I brewed a berlinner weiss two weeks ago sun. Pretty easy process hour mash, 15 min boil. Racked to primary addedd WL Berlinner weiss yeast and wraped it in an old sleeping bag and left it in a dark corner of basement for two weeks. Temp was 68 whole time. It was almost 30 hours before I saw any action from the air lock. Once it did start to bubble away it only lasted about 24 to 36 hours. And the layer of krausen was the smallest I’ve seen since I started home brewing last year. I chalked it up to the fact that this beer is such a low alcohol brew. When I racked it to my secondary on sunday i noticed that after ten days of inaction the air lock is bubbling again, albeit very slow, and a tiny bit of Krausen has formed again. My question is have I ruined this beer?
What yeast? Original Gravity? Lacto?
Have you taken gravity readings at any point?
Is the 68* ambiant temperature? Why the sleeping bag?
My first plan of action would be the sniff test. New signs of fermentation can indicate infection. Problem here is that a weiss beer will already have some yeasty character to the nose. So it might be harder to pick out aromas of bacteria or wild yeast - but there would be a diference.
I would not be so concerned about the short fermentation originally- especially if it is a low gravity beer.
If the beer did actualy finish, and then start up again, that would be a problem in most cases.
og was 1.031. used white labs berliner weiss yeast. did not add lacto because LHBS guy said wasn’t necessary because it was already in the yeast. fg is 1.010. Smells like a normal wheat beer to me. Had a rotten egg smell during primary but have read that that is normal.
[quote=“Brew Meister Smith”]Have you taken gravity readings at any point?
Is the 68* ambiant temperature? Why the sleeping bag?
My first plan of action would be the sniff test. New signs of fermentation can indicate infection. Problem here is that a weiss beer will already have some yeasty character to the nose. So it might be harder to pick out aromas of bacteria or wild yeast - but there would be a diference.
I would not be so concerned about the short fermentation originally- especially if it is a low gravity beer.
If the beer did actualy finish, and then start up again, that would be a problem in most cases.[/quote]
Could monitor gravity… Brett will slowly eat residual sugars slow. I dont remember if that strain has a blend of lacto, sacc and brett. The release of co2 could also be release of co2 in solution. I was thinking that the final gravity was a bit high.
Looking at the write up of the White Labs strain, I don’t think there is much to be worried about.
I did not know the strain also contained Lacto - so that could easily account for a second and seperate fermentation.
The heavy sulphur smell seems to be par for the course.
This is a very specialized type of yeast strain (that I am very unfamiliar with by the way). Seems reasonable that fermentation would be very different than your standard US-05 sort of deal.
