Pumpkin beer

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Stunna980

Stunna980

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I made my first pumpkin beer on the 4th, pretty stoked about it. Made a starter for 3 days and made it with 5lbs of pumpkin filling. Most of the filling looks like it is settling out a little. When I go to rack it to secondary do I just siphon the beer off the top of the pumpkin( and loose like a gallon of space) or siphon up that sluge too? Was planning on using a hop sock around siphon to kinda filter a bit.
 
Yeah, leave the trub+pumpkin at the bottom. You will loose quite a bit of beer, but thats the cost.

Next time you may want to try adding the pumpkin to the mash, that way you keep it out of the fermenter and thus don't loose so much delicious beer to the trub.
 
Ya kinda what I thought, good learning lesson. One thing is I boiled it for 90 mins in a grain sock most came out. I use some extract but steep specialty grains. I couldn't strain it through my funnel screen, so I just took the screen out. I guess thats just part of making a specialty beer.
 
Yeah, Jamil's book says Mash the pumkin.(after you roast and caramelize it in the oven) It actually replaces some of the grain - so it's not just for flavor. And another thing he said is if you don't want to use pumkin(or can't) - you could just do the pie spices and most people wouldn't know either way.

-OCD
 
Alright my main question is when brewing pumpkin beer using pumpkin filling. Am I always going to just end up with just 4 gallons of beer when doing 5 1/2 gallon batch? Is that just part of making this beer or is there any way to strain it(my fine strainer gets clogged insteadly)?
 
Stunna, you can always make more beer! If you're ending up with 4gallons from a 5.5gal recipe, then make it ~6.5

Also, consider trying this technique. The ladyfriend and I are growing two competition-sized pumpkins for just this purpose ^_^
 
My 1st try i used no pumpkin,2nd time with pumpkin.Tastes the same.
 
mr_clean said:
My 1st try i used no pumpkin,2nd time with pumpkin.Tastes the same.
Click to expand...

When did you add it? You only get pumpkin flavor if you properly prepare the pumpkin before using it in mash, or if you add it to the secondary. You give the yeast a chance to eat all of the pumpkin flavor and it obviously won't taste pumpkin-y.

Also, you can make it taste a lot more like pumpkin pie by adding 1-3 sticks of cinnamon to the secondary, as well as using honey malt in the mash. Don't use actual honey because, again, it's super-fermentable and it will not taste like honey in the final product... but boy-howdy, 0.5-1.0lbs of honey malt will give you the right "pie crust" sweetness
 
Reno_eNVy_446 said:
When did you add it? You only get pumpkin flavor if you properly prepare the pumpkin before using it in mash, or if you add it to the secondary. You give the yeast a chance to eat all of the pumpkin flavor and it obviously won't taste pumpkin-y.

Also, you can make it taste a lot more like pumpkin pie by adding 1-3 sticks of cinnamon to the secondary, as well as using honey malt in the mash. Don't use actual honey because, again, it's super-fermentable and it will not taste like honey in the final product... but boy-howdy, 0.5-1.0lbs of honey malt will give you the right "pie crust" sweetness
Click to expand...

I mashed it with the grains
 

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