Brew Day Review - Berliner Weisse 6/10/12

Name: B-town Weisse

Style: Berliner Weisse

Gallons: 5 split

Yeast: Wyeast German Ale Yeast 1007 & White Labs Lactobacillus Delbrueckii 677

Grain Bill: Pilsner, Wheat, Unmalted Wheat

Hops: Hallertau Mittelfruh

The Plan

After having read Stan Hieronymus' Brewing with Wheat it became increasingly (ir)rational that I needed to brew a Berliner Weisse. Granted, I've never actually had a BW, and have no idea if I would even like one, but I wasn't going to let these small details curtail my adventures. The allure of pilsner, wheat, no boil, 10 minute boil, yeast, and bacteria was just something I couldn't let go of. Mysterious and alluring and against everything I've ever read from hombrew books. Certainly it appealed to my anarchist side. After some more reading I came up with a recipe and plan. I used the information from the Berlinder Kindl Weisse recipe to formulate my plan of action. I really liked the idea of taking half the wort before its been boiled with hops and pitching it with Lacto and then boiling the other half for 10 minutes with the hops and pitching with a German Ale yeast. Let them ferment out and then blend to desired taste, which i have no idea what that should be.
The Good 

Mashing was a simple two part protein and sacc rest. Everything went smoothly and all temps were hit and managed. Sparging was not difficult and the desired amount was obtained. Bleed half of the wort into two 1 gallon glass jug and one 1/2 gallon jug and cooled to 90 degrees and pitched with lacto. Boiled other half with hops for 10 minutes, cooled, and pitched with yeast. The brew day totaled a mere 4 hours, which was great and reminded me of those first few years brewing on the stove with extracts.

The Bad
I didn't have the luxury of cooling down the non-boiled wort with my cooler because that would involve cooling all 5 gallons, separating, and then bring the rest to a boil. So I added the non-boiled wort to jugs and placed them into a bath of ice water to drop the temp. This took quite a bit longer than what the cooler would have done and working with a wort that was not boiled makes me skeptical of what other beasties are currently swirling around. The 25 gallon propan 25 gallon tank looks to be almost gone, the flame strength was not very consistent but for such a short boil time it finished the job. I'm no yeast cultivator, so I eyeballed the splitting of the lacto into the three containers. The only carboy I had available was a 6.5 gallon, which is a lot of empty air space for the 3 gallons of German ale yeast wort.


The Ugly
I really should have tried a BW first to see if I even like it. I did manage to find a BW by Grand Teton called Snarling Badger, which I haven't read too many glowing reviews about, most of which is that its not sour enough. The gas regulator decided to spring a leak, which cost me an hour and half driving around the city looking for a replacement. Of course home depot didn't carry it to makes matters simpler. Looks like its been slightly leaking the whole time but managed to fully spew on this day. Lost a fair amount of propane as well. My normal homebrew shop apparently doesn't carry lacto all the time and treats this as a special order. I learned this after i already had the grains milled. So i had to wait a few days to get it. I really should get my own mill and buy grains in bulk.

Overall
Like any brew day, its about as enjoyable day as one can have. Lacto has taken off. One of three lacto jugs has really lighten in color very quickly but after another day the others have followed suit. The air locks have a nice clean sour smell to them with a fluffy krausen quality to it. After three days the German yeast has pretty much stopped bubbling. There is a slight bubbling to the Lacto and interesting enough the colors of two of the lactos are different. After a couple more days they both cleared to a similiar color.