All Grain Samhain and IPA's

Well, we finally brewed the Samhain Pumpkin the other day... Had a bit of a time with the drain... I guess the pumpkin caked up the inside of my manifold... I used rice hulls and I think they helped a little... But no worries... We just dumped the contents into another cooler and cleaned it out and then dumped it back in... Ended up with just under 7 gallons for the boil and about a little under 6 for the fermenter... OG of 1058... right on target... I threw in about 2 lbs extra of the main grain to make up for our eff.

Also did a double batch of the Mad Hatter IPA. This seems to be our IPA of choice... just need a stronger hop in the dry hop or perhaps use a hop ball to get some more hoppiness to the batch...

We also finally kegged the Oktoberfest... so I will see how that finally turned out next week...

Kegged the pumpkin this week... Can't wait...

Ocktoberfest was so so.. Got better in a week or two.

What kind of mash schedule did you use on the Octoberfest?

mashed for 60 at roughly 153, batch sparge, etc... The gravity came out a little lower and in the beginning I thought I had lager yeast, but I did not... But I still kept it in the fridge at about 45-50 for fermentation. It TASTES good, just not as expected...

The pumkin came out Great!! I was thinking it could use a LITTLE something, so what about a cinn stick in the keg?

Firebat138 said:

The pumkin came out Great!! I was thinking it could use a LITTLE something, so what about a cinn stick in the keg?

Click to expand...

One idea would be to crush a graham cracker and mix it with about 1-tsp of brown sugar and 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon. Wet the top of your glass by placing it upside down in some clean water or press it into a clean, wet cloth... then press the top of the glass into your graham cracker mixture so it coats the rim of the glass the same way they put salt on the glass rim for a margarita. Then pour the pumpkin ale into the glass. The spices on the glass will make the pumpkin beer taste like a pumpkin pie.