Pumpkin adding question

Brewmasters of the world, lend me your ears!

I have seen several recipes for pumpkin ales. Most, if not all, full-mash recipes state that the roasted pumpkin meat should be added directly to the boil then transported to the fermentor. The brewers then go on to lament about how much trub is in the fermentor and how often their racking was stuck. My question is: Is it not feasible to bake the pumpkin, then boil it on the stove with about a gallon of water. Then strain the pumpkin and add the newly created pumpkin-water to the wert pre-boil? Does the pumpkin itself need to be in the fermentor? If you boil/steep the pumpkin, doesn't that make the pumpkin sugars and flavors go into the water?

I've never made a pumpkin ale, but desperately want to. I also do not have a carboy for secondary fermentation. Therefore, I am trying to cut down on the cloud causing trub. Someone help!

Just buy a secondary carboy, they're cheap and will drastically improve your beer!

understood, and I probably will soon... What about my initial question? Any ideas?

What I did was add all my pumkin right to the boil and then let my homemade hoppstopper take it out for me. Nothing went into the Primary (pumkin wise). Beer tasted great as I put it into the secodary. Only problem I ran into was my hop stopper worked too well . . . sorta . . . I cant believe the mount of crap it kept from going into the primary and I also cant believe how much volume 8 lbs of canned pumkin takes up.

Depending how much punkin you are using your method should work, BUT if you are using a lot of pukin 1 gallon of water aint going to work AND you still need to get the pumkin out of that water too. If worse comes to worse you could always rack your brew out of the carboy to your bottling bucket, clean the carboy out, then rack it back into the carboy and let it act like a secondary. It's a lot of work but I think it would be your best bet.

BTW if ya ever plan on making a hopstopper ya may just want to go and pay the cash for one instead. When I first saw the price I though he was freeking nutz, but after hand sewing the screens with fine wire my eyes were begging to be gouged out of my head.

Thanks for the info. I'll have to see how much 6-8 lbs of pumpkin really is. It may be the sheer volume that makes my tentative plan a no-go.

I only have a bucket and a carboy at the moment, and my carboy has some oatmeal stout in secondary, so I just put the pumpkin ale in the bucket for primary, and when I bottle the oatmeal later this week, I'll rack the pumpkin to secondary, making sure to keep the siphon ABOVE the level of the pumpkin trub. I figured that with all of that gunk, a bucket was a safer call anyway, since the lid popping off of my bucket beats having my carboy explode.

On a related note, I've found that I have been leaning down and smelling the CO2 coming out of the airlock a LOT more with my pumpkin ale than I do with my other beers. It smells like someone's making a pumpkin pie in my fermenter. Can't wait for this one...

aweks said:

Thanks for the info. I'll have to see how much 6-8 lbs of pumpkin really is. It may be the sheer volume that makes my tentative plan a no-go.

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I used a 2 pound can of pumpkin in my hops bag and it worked great, but I still have a few bottles lying around. It's good, but pumpkin beer can get old real fast.

I added 2 large cans to the boil and allowed the pumpkin to get into the fermenter. I brewed a little over 6 gallons which resulted in 5 gallons in the keg.
I was told later that the pumpkin must be mashed so there are 2 different thoughts on pumpkin beer. Mine does not have the protein haze that this person warned me about. As a matter of fact it is quite clear. I guess time will tell. There are a lot of us who have made batches recently so hopefully we can compare and figure out which method is best.

aweks said:

I have seen several recipes for pumpkin ales. Most, if not all, full-mash recipes state that the roasted pumpkin meat should be added directly to the boil then transported to the fermentor.

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Try adding the cooked pumpkin to the mash, not the boil.

ALPS said:

Try adding the cooked pumpkin to the mash, not the boil.

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That was my second thought, but my picnic cooler/mash tun may not be big enough to store 9 lbs of grain and 6-8 lbs of pumpkin...its only a five gallon cooler. I think I'll go with the pumpkin in the boil. I'm assuming that the pumpkin will sink to the bottom of the pot, so when the boil is over, I'll just use my big Pyrex to scoop out the liquid and leave the pumpkin... I'll keep in touch and let everyone know how it works.

I made a pumpkin ale last year and just put the cooked chunks into a spare grain bag for part of the boil and subsequent sparging. Afterwards, I just emptied the bag into the trash.... no muss no fuss!:cross:

I was looking in BYO magazine and they suggest putting cubed up chunks of baked pumpkin into the mash vessel. Thats what I planned on doing, until I realized that my wife shredded the pumpkin last year before canning it. That makes it even easier. I'm sure it will take a lot of room in the mash vessel, but I should have enough space for the grains and water too.

Just racked mine to secondary. I ended up with about a gallon of canned pumpkin at the bottom. Its a lot but it worth that strong pumpkin aroma.

