Stuck Berliner weisse

[staticfritz]

Lots of reading, over the years, finally decided to try out a berliner, but now it's stuck (i think?)

This is what I did (shout out to the sour blogs, Mad fermentationist and all for the incredibly useful posts)

4# german pilsner
4# german wheat

mash @ 150deg for 60 min
156deg 10 min rest with 12oz acidulated malt
Sparge into two 3ga soda kegs, charged w CO2
Soda kegs went into a big rubbermaid with cool water until I hit 110deg
Added 1/4 lb breiss wheat to each, recharged with CO2
Using an immersion circulator (ANOVA sous vide), kept both kegs at 110deg and under ~7psi C02
3.5 days later, pH 3.6, smells great and sour, clean wheat aroma

90 min boil
1oz hallertau @ 15min
Cooled to ~70
transfered to fermenter 1.6 L starter of Wyeast 1007 german ale
Airated for about 3 hrs, then sealed up

OG 1.034 prior to souring (forgot to check after boil)

It bubbled away nicely for the first 7 days or so
activity slowed and stopped so on day 10 I check it...
and the SG is 1.024



Is that all Lactic acid I'm measuring?
Did my yeast get stuck?

Not sure on how best to proceed at this point... I was hoping for a quick beer to start serving up soon

 

[WI_Wino]

How are you measuring SG? Refractometers are not accurate after fermentation starts and will read higher (alcohol skews the refraction index). In a clean beer you can correct for the error using a spreadsheet but I personally don't know if/how lacto affects that correction. I would use a hydrometer.

 

[staticfritz]

ha, new refractometer, never even thought to see if it measured the same.

1.010 by hydrometer. Better!
I was under the impression most BWs fermetned down into the 1.003-5 range? Maybe I'm just seeing the lactic acid now?

 

[soundguy]

My first berliner fermented down to I think 1.003 with white labs German ale yeast. The second, I have aging now, only got to about 1.008 with trios and Ardennes. It is aging now with Brett c and b. Plan on racking it and taking a gravity sometime in the next few days. I have to check my notes but I think they both started about 1.033.

 

[foltster]

I don't think the lactic acid is affecting your gravity readings significantly.

What temperature was it fermented at/is it at now?

Its likely that it is just a tough environment for the 1007 to fully ferment and it just needs a little more time. I'd give it more than 10 days to do its work, maybe 7 more days and check the gravity again.

It is entirely possible it is just done at this point. How does it taste(if you tasted the samples, don't pull one just to taste it)? If you are "stuck" at 1.010 7 days from now, transferring to another vessel may encourage it to finish up.

Bottle conditioning or kegging?

 

[staticfritz]

fermenting at 65-70 (temp in my laundry room)
It's wakes up a little with shaking, so yeah, another week seems good

Tastes quite sour, but no feet or vomit. pretty simple/clean actually, begs for syrup or something

I'm planning on kegging it, maybe a few small bottles just for long term reference. 2 3ga kegs. One to drink now, one to maybe add some fruit to? Apricots maybe?

 

[staticfritz]

or maybe the first of the season bing cherries I just picked up... hmmm

 

[Calder]

ha, new refractometer, never even thought to see if it measured the same.

1.010 by hydrometer. Better!
I was under the impression most BWs fermetned down into the 1.003-5 range? Maybe I'm just seeing the lactic acid now?

Lactic acid has a higher gravity than water. The more sour the beer is, the higher he FG ...... to an extent ....... lots of other variables, such as fermentability, OG, yeast, etc.

1.010 is not bad for a Berliner. I think mine generally end up around 1.008.

1007 is a fairly acid tolerant yeast, but the low ph environment of a BW is hostile for just about any yeast, and you may not get much reproduction. And the lower the ph, the harder it is for the yeast. I like to pitch really high for my BWs, about 4X what I would pitch for a regular beer.

At 1.010, does it taste sweet? Does it taste sour? If the answers are No and Yes, then you have made a pretty good BW.

 

[staticfritz]

so, the beer turned out great!
half of it drank plain, the other half with a pound of apricots

Batch #2 this weekend. Though instead of putting in kegs for the lacto souring, i may just use a bucket for ease. Although that makes it a lot harder to top with CO2, maybe a reverse blow-off tube in some soda water?