Malt & Grain

What grain makes up Berliner Weisse? Barley malt and wheat malt. Malt is grain that's been allowed to germinate and then dried, so its starch can later be converted into sugar. With wheat, this gives the beer a soft, bread-like core.

There's a difference between the two malts that you can taste. Wheat malt brings more protein, which creates haze and a dense, stable foam. Barley malt ensures the wort—the sugary liquid before fermentation—drains properly. That's why a Weisse isn't made from wheat alone.

Almost nothing gets roasted. The malt is dried only lightly in the kiln, a drying chamber using warm air, and the beer stays pale to straw-yellow. According to BJCP, the American guidelines for beer style competitions, Berliner Weisse's color sits at just 4 to 6 EBC. The original gravity—the sugar content of the wort before fermentation—ranges from 7.1 to 8 degrees Plato there.

Legally, this is something of a special case. For top-fermented beer outside Bavaria, German law permits malts other than barley, including wheat malt. With this original gravity, Weisse counts as a Schankbier under German beer regulations—meaning a beer with 7 to just under 11 percent original gravity. A Berliner Pils, by contrast, is brewed exclusively with barley malt. That was also true at Berliner Kindl and Schultheiß: the pale lager carried barley malt, while the Weisse carried wheat. Two beers, two grains, both long brewed under the same roofs.