Pumpkin Ale Help!

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messi

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hey-

I know it's a little out of season, but my friend wanted to try a brew and he had his mind set on a pumpkin ale. Here is the problem: I bought 5lbs of organic pumpkin to use and did not remove it before putting in the carboy. Now, I've got 5 inches of pumpkin at the bottom of my carboy that has settled out. I used 6 gallons of water planning to get 5.5 in the carboy, so now i have about 3.5 gallons of beer and 2 gallons of alcoholic pumpkin sitting on the bottom. I know this pumpkin is just filled with beer because the volume of pumpkin at the bottom is about 2 to 3 times the volume of the actual pumpkin I put in. Can anyone think of a way to "milk the beer" out of the pumpkin.

Thanks-

messi
 
The only time I made a pumpkin brew, I ended up with the same issue. Not much you can do. You might try racking off as much liquid as you can into the secondary, then adding some kind of fining agent (like KC superkleer) and maybe the finings will attach to enough of the solids to drop them out of suspension. Also, the colder it gets, the more stuff will fall...so you could try bringing it down to lagering temps and see what happens.
 
brew another batch and throw it right on top of the trub...

no need to add more punkin then
 
Welcome to the fun of pumpkin in beer. I also had about 1.5-2 gals of pumpkin in the bottom of my fermenter. Sucks doesn't it? Would like to figure out a way around this. Ended up with only 3.5+ gals of beer at bottling time, was quite displeasing since the beer was VERY good.
 
I have brewed two pumpkin ales in the last year and found it much easier to cube the pumpkin, caramelize in the oven, then put the cubes into a grain bag for the boil.... No muss, no fuss!!:eek:
 
chimchim5040 said:
I have brewed two pumpkin ales in the last year and found it much easier to cube the pumpkin, caramelize in the oven, then put the cubes into a grain bag for the boil.... No muss, no fuss!!:eek:

Is that with carved pumpkin or canned?
 
What kind of carved pumpkin do you guys use? I used canned pumpkin last time.

Just regular ol' Jack O Lantern pumpkins? I've seen some stores selling "pumpkin pie pumpkins". Well, in season anyway.
 
I use canned as well, 100% pumpkin. Gotta watch out for the "pumpkin pie" canned pumpkin. It has artificial sweeteners and flavorings, and its pre-spiced with god-knows-what.
 
I like the alki pumpkin pie, but, the cooking of the pie would get rid of that.
 
Couldn't you rack the beer off the top in to a carboy. Then strain the pumpkin trub into the carboy through a sanitized sieve or a finer jelly bag to extract the remaining beer? Never dealt with this problem before... heck only just bottled my first batch of beer ever on Saturday... but, I'd think this should remove the majority of unwanted solids.

Patch
 
chimchim5040 said:
I went to the local farmer's market and picked up a few smaller pumpkins. (Allegedly better for eating, since they have less seeds)
Actually, many of the traditional orange "jack-o-lantern"-looking pumpkins (regardless of size or number of seeds) aren't the best for eating (or, one would assume, brewing). There are literally hundreds of varieties of "pumpkin", and many of the good ones for eating (including those that end up in cans at the grocery store) don't look like "pumpkins" at all. They might be blue-green or tan, and be shaped more like acorn or butternut squash.

You'll probably get much better results (ie more pumpkin flavor, more fermentables) from an acorn squash, or by asking at the farmers market "what's the best pie pumpkin". Just don't be surprised if they hand you something that doesn't look like you could carve a face into it...
 
Patch said:
Couldn't you rack the beer off the top in to a carboy. Then strain the pumpkin trub into the carboy through a sanitized sieve or a finer jelly bag to extract the remaining beer? Never dealt with this problem before... heck only just bottled my first batch of beer ever on Saturday... but, I'd think this should remove the majority of unwanted solids.

Patch

This would probably not be a good Idea. Too much risk of oxidation.


All you can do is live and learn, and enjoy the pumpkin brew you do have!
 
I have brewed two pumpkin ales in the last year and found it much easier to cube the pumpkin, caramelize in the oven, then put the cubes into a grain bag for the boil.... No muss, no fuss!!:eek:

Hello,
At what temperature and how long to you bake the pumpkin to caramelize it? It is fresh pumkin that you are talking about? I plan on making pumkin ale in a week and I am trying to figure out the best method to clean up the beer from the goop in the fermentor. Thanks for the tip.
 
gosnelgk said:
Hello,
At what temperature and how long to you bake the pumpkin to caramelize it? It is fresh pumkin that you are talking about? I plan on making pumkin ale in a week and I am trying to figure out the best method to clean up the beer from the goop in the fermentor. Thanks for the tip.

You get an A for searching, but an F for resurrecting a 5 year old thread. Most of the highly discussed pumpkin beer recipes cite an oven temp, typically 350 to 400. Doesn't really matter much, and you're not really caramelizing the pumpkin since it has so little sugar.
 
Mash the pumpkin, don't boil it. I spread pumpkin puree on a cookie sheet and baked it for an hour at 350 then threw it in the mash. The beer has a nice creamy smooth pumpkin flavor. Mashed for 1 hour at 155.
 
Mash the pumpkin, don't boil it. I spread pumpkin puree on a cookie sheet and baked it for an hour at 350 then threw it in the mash. The beer has a nice creamy smooth pumpkin flavor. Mashed for 1 hour at 155.

^^Agreed. I mashed the pumpkin for mine and had very little pumpkin in the fermenter once it was said and done. I got the same result - smooth pumpkin flavor and mouthfeel.

Don't get caught up in using a million pounds of pumpkin in your recipe; the flavor comes from the spices you use, not the pumpkin itself.
 
^^Agreed. I mashed the pumpkin for mine and had very little pumpkin in the fermenter once it was said and done. I got the same result - smooth pumpkin flavor and mouthfeel.

Don't get caught up in using a million pounds of pumpkin in your recipe; the flavor comes from the spices you use, not the pumpkin itself.

Good point. There's a recent Basic Brewing episode where they do a blind taste test of a beer brewed with both pumpkin and spices and one brewed with only spices. The one with only spices was chosen blindly as the better pumpkin ale.
 
I heard about that taste test. I considered not using pumpkin at all, but ended up using just 1lb--something just sounds better about a pumpkin ale when you can say it was brewed with real pumpkin.
 
Mash that pumpkin. I just did a Pumpkin ale and used baking/pie pumpkins, quartered them, baked them at 300 for an hour, skinned and mashed em up and put them in my mash. I plan to add the spices in secondary. We'll see how it does.
 
JDFlow said:
Mash the pumpkin, don't boil it. I spread pumpkin puree on a cookie sheet and baked it for an hour at 350 then threw it in the mash. The beer has a nice creamy smooth pumpkin flavor. Mashed for 1 hour at 155.

Yeppers, canned fresh, it doesn't matter. Spread it out in cookie sheet, roast at 350 for 1 hour, let cool then throw right into the mash!
Add 1 lb of flaked wheat and you will get a creamy, pumpkin pie mouth feel, second to none!
 
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