I had a Berlinner weisse that was just not getting very tart so I added some dregs from a really tart lambic I had on the shelf. After several months I am now getting a nice tartness but also some Brett character. Is this out of style for this beer?
I also intend to make some woodruff syraup from the Zymurgy recipe.
No, brett is not out of style for Berliner Weisse.
At an NHC presentation last year, they said that brett provided a “more authentic German” flavor to Berliner Weisse.
+1 to Jeff’s comment. Mostly lactic, but a note of brett is an enhancement to flavor.
My favorites have used organisms cultured from wheat malt - who knows what is there, but the flavor is more than one-dimensional sourness.
Guess I should’ve read the style guidelines a little closer. Thanks for the replies. I just bottled a dozen champagne bottles of this stuff as well as six 2L soda bottles. I think its at least a year old.
Is there brett on barley and wheat malts? I do a sour mash with crushed malt and seem to get a little Brett.
My question relates to Tom’s. I started a “no boil” unhopped ale recently as an experiment. I was not trying to produce a sour beer, but the method was similar to some used in Berliner Weiss sour mashes. The cooled wort (used Crisp ale malt) was immediately pitched with a dry Cal ale yeast (rather than letting it sour first). It fermented a week with a typical krausen, which settled out as the ale clarified during the first half of week 2. I intended to bottle this after 14 days, but fermentation has kicked back in, a new krausen (light and bubbly) has developed and the beer is cloudy with yeast again. The gravity during the first week went from 1030 to 1007. The flavor at that time was not sweet, nor had it appreciably soured. After 14 days it has a definite funk aroma, but it is more yeasty than anything else. The flavor is mild, fresh and somewhat “spritzy” but far from lactic or acetic. I assume a wild yeast has kicked itself into gear. Any thoughts? Again, this is primarily just an experiment, but I wonder what bugs or wild yeast strains might have been on the malt. I expected it to develop more lacto. Overall, it seems to have been relatively clean malt, but this new recent activity was a surprise.