Autumn Seasonal Beer Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale (AG and Extract versions)

Brewed this today, looking good so far. When I was shaking the carboy my hand slipped off the top, the bung shot out, and I was covered in pumpkin bits!

I don't think I lost more than 1/6 gallon but man it was everywhere!

Despite that, this seems like it will turn out well. Looking forward to trying it this fall.

I will be brewing the 6 gallon extract recipe and using a Ale Pale (7.5 gal. i think) for a primary. Will I be needing a blow off tube or does this brew ferment mild enough to be just use an airlock? I will not be making a yeast starter.

Also, exactly when do you add the spice tea? Is it during the secondary or some other time? Thanks for the advice.

I am brewing the 6 gal extract on Tuesday. I was thinking about adding 30 oz of roasted pumpkin at 60 min. And 30oz at 30 min. Would this help on keeping fresh pumpkin flavor or should I just add all at the beginning?

Made this year's today. The 15 gallon all grain recipe:

17 lbs Maris Otter
4 lbs Vienna
2.5 lbs Biscuit
4.5 lbs C60
0.5 lbs Special B
1 lb Wheat
145 oz Libby's canned pumpkin, baked at 350ºF for an hour

Mashed at 158ºF for an hour (including the pumpkin)

2.25 oz Tettnang at 60 minutes (the whole boil)

1/2 Tbsp Pampered Chef Cinnamon Plus at flameout

S-04 yeast

Wort tasted great...can't wait to keg it!

Tip - disperse the pumpkin into the strike liquor before doughing in. Add 2 lbs rice hulls. Then add the grain. Lautering was fast and easy this time!

This year's recipe isn't significantly different from the original, and most of the changes are due to the fact that I didn't take stock of my ingredients before I committed to a brew day. I did intend to add some Vienna this year, but otherwise the substitutions were results of my lack of inventory. Based on the consistency of my mash temp (not the recipe alterations), I expect this year's to be the best yet. Some of my previous batches were drier than I intended, likely due to heat loss in the mash tun.

lex990 said:

I am brewing the 6 gal extract on Tuesday. I was thinking about adding 30 oz of roasted pumpkin at 60 min. And 30oz at 30 min. Would this help on keeping fresh pumpkin flavor or should I just add all at the beginning?

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Add it at the beginning with the grain. I think adding it late may contribute a vegetal flavor.

OlRed said:

I will be brewing the 6 gallon extract recipe and using a Ale Pale (7.5 gal. i think) for a primary. Will I be needing a blow off tube or does this brew ferment mild enough to be just use an airlock? I will not be making a yeast starter.

Also, exactly when do you add the spice tea? Is it during the secondary or some other time? Thanks for the advice.

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A blowoff may be necessary...mostly depends on how warm you ferment. The warmer, the more violent.

Using the spice tea method, add them when you rack the beer for the last time.

If I were to use whole pumpkins and puree it myself, what is the type of pumpkin recommended?

Pie pumpkin or butternut squash

ok, someone said sugar pumpkin, but butternut pumpkins are cheap around here i might just go with that, how many you think whould be good?

I think sugar pumpkin and pie pumpkin are synonymous, but I'm no squash expert. If I were to use whole pumpkins or squash, I think I'd buy one per 5 gallons. I think someone else here has used whole pumpkins and my base recipe - search the thread a bit to see what others have said.

Made this yesterday. 10 gallons worth. Used 120oz of pumpkin. Put half in the mash, half in the boil. Easy lauter with the rice hulls. Hit the numbers dead on. Was a pretty good day. Can't wait to add the spices.

CoalCracker said:

Made this yesterday. 10 gallons worth. Used 120oz of pumpkin. Put half in the mash, half in the boil. Easy lauter with the rice hulls. Hit the numbers dead on. Was a pretty good day. Can't wait to add the spices.

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I'm doing the exact same thing this weekend. A couple questions for you if you don't mind.

1. When did you add the pumpkin to the boil?
2. How many rice hulls did you use?
3. How long are you going to wait until you add the spices?
4. Are you going to add the spices to primary or secondary?

So for the AG version no spices go in at flame out or anything just during clearing. And you dont boil any of the pumpkin in the AG you just use it in the mash, correct?

Made this yesterday!

Thanks Yuri!

