pumpkin ale procedure

Making a pumpkin ale next week and will probably add canned pumpkin to mash. Does this need to be figured in with your grain weight when figuring out mash and sparge water volumes? Also most threads I've read say you won't get much in flavor from the pumpkin; would it be better to add some to boil towards the end and put the pumpkin in a hops bag? Would this work also?

I got plenty of pumpkin aroma and flavor in my pumpkin ale I did a few weeks ago by putting the pumpkin in the mash. Yes, you do need to figure the pumpkin in as part of your grain bill for the purposes of strike temp calculation, but not for grain absorption since the pumpkin already has a lot of water in it. One thing I would recommend, as will most others here who have done pumpkin in the mash, is to use rice hulls. I had a very close call with a stuck sparge when I did my pumpkin ale without rice hulls.

Definitely use rice hulls. I just did a pumpkin ale last week and got a stuck mash because I was too lazy to add the rice hulls. I had to bore s hole in the bed to release the air pocket.

Just spend the $1.50 and put a pound of rice hulls in the mash with the grain and pumpkin...its not worth the hassle of a stuck sparge for $1.50.

I went back and forth on this and most everyone in my brew club said even with rice hulls it was a pita and went to adding to the boil. I will see the final product and if I am not happy will change next year.

I was reading in Jamil's book that he recommends quartering small pumpkins and roasting them in the oven until the juice begins to carmelize on the baking tray, then scoop out the pulp and use in your mash.

I followed a lot of the guidelines in the Thunderstruck pumpkin ale recipe thread. It has a lot of good info and lessons learned from people. After reading the thread i baked 2 cans of pumpkin filling at 350 for 15 mins and put it in my mash with 1lb of rice hulls. Worked like a charm.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/thunderstruck-pumpkin-ale-ag-extract-versions-26699/

billf2112 said:

I went back and forth on this and most everyone in my brew club said even with rice hulls it was a pita and went to adding to the boil. I will see the final product and if I am not happy will change next year.

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And i always hear the opposite, that doing it in the boil is a huge pita because you end up with a huge sludge of pumpkin that is hard to strain out and keep out of your fermenter.

Either works

Julienne the pumpkin and mash raw.

You get more texture and "squashy" flavor from the pumpkin. You need pumpkin pie spice (allspice, nutmeg, cinammon, something else) for the "pumpkin pie" type flavor though.

billf2112 said:

I went back and forth on this and most everyone in my brew club said even with rice hulls it was a pita and went to adding to the boil. I will see the final product and if I am not happy will change next year.

Click to expand...

After mashing the pumpkin in last year's pumpkin ale, and getting a super sticky mess of a sparge, I decided to only boil pumpkin this year. I used 3 lbs of baked, canned pumpkin in the full boil, spices added over the last ten mins. The whole boil smelled of wonderful pumpkin and once the spices went in, the aromas were delicious pumpkin pie. The wort sample tasted like a very very sweet pumpkin pie. Plenty of pumpkin and pie spice flavor and aroma.
From what I gathered by boiling a pound of canned pumpkin in a gallon of water was that the pumpkin contributed ~4-6 gravity points. I also took readings on brew day, one from the runnings before the pumpkin went in, one right after adding and stirring in the pumpkin. 3 lbs added ~4 points to ~6.5 gal of wort. YMMV
I'll be taking the first final gravity reading this weekend, I'll try to post my results back here, but you can follow this thread to see how it comes out.

I used about 6lbs fresh pumpkin that I roasted in the oven until it was soft and started to carmelize, then mashed well. I added the pumpkin and rice hulls directly to the mash and had no stuck sparge. I got a decent amount of pumpkin flavor but not overwhelming. I added 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp ginger, and 1/8 tsp nutmeg to the boil with 1 minute remaining and so far so good. Still have a week or more till this goes in bottles.

I used 7-15oz. cans in a 9g. batch, roasted at 350 about 1" thick on two cookie sheets for 45 minutes. I added it to the mash with three or so handfuls of rice-hulls and had no slower runoff than usual. The spent grain looked pretty normal afterwards, actually. I added pumpkin pie spice (2 TBSP) with 10m left in boil.

Basically used Reno_eNVy's recipe as a base and just modified grain bill/hops to what I had on hand.