Never Make Your Pumpkin Beer Like This!

I've had a good run with all grain batches.... never had a stuck sparge, stuck fermentation, or any contamination. Now my streak of 14 batches is broken sadly.

I normally use pie pumpkin chunks in a grain bag, which worked very well before. In fact, my primary fermentation is usually quite vigorous and I have to change my blowoff jug water every day for the first few days.

I did some research on pumpkin beer before creating the last batch and decided to try canned pumpkin instead. I caramelized as usual in the oven after spreading on cookie sheets. The info I found on this site (I think it was this site) said that some people put the caramelized pumpkin into the mash instead of the boil. I did this and proceeded normally.

However, the fermentation was very weak and only lasted a couple of days. I was expecting around 8% ABV, but only ended up with 3%....

I transferred to secondary and added my bourbon-soaked oak spirals anyway, thinking I would salvage this batch somehow. After six weeks or so, I decided to add another batch of identical yeast in case the old yeast were tired or dormant. This did not produce any activity, leading me to believe that there just isn't any sugar left to utilize.

Did using caramelized canned pumpkin in the mash kill my sugar extraction? This is my only conclusion based on my limited knowledge.

If this is my problem, can I improve the beer by adding some boiled DME to bring up the gravity again? I'm not concerned about altering the flavor at this point, I just want to bottle this stuff already! :cross:

That's weird. I did a pumpkin ale last Fall using a similar method and it was one of the best beers I've brewed. My beer was only about 5-6% though. Maybe try repitching with some new yeast?

This is the recipe I used in case you are curious: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/samhain-pumpkin-ale-140674/

EDIT: Sorry I missed the part where you said you already pitched new yeast.

Thanks for the feedback on using canned pumpkin in the mash. Maybe I screwed up something else in order to have such low efficiency.

I guess I could use Beer Tools to calculate how much DME to add to my beer.... anyone have thoughts on this? I don't have too much room left in my Better Bottle. I can probably only add .5 gal of liquid at most.

Sorry to hear about your brewing woes. I've been using the pumpkin ale recipe on this thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/schlafly-pumpkin-ale-clone-attempt-sorta-201624/

It advocates putting the pumpkin in the strike water and it has worked very well for me. I used a fresh pumpkin that I had baked in the oven, ran through the food processor, and added the puree to the strike water.

As for how to "fix" your current brew...that's a tough one. There is something called Amylase enzymes that might help. But it is a controversial fix at best.

If you only knew where Amylase came from

Can anyone tell me whether my "fix" is likely to work? I don't know what else to do..... I spent a lot of time and effort making this batch and I can't bear to toss it out.

You don't really include enough info to help diagnose what is going on. Pumpkin is problematic (as you seem to know) for a variety of reasons. Because it is goopy, it tends to stick spurges and cause low efficiency. A lot of brewers will add yeast hulls to try and improve sparging. Also, because pumpkin doesn't have amylase enzymes, a mash with pumpkin may take more time to convert, especially if you are using a base malt with low diastatic power. A lot of pumpkin ale brewers choose six row because if it's high diastatic power.

Answers to the following questions will be helpful:

Did it sparge normally?

What was your original gravity?

Did you do an iodine test at the end of the mash?

Did you aerate the wort prior to pitching yeast?

Did the canned pumpkin contain preservatives?

With answers to the above questions, we may be able to help more.

Adam

A few more Qs to add to Adam's list:

At what temp did you mash?

For how long did you mash?

Did you use rice hulls or yeast hulls?

You mention "adding pie pumpkin chunks". To what are you referring? Chunks of a baked pumpkin pie? Where are you adding these chunks? Boil?

Answers to the following questions will be helpful:

Did it sparge normally?

yes

What was your original gravity?
not sure, but it matched the recipe in Brew Tools

Did you do an iodine test at the end of the mash?
No, but I followed my usual procedure which has produced great results about 12 or 13 times before

Did you aerate the wort prior to pitching yeast?
Yes. I also pitched a second batch of yeast a few weeks later with no effect.

Did the canned pumpkin contain preservatives?
no

With answers to the above questions, we may be able to help more.

I mashed for the usual 90 minutes at around 152-153 deg and I did use rice hulls.

barrooze said:

A few more Qs to add to Adam's list:

At what temp did you mash?

For how long did you mash?

Did you use rice hulls or yeast hulls?

You mention "adding pie pumpkin chunks". To what are you referring? Chunks of a baked pumpkin pie? Where are you adding these chunks? Boil?

Click to expand...

I was referring to "pie pumpkin" chunks. Pie pumpkins are smaller and are mostly flesh with no seeds...

You could make a blend. I found this thread yesterday and I thought the idea had merit:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/low-og-reading-worth-drinking-306468/

Hmmm.... I guess this is similar to what I was thinking about. I was planning to boil some DME to add sugar to my beer. I know there is a ton of dormant yeast in there after adding a second batch. Isn't my idea equivalent on a much smaller scale?

Another idea popped into my head just now. Maybe I could make my next batch as a SMASH (same grain and hops as the pumpkin beer), then just split it in half between two fermenters. Then I could blend half of the pumpkin beer with each half of the SMASH after it's done fermenting.

Any thoughts brew gurus?

Since you say you hit the estimated OG, your beer is probably really thick right now. If you blend, maybe you should make your second wort really dry and/or add some sugar to dry it out.

It would seem to me that you could add some sugar to your fermenter to see if the yeast will eat that. If they do, then you know the yeast is viable and you have too much unfermentable sugar in your current beer. Does this seem right to anyone else?

Maybe I missed it, all I see is you said you're at 3% ABV. So if you hit your expected original gravity (would really like to know what that was) you should have a really high residual gravity right now. Can you take that measurement and tell us what it is? If it's really high, I don't think adding sugar is going to help you much right now.

I'm planning to reference my notes and take a new gravity reading tonight. I want to double check myself and provide the needed numbers to understand what happened to my batch.

A hearty thank you to everyone who chimed in thus far! :rockin:

Thanks for answering the additional questions.

If you hit your OG but are only at 3% alcohol, you must still be at a fairly high gravity. What was your last SG reading?

My hunch is that you got poor conversion for some reason (temperature error, old malt, low DP malt, etc.) and that you have a lot of unfermentable starches in your wort.

The fact that you pitched additional yeast and it did not help supports this theory. To confirm for sure, you can take a few drops of the partially fermented wort and do an iodine test.

If you do an iodine test and get a purple/black result, I am afraid there really isn't much you can do to salvage the batch. You could heat it up and add amylase enzymes, but all of the handling, etc. would probably result in a pretty terrible final product.

If you do an iodine test and it confirms that there is no starch present, we can go back to the drawing board.

Adam

Like others have said, if you didn't check for conversion with iodine, my guess would be that you've got a bunch of unfermentables in there.

Well I decided to dig out my notes from this batch and found my OG reading. I measured my FG again and discovered that I'm at ~5.5% ABV. My recipe calculated 8.25%, so something definitely went wrong.... I'm still leaning towards mashing temp as the culprit. I'm definitely not going to put canned pumpkin in the mash again either! I got such great results from caramelized chunks in a grain bag for a 60-min boil.

I think it was best to bottle a lower strength beer than to mess with it any further. I'll chime in after a couple of weeks to see what I've got on my hands..

Thanks again for all the great suggestions everyone! This is a great resource.