I added half to the mash at the beginning and half to the boil at 60min. I used about a 1lb of rice hulls for the mash. The spice tea I plan on adding at kegging. Was a pretty smooth recipe. Had no issues with it. Didn't really smell like pumpkin like I hoped so hopefully I can taste it.

I brewed this a few weeks ago, and when I checked on it the other day I realized I screwed up. When I printed the recipe out for my brew day the part about baking the pumpkin on a sheet got cut off. I ended up not baking it and not adding it to the boil, I added it in the primary.

It fermented just fine, but the other problem is I work away from home, so for the past two weeks I haven't been there. My girlfriend who is normally around went to visit family while I was gone and turned the A/C off. So when I checked on it yesterday the temperature in my brew area was 80*F. I used Nottingham yeast on it. How bad are the esters or other off flavors from the yeast going to be, and could they possibly be masked by adding the spice tea and/or dry hopping it a bit? I was just checking up on my place when I looked at it so I didn't have time to check the gravity or taste.

Brewed 6 gallons worth today. Extract version since my keggle isn't finished and I am going to biab. I added .5 lb dme extra as well as 8oz Munich 20L. Threw in tsp pumpkin pie spice 1/4 tsp Ginger 1 tsp coriander at 2 min til flameout. Og sample tasted amazing. Can't wait for this to be done. Racking to secondary in 10 days and adding spice tea to taste. My og was right on the money with brew master. Fun brew!

10 Gallons this year in a few weeks!!!

Brewed yesterday. Used the big can 6# 10 oz baked for 45 mins.. next time I would go for the full hour

Hi everyone:
Brewed this over the weekend. Read through the post and decided to bake the pumpkin for an hour at 350 degrees and also sprinkled it with cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny bit of ground ginger. Made the house smell great! Put everything into the primary fermenter with a blow off tube. Can't wait to sample it in a week,

Thanks Yuri for this recipe!

I use a manifold bottom from How To Brew, inside a 70quart cooler for a Mash Tun, i want to brew this on Wednesday but do not have any rice hulls. Do I risk it or place an order and wait 10 days to brew?

A picture of a pint of the Thunderstruck Pumpkin ale. I brewed it Oct 6th, 2010 and the bottle I just popped (Sept 14, 2011) still tastes fantastic. It's lost a little of it's cinnamony and nutmeggy flavor, but it's still great. I did an all grain 5 gallon batch. I'll post my recipe and process in the next post.

I'm still a little confused on when/how to add the spice tea. I just transferred my attempt at this recipe to the secondary and was thinking I would just add the spice tea to the secondary just before racking to the bottling bucket. Is this the correct way to go about this or do you add it directly to the bottling bucket? Also, everyone says you add it "to taste." What method are ya'll using to sample it? Thanks for the input.

Great recipe. Thanks Yuri!

I going to brew the extract version next week (only my 2nd batch). I read through many (many) posts, but I'm still a little confused. I have a 20 qt pot, so have to do a partial boil. I see in previous posts others have done so with good results. Here's my question: How much water do I use to steep the grains? I could steep in a bag in a 5 gal cooler I have (to hold temp better). I'm thinking of steeping in maybe 2 gallons of water, then bring the volume up to 3 1/2 gal for the boil and adding the extract?

Does the original post have all of the improvements (edits) talked about in the 70+ proceeding pages? I would like to make this, and want brew what has been learned from the 4 years of trial and error. Do the rice hulls work? Also, I’m new to beer smith...and have never lownloaded a beer smith file, but could someone post the fully edited beer smith file? Thanks!

I just updated the recipes for this year. Rice hulls work.

Yuri_Rage said:

I just updated the recipes for this year. Rice hulls work.

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Sorry, just a quick offtopic question: Do you have to have a yearly/lifetime membership in order to edit your old posts? I ask because you said you changed the recipes in the first post, but I can't access my older posts to edit.

