Spiced Pumpkin Porter

I have been fermenting my Porter since Sunday. I have had no bubbling through the air lock at all. I used the brewers best kit.

Anybody have any thoughts?

Tough to say without recipe, yeast strain (and how much) used, pitching temp, ambient temp, etc. Also, the airlock isnt necessarily an indicator of fermentation. Do you have any krausen at all? Have you taken a gravity reading since Sunday?

Just as an FYI I am a noob. So when I do ask questions it is because I am truely ignorant. So please bare with me.

The yeast strain used was Safale S-04 premium yeast. I just followed the directions on when to put it in. I picked up the free Zymurgy magazne at my local HBS and they did have an article about putting the yeast in water for it to start. (I am paraphrasing because it was a loner article and I am not going to re-write it.)

Pitching temp was slightly on the high side. Unfortunately, my tap water is not getting that cold yet. and even in an ice bath, could not get it below 80 degrees.

The ambient temperature is right at 72 degrees for fermentation.

I have not taken a gravity reading yet because I did not want to take the lid off.

What is Krausen?

On Sunday, we also brewed an IPA Hop Scare. That has been bubbling like crazy and started to slow down today. I will be putting that into a carboy tomorrow.

If temp was 80+ it might have killed the yeast. Try dumping another packet in there and see what happens. Yes, you can take the lid off for a few minutes to do this.

80+ won't kill yeast. In fact yeast will ferment like gangbusters at that temp, but they can make some funky flavors if it's that warm. It takes over 100 to stunt thier activity and around 140 to kill them.

Check the gravity. If it's still up around OG you might want to pitch another pack of yeast. If it's close to FG leave it be for another week or two to clear and condition.

evdog46 said:

I have been fermenting my Porter since Sunday. I have had no bubbling through the air lock at all. I used the brewers best kit.

Anybody have any thoughts?

Click to expand...

In before revvy!

Bubbling does not signify fermentation, its not a gauge. It's a one way valve basically. You can only tell by using a hydrometer. If you ferment in a bucket it might not be air tight so it wouldn't bubble then.

evdog46 said:

On Sunday, we also brewed an IPA Hop Scare. That has been bubbling like crazy and started to slow down today. I will be putting that into a carboy tomorrow.

Click to expand...

Surprised nobody jumped on this. Again, dont look at the airlock. Secondary racking should be done when primary fermentation is complete. That means the krausen should have receded back into the beer. Krausen is the foam on top of the fermenting wort. Just google that word and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you rack it early you'll be taking the beer away from that very active yeast. Leave that beer in the primary for 1-2 weeks. Then, if you so choose, rack it to a secondary. A secondary will help clear up your beer and is generally not necessary. Nothing wrong with leaving it in the primary till you get a stable final gravity (fg) reading and then bottling.

Ok, So I took all of your suggestions and finally took a hydrometer reading. It is right where it is supposed t be. Its FG is supposed to be between 1.014-1.018. Mine is at 1.016.

I will leave it at least one more week before racking into carboy.

Thanks to all of you for your help.

I'm doing this same kit. I am planning on letting it go in a primary only for 4 wks. Then planning to bottle. I will be curious to hear how it turns out for you. Mines been in two weeks (8/18/12) brew date.

I will tell you when I bottle.

I don't know what to do though. Should I rack to secondary or should I just leave it in primary? By listening to everybody, I leaning towards leaving it in primary.

Any pros and cons besides how clear it could be?

If you get it out of your primary you can brew another batch!

That has been my biggest fight to get it into secondary. HAHA

I just bought another Ale Pale,etc and now I can have two primary's going. I have read on here that the BB Pumpkin Spice Porter's spice pack is a bit much. Wish I would have read about about cutting back on some of that before I brewed it. Too late now it's done so, I will just have to wait and see what I think of it after it's ready.

I read that also after I started it. But I am interested on how it will turn out. I like my beer sweeter than anything else. Much favorite is a tripel. So I am interested on how it comes out.

I brewed this kit last night, like you I'm fairly used to waking up the morning after a brew day and being greeted by the "blub, blub, blub" of a happily fermenting job well done. This morning was different, my glass carboys all being full, I used a fermenting bucket for this batch and although the lid is noticeably convex (upwardly warped from the pressure of the CO2) there aren't any bubbles or sounds coming from my airlock. If I apply gentle pressure on the lid downwards, bubbles do spring up from the vodka filled bubbler. There's evidence of yeast cake and krausen so I'm not too worried but I did have some trouble while making this kit.

I decided that my pumpkin spice porter would include real pumpkin for fermentable sugars. (pumpkin is fruit, fruit has glucose, glucose is sugar, yeast like that.) I sliced a pumpkin in half and baked it, flat sides down on a cookie sheet at 350F for 90 minutes until darkened. Cleaned the seeds and mixed with olive oil, sea salt, and garlic powder to bake for 40 mins in the same oven to make the best pumpkin seeds I've ever had.

