Another "adding pumpkin to mash" question...

So we're planning on brewing a pumpkin ale tomorrow morning and I got a few questions regarding adding pumpkin. There are enough opinions on when to add the pumpkin, so let's keep that topic on the back burner for this thread please

I'm planning on adding 3-4 29 oz of canned pumkin to the mash tomorrow (10 gal batch) and would like to bake it beforehand. My question is: do I have to bake it and cool it right before putting it into the mash or can I bake it tonite (for time-constraint reasons) and let it sit until tomorrow morning? Since we've never brewed a pumkin ale before, when i add it to the mash after its cooked, is it gonna/supposed to be soupy, hard, or something in-between? should we mix it in with the grains at dough-in or just let it sit on top after dough-in?

Thanks in advance!

you should be fine baking it the night before, although you may want to cover it and pop it in the fridge overnight and then let it warm up to room temp again the next day. even after baking, the pumpkin is still very wet, so expect it to be soupy in the mash. I just mix it right in with the rest of my grain when I dough in. I recommend a pound or so of rice hulls so you don't get a stuck sparge (better safe than sorry). also, pumpkin messes with the thermal mass and pH of everything, so be ready to correct things if necessary.

Yea, I got 2 lbs of rice hulls for it...

how much higher should I go temp-wise. I had read about that when researching. Does ~4 degrees sound right? I'm gonna shoot for around 156F and Beersmith told me use 167.2F water. So I was gonna shoot for 171F. sound reasonable?

yeah, that sounds about right. I was a few degrees under when I brewed mine this year and had to adjust with boiling water. have some cold water on hand in case you overshoot. have fun!

Yea, there should be no problem with baking the night before. Either way it won't make much difference.

The mash is a mess. I just did roughly the same in a 10 gallon batch, using 8 15 oz cans. trying to recirculate makes it a total disaster. Be careful to make sure the pumpkin gets mixed up into the mash, it seemed a little gummy and chunky. Just take the time to get it mixed in. Everything will be slow and messy, just take the time to let it all work. As long as the runnings and sparge are flowing at all, it's still working, and be patient.

For some reason the pumpkin makes everything sticky and messy. hot break was super foamy and touchy to keep from overflowing, even with a 10 gal batch in a 20 gal kettle. And use a blow off tube and keep an eye on it during fermentation. I gummed up and blew an airlock into the ceiling. fun mess to clean up.

Have fun with it, it's an interesting beer to try to brew.

I also used 8 - 15 oz cans for a 10 gal batch. I spread across a few baking pans and baked until browning on edges and a lot of the moisture had evaporated. I did this the night before and just covered with foil and put back into the cooled oven overnight. I threw 6 cans of it into the mash and 2 into the boil for the last 10 mins, in my hop spider. Be warned, I used 2 lbs of rice hulls and still got stuck towards the end of the sparge.

I just got done being one today. I put the water in first then the pumpkin. Once it was mixed up i added the grain
Worked great