Yuri_Rage said:

Made this year's today. The 15 gallon all grain recipe:

17 lbs Maris Otter
4 lbs Vienna
2.5 lbs Biscuit
4.5 lbs C60
0.5 lbs Special B
1 lb Wheat
145 oz Libby's canned pumpkin, baked at 350ºF for an hour

2.25 oz Tettnang at 60 minutes (the whole boil)
1/2 Tbsp Pampered Chef Cinnamon Plus at flameout
S-04 yeast

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I trimmed this down to 5 gallons with adjustment to account for my LHBS selling grain by the ounce, so here's what I ended up with:

5 lb 11 oz Maris Otter
1 lb 5 oz Vienna
13 oz Biscuit
1.5 lb Crystal 60L
3 oz Special B
5 oz Flaked Wheat
3/4 oz Tettnang
60 oz canned pumpkin (a bit more than in the above recipe)
2 packs Nottingham

The wort was pretty dark, looks more like a porter or stout, but the hydrometer sample was fantastic! Wondering if I should have backed down to 2 oz Special B. Will transfer to secondary later this evening. I have high hopes for this beer!

Glad I bought extra pumpkin last year. Nothing to be found in stores around here yet.

FYI: I brewed this in a 5gal version this past weekend. The only think I had to change was using torrified wheat rather than flaked wheat because my Northern shipment did not reach me in time. For 5gal, it came out to only 60oz (4cans) of pumpkin and my sparge only lasted 20min and that is with a tiny spinning fly sparge arm. I was very glad about that. I totally missed the OG too which stinks. About boiled down to 5.5gal and had an OG of 1.040

onipar said:

Sorry, just a quick offtopic question: Do you have to have a yearly/lifetime membership in order to edit your old posts? I ask because you said you changed the recipes in the first post, but I can't access my older posts to edit.

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Here you go: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/faq.php?faq=vb3_reading_posting#faq_vb3_editing_deleting

Hobnob said:

Here you go: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/faq.php?faq=vb3_reading_posting#faq_vb3_editing_deleting

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Thank you, sir.

Yuri_Rage said:

I just updated the recipes for this year. Rice hulls work.

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Thanks!

Anyone who has done a 5 gallon batch, how much pumpkin pie spice did you add?

The version I looked at was a 15 gallon recipe that called for .5 tablespoon (1.5 teaspoon), so for 5 gallons I did .5 teaspoon. It's still in the fermenter, but the wort sample was fantastic!

eulipion2 said:

The version I looked at was a 15 gallon recipe that called for .5 tablespoon (1.5 teaspoon), so for 5 gallons I did .5 teaspoon. It's still in the fermenter, but the wort sample was fantastic!

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ditto. may be secondarying mine soon, based on the spice flavors. i might just keg, or secondary if i think it needs a spice tea added

OlRed said:

I'm still a little confused on when/how to add the spice tea. I just transferred my attempt at this recipe to the secondary and was thinking I would just add the spice tea to the secondary just before racking to the bottling bucket. Is this the correct way to go about this or do you add it directly to the bottling bucket? Also, everyone says you add it "to taste." What method are ya'll using to sample it? Thanks for the input.

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I just added my pumpkin spice over the weekend. What I did was took a sample with my thief and tasted it. It was somewhat spicy and we didn't want it to be overpowering, so we added 3/4 of a tsp of pumpkin pie spice to the secondary, which will sit for 2 weeks. So I did a different method, I'm not sure how adding it to the bottling bucket would work but from what I understand in reading old pages from the thread, this is what most people did.

GR22 said:

I going to brew the extract version next week (only my 2nd batch). I read through many (many) posts, but I'm still a little confused. I have a 20 qt pot, so have to do a partial boil. I see in previous posts others have done so with good results. Here's my question: How much water do I use to steep the grains? I could steep in a bag in a 5 gal cooler I have (to hold temp better). I'm thinking of steeping in maybe 2 gallons of water, then bring the volume up to 3 1/2 gal for the boil and adding the extract?

Click to expand...

I did the extract last week and steeped it in 3 gallons of water then removed grain back and brought the whole thing to a boil and added pumpkin/DME to the mix. I have read that you steep in less water in other places on the forum, but I'm not sure the reasoning behind this. I've always just steeped in the amount I'm going to use for the boil.

Yuri, I see that you used the Marris Otter and Vienna this time around would you recommend that over the Pale Malt?

I'm still unsure if it would be better to add to secondary, or at bottling, would the flavors have more time to blend if it was in the secondary for a week or 2 .

Or would it be just as good to add at bottling and the flavors will blend in the bottles