I’ve been homebrewing for a little over 2 years now and I figured it was finally time to attempt my first sour beer! After searching the web for a good recipe I ended up just taking what I thought made sense from a few different ones and putting together my own.

Beer Specifications

Beer Name: Berliner Weisse Sour Beer Style: Berliner Weisse Recipe Type: All Grain Pre-Boil Volume: 6 gallons / 27.3 litres Batch Size: 5 gallons / 22.7 litres Estimated SRM: 2° Estimated IBU: 17 Estimated OG: 1.034 Estimated FG: 1.008 Estimated ABV: 3.3%

Water Chemistry

Amount Addition A small amount Citric Acid to pre-acidify the wort 0.5 tsps Calcium Chloride

Grain Bill/Fermentables

LBS Fermentables 2.75 Pilsner Malt 2.75 Wheat Malt

Hops

Oz Time Hops 1 60 min Saaz

Yeast

# Yeast 1 Escarpment Labs Lactobacillus Blend 2.0 1 Safale K-97

Fermentation Schedule

21 days Primary 14 days Bottle Conditioning

Directions

Mash Temperature: 150°F / 65.5°C Mash Time: 60 min Boil Duration: 60 min

This recipe was designed as a kettle (or “quick”) sour and so the first step was to mash like normal.





I then did a very quick 10 min boil to kill any bugs in the wort, including the naturally occurring lactobacillus that lives on the grain husk. I did this because I wanted to control exactly what strain of bugs soured my beer rather than leave it up to chance.

After cooling the wort down I pitched my blend of lactobacillus right in the kettle. I also placed some Star San sprayed plastic wrap around the top of the kettle, put the lid on it and wrapped that in as well. Finally I placed the whole kettle in a warm part of the house and wrapped it in blankets and left it to do its thing.

Unfortunately the ph strips that I had weren’t accurate enough to actually be useful and so I had to take small samples and taste to see how sour things got. I first started noticing it getting sour within about 10 hours or so and then it steadily increased every few hours after that. After almost 48 hours I felt it had gotten ‘sour enough’ and decided to proceed with the next boiling step.







I know people swear by non-hopped sour beers but I decided for this one I was going to treat it like a ‘normal beer’ and throw in a standard 1oz charge of Saaz at 60 minutes. Perhaps I’ll be more adventurous with my sours in the future 🙂

After cooling it down I took an Original Gravity (OG) reading and ended up with 1.038 which isn’t right on target but was close enough for me. Finally I pitched some K-97 I had left over and allowed it to ferment over a month.

After fermentation was complete I took my Final Gravity (FG) reading and got 1.007 for an estimated ABV of 4.07% which is a bit higher than my target. Maybe K-97 really likes sour beers?

When bottling I decided to actually split the batch and bottled some as is and some with Brewer’s best Natural Strawberry/Kiwi extract for flavouring.

Tasting Notes