My son just walked in the house with a bomber of Pumking. That's my boy.
Mashing in my mouth, maybe. Those things are so good. I get them for my daughter and I end up eating most of them.
MZRIS said:I had a buddy try to 2ndary with graham crackers crumbs ( a lot of them) lol!!! needless to say he had to clean out the ruined mush beer from his carboy, and go back to the drawing boards. haha!!
which one is cannondales again??
BlakeL said:I'm on a tight budget so will need to find substitutes for the graham cracker extract and vanilla beans. I was hoping to see if anyone else had experience in mashing the crackers. Putting them in secondary defiantly sounds like a mess. For the vanilla bean substitute, I read online that for each bean you can use 1-2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract so I'll probably use 1 teaspoon for 2.5 gallon.
I really don't want to be the guy that says this, but the recipe on page 20 is not a Pumking clone. After having a couple of this years Pumkings, that recipe is way, way overspiced, amongst other problems. And I say this with all due respect towards the poster of that recipe. I'm only saying this to save any of you the trouble and money of brewing it and expecting it to be something that it isn't. It's not a bad or even mediocre pumpkin beer by any means, it's just not a Pumking "clone". I'm still going to give it a couple more weeks to condition (it has been in bottles for 3 weeks) and do a side by side comparison as a fair shot, but I already have a pretty good idea as to how that's going to turn out. I will post back with the results.
What would you recommend to get it closer to pumking? I drinking it for the first time right now and would like to get as close as possible.
Well, that's the million dollar question. I'm not by any means a master recipe creator, but I have some idea's that I think could get that recipe closer. I'd have to at least experiment with what I have in mind before suggesting anything.
...But that flavoring is exactly what I saw when walking around the grocery store today. It's called "Vanilla butter and nut" flavoring, so I picked up a bottle to experiment with since it was only a few bucks.
This one?: http://www.mccormick.com/Products/E...cts/Imitation-Vanilla-Butter--Nut-Flavor.aspx
I can't imagine ever putting something like that in my beer, but hey, if you say it's good, I'll give it a shot. Pumking does have a pretty heavy artificial aroma to it, haha. Thanks.
I like where this thread is going. I was personally thinking about trying Capella's Butter flavor drops in conjunction with the graham cracker flavor drops to see where that went. Pumking is definitely not a spicy beer, it's more buttery, creamy, with just a touch of pumpkin pie spice. But the grain bill from page 20 also needs some modifying. Pumking is a fairly light, yellowish orange color. The clone I made was dark ruby with a touch of orange. I wouldn't use crystal 80.After a bit of experimentation today, I'm pretty sure I've found the secret to Pumking. The graham cracker flavor many attribute to the beer has always sounded a bit off to me. While I can see how people could describe it that way, a much better descriptor for me would be cap'n crunch cereal, as I've mentioned before. But what flavor extract do you use to get that cap'n crunch flavor? That was the big question. I'd spotted a butter and nut flavoring on a website last year and thought that might be somewhat close, but I didn't want to order up a bottle just on that hunch. But that flavoring is exactly what I saw when walking around the grocery store today. It's called "Vanilla butter and nut" flavoring, so I picked up a bottle to experiment with since it was only a few bucks. Undiluted, it smells just like buttercream frosting. Like cupcakes or something, basically. But when diluted in a beer, it has that exact same aroma as pumking. And it does the same thing to the flavor.
This stuff is STRONG, though. Like 1 drop in 12 oz is too much, strong. I recommend some of you do what I did and pick up a bottle to experiment with. I added it to my cream ale at about a drop per 12 oz and it was too strong. When I had drunk that mostly down I topped it off again with cream ale and that's when it seemed just right. You basically want to dip the tip of a toothpick in the stuff and swirl that around in your glass to get the right amount. But when you hit the right amount, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. I think this will get you closer to that Pumking flavor than anything else you can do.
That's the exact one I bought. I recommend trying it in a single pint of one of your beers first before adding it to a whole batch, but to my palate, this is as close as you can get to pumking.
Go the natural route and add a stick of butter to the boil?
I doubt they used hazlebutt. I don't like hazlebutt extract and I think Pumking tastes good.
If it was my brew, I'd try cinnamon, nutmeg, clove in the boil and then a blend of graham cracker crumbs and almond paste (marzipan) in the secondary. It wouldn't be a clone, but it might taste good.
Maybe some mace too. The spice, not the spray.
I bought a pumpking. It still has a nose of Windmill cookies and a little pumpkin.
However, I do taste the artificial butter flavor. I smell it too. So the guy who said vanilla butter nut extract could be on to something.
As a matter of fact, this gross artificial butter taste just ruined the whole beer for me. Seriously, this beer sucks now!
The color of my pumking this year is much lighter than I remember. It's not even light orange. It's a darker blonde.
I think you are right. I haven't tasted the vanilla butter nut extract, but what I am tasting and smelling is fake butter nut with some spices. It even has the not so great aftertaste associated with those types of bakers extracts.
I've only had pumpking once before and I thought it was great. Now I'm somewhat repulsed and won't be buying it next year.
This just in: Preliminary lab tests indicate Pumking has enough diacetyl to kill a plow horse !
It's time to find a new pumpkin beer.
I must have already been drunk when I tried it and liked it last year. I think I rated it 3.7/5.0 and said plenty of good things about it.
Now it's a 2.0/5.0. I drank it this time with a fresh palate and literally thought it was gross. I almost didn't finish it.
+1. MisterTipsy, we get that you dislike Pumking. You can move along now.Seriously, you need to get lost, start your own thread on how you hate it. You've made your point.
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