Pumpkin Batch yesterday, WORST SPARGE EVER!!

Yesterday I brewed a pumpkin ale in celebration of fall coming soon. I experienced a terribly stuck mash and sparge. My SS braid was completely stretched and collapsed to a wire, no flow at all.

I ended up scooping grain out with a fine mesh strainer, squeezing the liquid out of it with the bottom of a measuring cup, and repeating over and over. It probably took me 2 hours from end of mashing time to boil.

The wort turned out tasting great after the boil but was very thick and tasted a little like grains. I hope I didn't get too much astringency in there and also hope I will have an actual batch of beer rather than a 3 Gallon pumpkin trub and 2 Gallons of beer.

Here was my recipe:
8.5 lb 2-row
1.75 lb Crystal 60
1 lb Special Roast
0.5 lb Flaked Wheat
1 lb Rice Hulls (wish it was like 3 lbs!)
80 oz Canned Pumpkin in Mash
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 60 min
0.6 tsp ginger, clove, nutmeg @ 5 min
1.2 tsp cinnamon, all-spice @ 5 min

How much pumpkin? Canned?

edited OP, 80 oz canned (I like pumpkin !)

I use a manifold (batch sparge) and last year i did about 4lbs (per 5gal) and noticed a decreased runoff rate, but with a pound of hulls it wasn't detrimental. Ths year i lowered it to 30oz with 1/2lb hulls and wouldn't have guessed there was any pumpkin in the mash from the runoff rate. Great flow and clarity.

BUT, for the 30oz that was added (as opposed to more than double the previous year), i got about the same amount of pumpkin flavor/aroma in the first runnings/pre-boil. I can't comment on whether the braid had anything to do with it, but i would suggest lowering the amount of pumpkin next time, because the true "essence" of a pumpkin beer is obtained from the spice load, ultimately.

Just my $0.02.

I'm just finishing up the boil of a batch of pumpkin ale - I used 4.5 pounds of pumpkin, 1 pound of rice hulls, and a double bazooka in the bottom of my 10 gallon rubbermaid mash tun. No issues at all with sparging - I think the key is to have a thin mash .....

- GL63

PS - I more or less emulated Jamil's / Palmer's recipe.

Good point grant. This time around (vs. last year's 1.25qt/lb) i went with about 1.5qt/lb so that most likely contributed to a better sparge. Toasting it, too, seemed to de-gum it quite a bit more than right out of the can.

80oz?! Wow! You may have seen this but in this article: Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - Brewing with Pumpkin: Tips from the Pros -
They scale down the amount of pumpkin in their recipe and for a 5 gallon batch it would be about a third of a pound, aka 5.33oz.

yeahhh maybe i went a bit overboard I was working off of the Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale recipe on here and thought "hey, i like pumpkin, let's add more"