Berliner Weisse Lacto Attenuation

Started making a Berliner Weisse with a combo of wyeast lacto and lacto cultured from grain. It took off within 24 hours with a furious looking fermentation, swirling and whirling but no krausen. It was really weird to be able to see that on top of the wort churning as well. Almost like watching a boil. Also tons of co2 bubbles rising through the wort. Smell is sour with a bit of funk. Taste is tart like a BW with a bit of wheat and lots of carbonation. Nothing seems off though and it is rather clean tasting.

Here's the problem... The lacto cultures alone have reduced my gravity to 1.010 at the 48 hour mark and all activity has ceased. I have looked and searched and can't find a straight response as to whether this is normal or not. I would think if it had a "yeast infection" it would have produced some off flavors fermenting at 90 degrees. The other thing I can't find a straight answer on is if any alcohol will have been produced with this drop in gravity.

I have a 2L starter of Brett Brux chilling in the fridge that was going to take it's turn next, but it appears there is not much left to work on.

So, firstly is this normal?

Secondly do I have alcohol or just sour low gravity wort? If no alcohol should I add some sort of sugars for the Brett to work on?

Thirdly should I bother to pitch the Brett or save it for something else? I do have a 1L starter of JP Dreggs I grew up that could go in instead if it would be a waste to pitch all that Brett.

Hopefully someone can shine some light on this soon. I'd hopefully be making an educated decision sometime tonight (Wishful thinking and fingers crossing here). Thanks in advance for the help.

AND I just broke another hydrometer!!! *sigh* Life goes on... Now I have an excuse to got the Homebrew Shop though.

Sounds normal to me, I like Brett in my BW I think it adds complexity to all the lactic acid
What strain of lactobacillus did you use? I'm sure there is some alcohol in there but not sure how much.

Wyeast 5335 and lacto cultured from raw uncrushed grain. Problem is, if the lacto didn't produce alcohol a fermentation of 1.010 to even as low as 1.000 is only 1.31%. Seems like that would be a waste of most any yeast, especially a $12 pack of Brett. So I am hoping someone has a solid answer on what's what here.

I ended up pitching the Brett. Still trying to figure out if the lacto will have produced any alcohol or not so know if I need to add any sugar to the mix so the Brett can make some alcohol.

It's been about 12 hours since the pitch and basically no activity so far. Not surprising though with 1.010 wort...

I think your lacto starter from the grain had more than just lacto on it. Your grain has all kinds of bugs on it.

I think that the wild yeast etc that reduced your gravity would have produced alcohol.

I have heard suggestions of this being possible, but I don't know what yeast could have fermented this warm without producing nasty off flavors......

The way I see it is I either assume I have alcohol and continue to proceed as normal, or I assume I don't and add 1.6# of sugar to make up for it. Flip a coin?

Adding sugar to a small dry beer is going to make it very thin and watery. I would leave it be, personally.

I have made 3 berliners all using the uncrushed grain sour mash. All of them turned out fantastic. All 3 times the FG was 1.002 but as time went on the beer dried out more and more making it all kinds of sour (no boil method). I added fruit to the last 2 that adds some sugar to the beer obviously and helps with the over dryness. Beers taste great! Have a Blood Orange/Pineapple on tap right now!

The simple and evidence lacking answer is the other wild yeasts in addition to the bacteria from the grain. If you didn't pitch a pure culture you have no idea whats in there. I would just consider yourself lucky and save the slurry for subsequent batches since, so far, this one came out nice. I once did a split batch of belgian wit and intended to just ferment half with lacto and the rest with a more neutral belgian yeast. Well the lacto portion got seriously gross (did no boil/hop) and ended up blending it and then adding brett to remove the nastiness in the beer. It's pretty good now but I wish it had ended up more like yours did.

I take a gal up to 1.5 gal with about a lb of un-milled 2 row then ferment the other half with normal ale yeast generally Safale US05 then blend back once sour mashed portion is done and tart enough. Never had to worry about any nasties. Blanket the carboy with CO2 to avoid any dumpster/diaper pail type odors.

