Berliner-weiss

This is the first of what I am sure will be many post about our berliner-weiss.  Berliner-weiss is a sour wheat beer that some people add syrup to after it is poured into a glass.  I am assuming that glass in the picture above, the green beer is apple syrup and the red is raspberry syrup.  I have tried both along with vanilla, all are yummy.

Sour beers are becoming more popular in the US.   I think part of this is because many of the microbreweries want a challenge, I will get in to this latter on.    The other reason for the rise of the sour beers is that, they are apparently more appealing to women.  I can kinda see where that is coming from.  Too many american breweries are obsessed with hops.   Even traditional styles that should have little to no hops,  are crammed with hops.  As a generalizations, most women don't like IPAs or other hoppy beers.

The reason why sours are fun is because they are a challenge.  For sour beers, both yeast and a bacteria fermenting sugars to alcohol. The reason why sour beers have a higher alcohol content is because, bacteria can use sugars that yeast can not and bacteria can thrive in a high alcohol enviroment.  The other issue is the same bacteria that you use for souring a beer is the same bacteria that can spoil your beer.  That is why some breweries do not make sour beers or the bacteria fermentation takes place off site.

Usually for sour beers there are two separate fermentations, first yeast then bacteria.  The yeast will have a long fermentation time of a month, and then bacteria will then ferment the beer for three months.   For a berliner-weiss both fermentations take place at the same time, so the total fermentation time is two to three weeks, which is a lot better than four months.

The picture about is the starter for our bacteria, Lactobacillus acidophilus.  The yeast can out compete the bacteria for sugars, it is because that there needs to be more bacteria than yeast at the beginning of the fermentation.  We made a starter mixture of apple juice, honey and 'brewers nutrients'.    L. acidophilus is the same bacteria found in yogurt.  It's perfectly happy growing at high temperatures which is nice because it excludes other things from growing in the bottle. Placing the slow cooker on warm kept the culture at 100-120F.  The bacteria culture grew for a week before we started brewing.

The bacteria bottle was cooled to 80F and then the yeast was added.  After three hours the bacteria/yeast mixture was added to the fermenter.  Three hours after that there was a ton of activity.   I think the yeast fermentation should be done in a week and a half, which leave a few days for the bacteria to ferment on it's own.  We will test the beer in two weeks. 

The Reinheitsgebot loophole

We've had a busy month or so, but we're back on track.  We took about a two week break from brewing and haven't had much time to update the website.  But on to the thing we care about most...beer.

Our Hefeweizen turned out pretty amazingly.  We took the Speise and boiled it once it had melted from being in the freezer and used it to prime the beer.  We also named the beer Loophole beer based on the reason wheat beers even existed in spite of the Reinheitsgebot.  I discovered the loophole when researching about the history of Hefeweizen to give me an idea what to name it, and just for general edification.  This website is where I found a majority of my information: http://www.beerboozebites.com/2008/12/13/a-brief-history-of-hefeweizen/

In honor of the naming, we also used the coat of arms of the Dukes involved with the loophole in question:

What I find so interesting is that the Reinheitsgebot only had three ingredients it allowed for; Barley, Water, and Hops.  Yeast was not known about at that time so they did not include it until years later.  But the Wheat was allowed through select breweries as the Dukes of Wittlesbach were extremely fond of Weissbier.  The original Reinheitsgebot was actually created for two reasons that I've ever learned of.  One reason was economical in order to ensure that not all grains were used for the creation of beer, and plenty were used for food in order to help regulate cost.  The second reason was to stop the use of certain preservatives that some breweries were experimenting with to help their cost and, from what I've been able to gather from a few sources, caused some bad side effects.

As a side note, if you can find any beers by Dr. Fritz Briem I highly recommend buying them.  He is apparently a professor at the University of Munich and made a series of beers based on old German recipes which are either uncommon nowadays or just not made at all.  Because of him I finally was able to try a Berliner Weiss (a beer we are currently brewing and I will have a special post for), and a beer called Grut Beer which uses many spices and is a recipe from before the Reinheitsgebot.

Bitter Brit aka don't photo bomb our friends

The Biter Brit batch was a copy cat of 21st Amendment  Bitter American:

For beers that that should have a lighter color an flavor the mash should be placed in the pot once the water has reached temperature.  We start our boil with placing the mash in the pot and then increasing the temperature for the brewing. Our beer did not exactly match 21st Amendment because we boiled that mash longer, but that is ok.  The additional flavors from having a longer boil balanced the bitterness of the hops.   

Now about the label.  Our friend Monica was in Europe for work.  While she was in London she took a selfie in front of Big Ben.  When she posted her picture on facebook a couple of her friends started making fun of the obviously upset British gentleman in the background.   Since she was going to be out here so we named a beer in her honor.