Seabuckthorn Berliner Wiesse

oipivo

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Hellllo!

My wife requested a seabuckthorn beer and what style is better than a Berliner Wiesse? I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions on adding them. I'm planning to whirlpool with them, but maybe adding them after primary would be better? As I understand it, whirlpooling pre fermentation will result in a more tart flavor.

I'm also going to kettle sour the beer using my tepache. Anyone tried this? I'm certain it will work and my tepache turns nice and sour after about a day. I'm guessing I'll get a bit of attenuation from that as well.

Here's the recipe: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/825858/tepache-soured-seabuckthorn-citra-berliner

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
 
No idea what seabuckthorn is, or tepache - I'm assuming wort?
 
Seabuckthorn is a very sour berry. it's available all over Estonia (where I'm living). It's really great in teas and I've seen it used in beer fairly often here with quite nice results. Tepache is a fermented pineapple ginger drink. I ferment it using just the yeast on the pineapple rind and it naturally creates some lacto since it's very sour.
 
You have a lot going on there, I'd say choose one thing as your flavor focus rather than having the berries, pineapple/ginger and Citra competing. It may very well be that the Citra and the tartness of the berries will compliment so I'd try that first. The tepache would be interesting but I think I'd rather see it in a secondary fermentation/sour application.
 
I definitely agree there's a lot going on. My hunch is that the tepache flavors would mostly be fermented out as I'm only using it to kettle sour. I suppose this would be obvious once tasting the pre-boiled wort however. Proper lacto is slightly pricey at my LHBS which is why I'm looking for other cheaper/interesting options.
 
Welli'llbedamned....just learned something!
....what "Sanddorn" is in English. :D
I think a sanddorn berliner weisse is a cool idea and your recipe looks like it might work (no personal experience = grain of salt)
Looks like Kehrwieder have done something similar, though I have yet to have tried it.
Kind of agree with JA though with the Tepache....
I wouldn't try to integrate it into the brew, at least not initially. Mix, if you want, after the fact, but try to the sanddorn sour alone down pat and then go from there.
....my 2cents
 
I looked them up. They're described as "edible and nutritious, though astringent, sour and oily, unpleasant to eat raw", not something I'd want in my beer but then, I've never had one. The oily part would concern me - goodbye, head retention! Also this: "malolactic fermentation of sea buckthorn juice reduces sourness, thus in general enhancing sensory properties." This is possible and might be advisable before adding to a Berliner Weiss - you're adding sour to sour. I also agree with posters above: Too much going on. Try the sour with the fruit before adding the next factor to it.
 
Gah you're all right. I'm going to hold off on the tepache souring and deal with purchasing some proper lacto for the time being. And Nosybear you're definitely right about the oil content. I wasn't expecting any head, that's for sure, but other brewers have mentioned it wasn't as much of a problem as they expected. My wife loves astringent sourness for some reason, so I'm not too afraid of that flavor coming out strongly (even if I'm not a huge fan of it). Going to ditch the tepache sour and stick with just the lacto kettle sour (purchasing proper lacto), citra dry hop, and seabuckthorn.
 
The tepache could work for the souring phase. If you're happy with the flavour of your culture and how quickly it works, then the kettle sour approach will allow you to stop it at the point you're happy with the taste.

You could always add a tea or tincture of the sea buckthorn at packaging. Much more control that way.

Then it's just the question of whether there's too many flavours as others mention...

If you were interested in experimenting, there's probably some lactobacillus in your tepache colony and lactobacillus is used for malolactic fermentation (though I'm sure it's strain dependent). So if you added some sea buckthorn juice during the souring phase you may get that lovely creaminess. Lot of ifs and maybes in that though. Something to try once you've done a batch to prove the flavours?

And with all these ideas I still think have a tea or tincture handy to adjust the flavour at packaging.
 
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. I suppose this would be obvious once tasting the pre-boiled wort however. Proper lacto is slightly pricey at my LHBS which is why I'm looking for other cheaper/interesting options.
Cheapest option for abundant lactobacillus culture is yogurt. Just make a starter with some wort and a couple of tablespoons full. Lacto is probably the most prevalent organism in most any environment. Just leave some wort or beer out and let it sour naturally...it'll do so pretty quickly depending on how much you use "germ-killing" cleaning agents. Or leave some flour/water mixture sitting out overnight...sourdough bread starter. You'll have to be a little patient and try a few different locations to cultivate a good starter for a kettle sour but given that you're boiling the wort and are more interested in the PH adjustment for tartness, almost any lacto species should work.
 
The other source I've used for lacto is probiotics. Either from the supermarket or the health food/hippie type stores.

Also had a tepache sour today, pretty nice. Seemed like a fairly clean sour source. It was the Candian brewery Collective Arts and they'd added some brett to give it a bit more complexity.
 
Collective Arts is just about 40 minutes away from me in Hamilton, they are phenomenal, I love their brews. There a handful of "are you kidding me" craft brewers in Hamilton. Merit, and Fairweather to mention a couple. Quite surprised that you would find some Collective Arts down under! Cool!
 
Collective Arts is just about 40 minutes away from me in Hamilton, they are phenomenal, I love their brews. There a handful of "are you kidding me" craft brewers in Hamilton. Merit, and Fairweather to mention a couple. Quite surprised that you would find some Collective Arts down under! Cool!
It's our beer week in Melbourne and we have a bunch of pubs in town that specialise in one geographic region for the week. Yesterday was a visit to the Canadian 'pint of origin' pub. And it was a Collective Arts tap takeover, 26 taps worth.
 
Thank you everybody for your advice. I'm planning to mash and sour this tomorrow, so I'll update with whatever I end up doing and how it turns out!
 
I'm finally getting around to updating! I ended up just going all in and giving it a shot. I kettle soured with the tepache for a little over a day. It smelled like cheese the entire time, but it definitely did the job! It has a great sourness to it and came out quite clean. There is some very slight lingering funk on the nose, but other than that the tepache worked perfectly.

I ended up throwing in 25g of Citra and 40g of seabuckthorn into the 14l batch. The seabuckthorn is amazing in it. The character comes through very nicely, but isn't overpowering at all. The citra gets lost a little bit and I would definitely increase the dry hop charge. All in all I'll definitely be making this again. Great summer beer!
 

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