I just brewed this today, it tasted awesome, but man it was a LOT of work.
I used a fresh pumpkin, cut it open, cleaned it, and then boiled it for 20 minutes. After boiling I cut the skin off the pieces and then baked them for about 45 minutes at 350 ºF. I then steeped the following grains for about 25-30 minutes at 155 ºF:
1 lb Caramunich
1 lb Crystal 20L
1 lb Crystal 40L
1 lb Flaked Wheat
After steeping I sparged, then brought to a boil and added:
5 lbs Extra Light DME
0.75 oz Goldings Hops
The baked "meat" from a soccer ball sized pumpkin.
I boiled for 45 minutes, then added about 1 oz Ginger root that SWMBO sliced up for me. After 55 minutes I added 3/4 tsp Nutmeg, 1.5 tsp of Cinnamon, 1 tsp Vanilla, and 3/4 tsp Irish Moss. Everything had gone great so far, but I knew i was in for trouble because I had tried to put the pumpkin in my grain bag, and it clogged it up, so I dumped the pumpkin straight into the wort.
Even after tediously straining out about 8 quarts of pumpkin, I had some more trouble. When I added the wort to the carboy, I tried taking an OG reading and it came out very wrong (1.030). I knew my efficiency couldn't be that far off and that's when I looked at the carboy and saw some strange layering going on:
So apparently, even after my tedious straining, a LOT of pumpkin made it into the wort. I know that my OG was not accurate b/c I could easily tell the top layer that I had pulled from with a turkey baster was significantly lighter than others. I'll probably have to use the OG that beersmith gave me and see what my FG is. I'm excited for this to finish, should be very tasty.
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