also need a half pound of base malt for inoculating the wort.  Follow the fermentation instructions above.

Tagged as: berliner, fermentation, lactobacillus, recipe, sour, weisse