How do you keep pumpkin from going into your plate chiller?!

Im going to be brewing Yuri's Thunderstruck with 60 oz of pumpkin. 30 oz in the mash, 30 oz in the boil. Im using a penrose kettle with a dip tube to the side wall of the kettle. Im going to be using a plate chiller for the first time on this one and i really would not have the plate chiller jammed up by the pumpkin. if I boilt the pumpkin in a muslin bag or 5 gallon paint strainer bag should that be enough to keep enough sediment out to not jam up the chiller? Any suggestions would be much appreciated! Cheers. Oh and I have yet to successfully get whirlpooling to work.

i don't know man. i used canned pumpkin last year and it was a freakin mess. the beer was great, but i ended up with a bunch of gunk in my fermenter (its cool because i use an immersion chiller). i'm thinking the only way to avoid the gunk is to use whole pumpkin chunks. or maybe a really fine mesh. the muslin bags i normally get are not fine enough to filter that crap

Yeah I have an immersion chiller I could use but being that I use electric kettles its tough to use that. Do you think recirculating the wort through the pump will be an issue?

Anyone else?

I boiled my pumpkin in a bag last year. This year I'll just mash with it and not put any in the boil.

barrooze said:

I boiled my pumpkin in a bag last year. This year I'll just mash with it and not put any in the boil.

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Did the bag help at all?

wedge421 said:

Did the bag help at all?

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i used a fine grain bag when i do my pumpkin ale. it helps, then my bag is stained orange.

wedge421 said:

Did the bag help at all?

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I used this bag and it worked great. The pumpkin was very well contained and didn't disperse throughout the wort, however, I'm sure there was a big loss of utilization. I did boil a total of 75 oz though, so I think I was covered...