I also mash hop with 1oz of Hallertau pellets.

Works great for me!

Well I guess I'll just wait it out and see if I can catch a buzz off it or not. Will definetely save the slurry and reuse if it ends up well.

You didn't provide your starting gravity.

I did some research on Wyeast 5335 and lacto fermentation recently but I don't remember most of it. Reading your post I want to assume the activity was dominated by the (wyeast 5335) lacto culture you intentionally pitched. This is partly due to the short fermentation time (ime wild yeast takes more time to kick in) and it visually resembles mostly pure lacto fermentations Ive seen.

I believe Wyeast 5335 is a facultative heterofermentative lactobacilli meaning it produces alcohol and lactic acid (unlike delbrueckii). However it can only ferment certain carbs so it does not produce much alcohol. I too yearned to know how to calculate abv if much of the sugar conversion did not produce alcohol. Mad fermentationist says 10 - 12% for 5335 (not sure if you can post links but Im sure you can find it). So lets say you pitched at 1033, a common grav for bw. A fg of 1010 would be 3%, and 10- 12% of that is 0.3 or 0.4 % abv, which seems right to me.

A little brett in a bw sounds great to me, but why not also just add more wort, and pitch w sach? Seems like that (brett or not) would end up being a pretty go bw. cheers

Quote:
"Lactobacillus is an interesting organism. It is known for its rapid fermentation in dairy products, producing all the required acidity for yogurt in just a few hours at high temperature (115-120 F). The problem with using Lacto is the huge range the genus comprises. For example, the*strain sold by Wyeast
*(5335)*is only capable of fermenting about 10-12% of the carbohydrates in a standard wort, not nearly enough attenuation for something resembling beer. LuckilyWhite Labs’ 677 strain
*is capable of producing an enzyme which allows it to ferment maltose, maltotriose, and raffinose, ensuring a dry finished beer without aid. In addition to lactic acid, WLP677 also produces both alcohol and carbon-dioxide, so the result should be similar to a beer fermented with yeast. Even if my attempt to use this particular strain doesn’t work, it may just mean that I have to find a strain that is better suited for the task"

So that states that only 10-12% of the sugars is fermentable by the Wyeast Lacto, not that all will be fermented and only 10-12% of which would become alcohol. So I'm not sure if that was a misunderstanding or if you are refering to something else.

From another thread on this subject:
actic acid bacteria can be divided into two groups based upon the products produced from the fermentation of glucose. Homofermentative organisms ferment glucose to two moles of lactic acid, generating a net of 2 ATP per mole of glucose metabolized. Lactic acid is the major product of this fermentation. Heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria ferment 1 mole of glucose to 1 mole of lactic acid, 1 mole of ethanol, and 1 mole of CO2. One mole of ATP is generated per mole of glucose, resulting in less growth per mole of glucose metabolized. Because of the low energy yields, lactic acid bacteria often grow more slowly than microbes capable of respiration, and produce smaller colonies of 2-3 mm."

So I obviously have Heterofermentative Lacto with the CO2 that was produced. But who knows how much alcohol. I've already pitched the Brett and will let it ride. We'll see how it turns out...

hey man, how'd your stuff turn out?

I guess we decided if there's CO2 then there's booze?

I just had an 1809, and it definitely has a brett character I had not realized it had before. It seems to really compliment the tart of the lacto, and dry out the beer with effervescence at the same time.

I still haven't tried SN Brux, but I understand it has plenty of Sacchro so I think your brew should have plenty yeast workers on your side.

I want to add some brett to my next BW. I think I'll do it when I prime next time I do this one. Kind of like what you did. Next time you'll start with higher gravity, right?

Mine is actually still in primary. I have been letting this one go for a while because of the complex bugs involved. Also I broke my hydrometer and would really like to get a FG on this before kegging. I've been meaning to try a small sample but havn't gotten around to it yet.

As to whether or not I will bump up the SG on future batches, I don't know. I will wait and see how this comes out first. I will definetely update as I progress with this though.