I have an additional bit of advice for anyone who is going to add pumpkin to the mash. Definitely use cubed pumpkin. Do NOT shred it like we did when we canned pumpkin last year. The shredded stuff will guarantee a stuck sparge. There is NO WAY the liqour was coming through those holes when they're plugged up with all that goop.

Consider yourself warned.

That is all.

I've transferred my pumpkin ale to secondary carboy. A few surprises were in store for me:

- I found that the slight amount of pumpkin that went from the boil pot to the primary is very difficult to keep from transferring to the secondary via the siphon hose. Turns out cooked pumpkin pieces float or are suspended somewhere in the beer. Thought they would sink. I got some pieces in the carboy secondary. They're moving up and down in the beer. Kinda surreal actually.

- I had right at six gallons of wort go into the primary. I had about 4 gallons of beer go into the secondary. That was a lot of trub! I even made sure to keep all of the large pieces of pumpkin out of the primary fermentor.

It smells great though.

This happened to mine as well. I ended up with about 1/4 gallon of floating pumpkin in my secondary. The funny thing is that I didn't notice the pumpkin going through the siphon hose when I was racking, but lo' and behold later, the pumpkin was back!



I'm considering doing a tertiary just to make sure the pumpkin doesn't gum up my keg!

Spyk'd said:

This happened to mine as well. I ended up with about 1/4 gallon of floating pumpkin in my secondary. The funny thing is that I didn't notice the pumpkin going through the siphon hose when I was racking, but lo' and behold later, the pumpkin was back!



I'm considering doing a tertiary just to make sure the pumpkin doesn't gum up my keg!

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You can't fool me. You just wanted to use the word "tertiary!" What would four be? Quadary...Quadtiary...fourtiary...rectiary...squaretiary...rhomboidary...parallelelary?

aweks said:

You can't fool me. You just wanted to use the word "tertiary!" What would four be? Quadary...Quadtiary...fourtiary...rectiary...squaretiary...rhomboidary...parallelelary?

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I'd stay away from "rectiary", if you know what I mean?

:cross:



Welcome to the board! Another one that 'stays by me' to some degreee. We'll have to get some kind of brew exchange thing going like the boys in NC.

Spyk'd said:

I'd stay away from "rectiary", if you know what I mean?

:cross:



Welcome to the board! Another one that 'stays by me' to some degreee. We'll have to get some kind of brew exchange thing going like the boys in NC.

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I like parallelelary the best. Try to say that without smiling! Where is Waveland, MS? Denham Springs is a suburb of Baton Rouge, by the way.

I see that you keg condition (I assume that means natural carbonation). I force carbonate with CO2. It's faster, and there's no sediment in the keg. Am I missing something? Flavor maybe?

I know where Denham Springs is. I just drove by there the other day on my way back from Arizona. Waveland is the first exit into MS on I-10.


I keg condition, which really just means to store your kegs cold for a period of time to let them age a touch; it's still force carb'n them. Makes them way better. I condition them by putting about 10psi on them for about two weeks unless it's a more complex brew, like my pumpkin ale, then they go longer.


To be fair, I usually 'sample' some beer as it's conditioning. Right now I'm sampling a Special Bitter that will be awesome in a week or two!

Here is my experience: I have been brewing pumpkin ale for the last 12 years. In that 12 years I have had allot of not so favorable batches. I have only recently in the past 4 years perfected my pumpkin porter. I am getting ready to brew it again for my winter welcome party and have at least 20 people asking me if I am going to brew it. I will post the complete recipe in the recipe section withing a few days. But, to answer the question about pumpkin addition.

For the most part, adding fresh pumpking to your beer will not be enough to give you that lovely aromatic pumkin pie flavor. The main flavor of the beer is in the spice mix.

First off, I use only White whole pumpkins. I get them locally every year at one of the farms here in AZ. The white pumpkins that I get have a very sweet flavor and nice texture when baked (not too nutty). They are so sweet they are not that far off from a yam ( as a matter of fact, I have had to adjust my grain bill to balance the sugars). Anyway that first thing I do is half and de-seed that pumpkin. I place it on a cookie sheet face down in the oven at 300f for about an hour, or until the skin is able to be pulled loose by hand. When I reach this level I take the pumpkin out of the oven and let it cool enough to be able to pull all the skin off by hand. with the pumpkin still sitting on the cookie sheet in halfs. I put the pumpkin back into the oven at 400f until the flesh starts to caramalize. At that point I take it out, put it aside and let it cool. When it is cool I take a knife and slice it into big chunks and put it all into a very large mesh bag. Then I put that directly into my boil for about 35 minutes. After that I remove the bag with tongs and give it a good wringing.

I have tried canned pumpkin(really bad idea), pumpkin in the mash, pumpkin boiled seperately, etc. None of these methods have been as favorable as the way I do it now.

Look for my famous pumkin porter in the recipe section.

I had really thought that adding pumpkin to beer was kinda odd. The LHBS is having a pumpkin beer tasting later this month. I had asked him what it taste like and he said to think of pumpkin pie....