I followed the kit's directions and peeled the pumpkin halves of their skin, the fruit had become very soft and broke apart easily, probably should have put it in the oven for 45-60 mins. I added the pumpkin pieces at the same stage where I added the bittering hops (1 oz of US Golding) at the very beginning of the hop addition phase of the brew day schedule. After 40 mins I added 1 oz of Willamette aroma hops and after another 10 mins I added the whole packet of pumpkin spice (I have read that many people believe the provided packet of spice is overpowering at first but I also read that this subsides with time, so I simply planned on leaving this in the primary fermenting bucket for 2 weeks, secondary glass carboy for 8 weeks, bottle conditioning for 2-3 weeks+ or kegging it if it tastes good by then. So basically I won't know for sure how this came out until mid to late November or so.

My trouble began when I realized I was out of ice, I don't have a wort chiller/thermonator/etc. so I rely on an ice bath to terminate my boil. Without ice, I was stuck using cold water. Well, I had forgotten that I needed to pick my girlfriend up so I just left the brew pot in a sink full of cold water with the lid on for about 40 mins. When I got back, the temp was down from 214F (boiling temp here) but was still up at about 138F. Although it smelled incredible, the extra time in hot wort turned my pumpkin pieces into stringy pumpkin guts and had completely saturated my beer. I figured I would just spoon out what little I could and just strain out the rest, how naive of me..

Basically between a food grade strainer and a filter screened funnel, the pumpkin hairs clogged up the works. I had to abandon the funnel because the screen was simply too fine. The strainer took work and the process moved at a snail's pace, I think it took about an hour to strain the mushy pumpkin guts out of the 2.5 gallon wort. (note: I use the word "guts" but I had removed the actual guts and seeds before baking the pumpkin, the heat from the baking process and subsequent boil had basically turned a firm pumpkin into "guts".)

After I strained out what I could of the pumpkin guts and hop pellet refuse, I was left with what looked to be somewhere between 2 and 2.25 gallons of wort, down from about 2.5 gallons with the guts and stuff. I slowly added fresh, cool, well water while intermittently checking the OG to try to get into the specified range (1.057-1.061) I had gotten it to about 1.064 when I decided to add about 3 or 4 more cups of water (I wasn't being precise, basically just eyeballing it from the tap) when I went to check the OG again, it had fallen to about 1.048.

Annoyed with myself, I went to grab my yeast starter (oh yeah, I had made a starter with the kit's provided dry yeast packet about 6 hours earlier and it wasn't really doing anything, unlike other starters I have made) So, being further annoyed, I pitched the lazy starter and aerated the batch. I happened to have an extra packet of Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast so I sprinkled that on top just to be safe. After sealing the lid, I added vodka to the airlock, took a swig for myself and went to bed.

There seem to be a few people interested in this kit, and some of those seem to be interested in using real pumpkin as well, just thought I'd share my experience to help with their decision. I'll keep you guys posted on the progress of this batch in the coming weeks..

Just two questions for anyone with knowledge who has read this far lol: 1 - Was it a mistake to pitch the Safale S-04 strain with the Red Star Pasteur Champagne strain? 2 - if people use real pumpkin pieces and do not remove all of them during the primary fermentation process, will the organic material break down and decompose, imparting the favors of that process into the brew?

Ubsr1024 said:

Just two questions for anyone with knowledge who has read this far lol: 1 - Was it a mistake to pitch the Safale S-04 strain with the Red Star Pasteur Champagne strain? 2 - if people use real pumpkin pieces and do not remove all of them during the primary fermentation process, will the organic material break down and decompose, imparting the favors of that process into the brew?

Click to expand...

Just my opinion...

The "whole mess" goes in my primary... "pumpkin guts & all"...
(actually not true, in my case, the "pumpkin guts" go in the secondary).
But you could put it in the primary, in my experience you get less of the flavor.
It will settle out like the yeast & you rack the beer off the top of it.

I personally would not have added the champagne yeast... did you wreck it? NO.
It will/may attenuate lower than the intended yeast... and likely you won't get
any flavors the yeast would have contributed. (I've never used either of those).
I usually use Wyeast british ale yeast for the porter (1084?? maybe?)

Sometimes fermentation goes crazy right away, sometimes (particularly if the yeast is closer to the "best by date" it can take up to 3 days). If your sanitation is good, (I try to be meticulous) I've never had a problem, even the few times it took awhile to get going.

As far as the 2 different yeasts? I would assume you started a "yeast war" and 1, (I would guess) the champagne yeast will win. So the flavors contributed by the yeast will likely be from the champagne yeast, I don't THINK it adds much.

I just tasted my first bottle. Very good. My wife and I agree that it finishes with a very strong clove taste. Definately a good beer for the season.

It has already been int he bottle for two weeks. So I transferred to the fridge this afternoon. I could not wait to taste it. All in all a very good beer from Brewers Best and definately right for the fall.