It's almost go-time for the Gose

So I've decided to pull the trigger on brewing my own Gose (as evidenced by the picture of lactobacillus delbrueckii to the left). After much deliberation, I've decided to go with the procedure described by "Øl-sheik" on probrewer.com (who I believe is Christoph Bhenke, head brewer at Søgaards Bryghus in Denmark):

Grist load: half malted barley, half malted wheat, designed to give about 15 EBC in Color and 11,5 Plato

Mash Intensivly for up to 2 hours

Collect runs offs and keep them at about 50 C or 122 Fahrenheit, inoculate with homofermentive lactobacillus, keep at 50 C until PH droped to about 4-4,2. This might take up to 48 hours

Boil and add hops for only bittering to reach 10-14 IBU,

I would add the salt (sea salt) at knock out rather then during mashing, although it would be more authentic. How much? No idea!

I would as well boil coriander in water separatly and add it after fermentation, rather then during the boil, to be able to control the level of intensity better.

Ferment with a bavarian hefeweizen yeast or belgium wit that has a high attenuation at usual temperature, mature for 2 weeks. I imagine that the refrehsing quality will profit from higher Co2 level.

Now, I'll be tweaking a couple things and am still trying to figure out some logistics. First, the tweaking:

• I'm not sure what "mash intensively" means but I'm thinking I'll just do a single decoction at mash-out, as is my usual procedure.

• I'm going to do a quick 15-minute boil before pitching the lacto.

• I'm not going any higher than 95°F/35°C per Wyeast's specs.

• I'm hoping to get the pH down to at least 3.6 (per the head brewer at Bayerischer Bahnhof).

• I'll be using WLP320 American Hefe yeast (pitching a slurry from our Altbier).

Now, the logistics... How the hell do I keep the lacto-inoculated wort around 90-95°F? My initial thought is to run it into an insulated cooler and just hope it stays fairly warm. Sure, it'll drop, but the weather's supposed to be in the 80s this weekend so hopefully it'll stay in the neighborhood. However, my bigger concern is sterilizing the insulated cooler. We're talking wort at 95°F--prime real estate for bacteria. Hopefully the lacto will beat the crap out of anything else that gets in there, but I don't want to risk it.

Other ideas I had were buying a brew belt (though that only raises the temp five to ten degrees F above ambient), buying some sort of heating element, or building some kind of hot box, but I doubt I can get any of those done by Saturday morning (when I plan on mashing/inoculating). So for now I'm thinking I'll just make a starter on Thursday and hope that it'll have enough of a head start that it sours fairly well in 48 hours, even if it drops from 95°F to 80°F during the inoculation period.

Anyway, the plan for now is starter Thursday, mash/sparge/inoculate Saturday, boil/chill/pitch Monday. Stay tuned for the exciting results.