8562154 large number
Monday, July 7th, 2008Another “I should have paid more attention in Chemistry class” post…
Tonight I bottled my second batch of Berliner Weisse. Its a simple (albeit odd) recipe that yields a low alcohol, slightly tart beer. The oddness comes from two distinct sources. First, unlike other beers you don’t boil Berliner Weisse. You extract the sugars from the malt, cool & add yeast. Second, you conduct a sour mash.
The sour mash is what I’m contemplating. The procedure involves taking about a quarter of the sweet wort you collect from the grain and adding half a pound of malted (but unmashed) grains. The grains soak in the liquid for about a week before being strained out. That 25% is added back to the remaining 75%, you wait a few days & then bottle. The grains you add to that 25% inoculate the mixture with Lactobacillus that resides on the husks.
When I brewed my first Berliner Weisse I stored the bucket of grains & liquid in the cellar which stays somewhere around 65 degrees. That batch was good but like any proud sourhead I wanted more. For this second batch I brought the sour mash bucket up to the attic. I didn’t keep track of the temperature but I’m going to guess that the average temperature was at least in the mid 70s.
Lacto’s optimum temperature is 98 (so says Sparrow’s Wild Brews) and while I’m sure the attic didn’t reach that temperature, what I bottled tonight was noticably more acidic than the first batch. I think I’m going to try and do a few more batches this summer, monitoring the temperature in the attic, to determine what temperature sour mash I feel produces the best beer. There was such a difference between the first batch at 65F and (an assumed) 75F that I can’t imagine a sour mash conducted at 98 being good. Still, I think it can be pushed further. Its just a question of how much…