Friday 11 April 2008

Berliner Weissbier - the long version (part 2)

This is the second installment of a summary of the Berliner Wissbier chapter in "Die Herstellung Obergähriger Biere" by Schönfeld, published in 1902.

Mashing (continued)
The final mash temperature should be 76.25 - 77.5º C but no higher, because that would weaken the diastase, prevent a full conversion and leave the wort with a starch haze.

The lauter tun should be well insulated to prevent the wort from cooling.

As soon as mashing is complete the wort should be pumped into the cool ship.

About 375 to 500 g of hops should be used per 100 kg of malt.

As there is no boil, the hops need to be added in a different way.

The simplest way of adding hops is to boil them in the water that is to be used for mashing. The hops are present for the whole mashing process and act as an additional filter. The lauter tun needs to be emptied very carefully, due to the high percentage of wheat in the mash. This usually takes 5 to 6 hours.

As the filtered wort contains a large amout of active diastase, the grains can be sparged with almost boiling water without danger of unconverted starch remaining in the wort.

The wort should be pitched with yeast as quickly as possible and should not be left standing cool. The risk of infection is too great if this happens.

The wort should only flow over the cool ship and not stand in it. Even a 15 minute rest in dangerous.

Infections occur quite often because the importance of sterilising the wort isn't recognised. The final mashing temperature is often not higher than 71.25 - 72.5º C and the mash ofter cools considerably in the lauter tun.

That was fun, wasn't it? Still lots, lots, lots more to go. You understand now why I didn't attempt a full translation.

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