Eve of Destruction Pumpkin Porter

I have left over pumpkins and left over grain from my porter last night. Yet another "What was I thinking?" thread.

I'm posting this in this category because I'm pretty sure it doesn't if anywhere else.

I'm baking about 10 lbs of jack-o-lantern right now. I have a big heap of mostly spent grain that's been sitting for about 8 hours. I plan on crushing the pumpkin to a pulp and sparging it over the top of the mostly spent grain bed.

I think I'll have to boil longer before addition of hops to increase original gravity and let it set in the ferment longer - Also I read that tannins will aid in the breakdown of pectin and should get more fermentables from that. I may place a couple bags of green tea into the tun. The spent grain will probably have some extra tannins in it too.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/how-much-fermentable-sugar-will-i-get-pumpkin-199558/index2.html#post2387450

The original grain bill is the second list in this thread, the actual porter:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/edmund-fitzgerald-porter-clone-tribute-202821/

I baked the pumpkin until it was turning brown on the skin. I took it out and cut the skin off. Some of it was still undercooked. I'm boiling it with a couple green tea bags. I'll mash it up in the pot with a potao masher, and place it over the spent grain. Ill add additional sparge water to try and collect 5 gallons to ferment.

And...I'm officially interested. Please update and let us know how it goes.

I'm trying to decide on spice amounts. This thread was a good resource:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/thunderstruck-pumpkin-ale-ag-extract-versions-26699/

OK, This is leavings of a similar grain bill and the process is sort of like an extra sparge at the end.

I going simple though from his quantities it looked like about 10~11 teaspoons total Trend Pumpkin Pie Spice. I'll cut it in half and use 4 teaspoons because I'll be collecting less than half the wort because this is like a last sparge.

We mashed the pumpkin and then hit it with one of those hand held whips. I guess that makes it "Wild". We mixed the spices into the pumpkin beer filling. I poured the mush over the top of the spent grain and could watch it thicken as the juice ran out of the mush. The grain bed was still pretty warm from last night and the mush was pretty hot, so I just got about 4 gallons of sparge water - one more at the end.

Part of the process; the pumpkin acts as a great sparge stopper. I had to mix it around on top of the grain bed to get the liquid to run down into the grain bed. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should try to wash the sugars an starches out of the pumpkin so I mixed it into thin soup on top. Then I scraped a couple places back and let it trickle down though the bed. I did the same with the last gallon.

I took a taste of the wort not to much hint of spices. I can taste the pumpkin though. It's starchy. There are tannins too. It will probably have a Red twang to it.

I've got too much to fit in my boil pot. I'll do my hopping boil and see how much room I have to add it all back together in my HDPE fermenter. I should get close to my 5 gallons.

I wonder if it would survive lagering in the garage. It gets pretty cold here before Thanksgiving. It would probably freeze. Next pRoJeCkt - lagering closet.

I put in 1/2 oz Fuggles at 45 minutes to flame out. I will also use about 1/4 oz Cascade dry hops at 15 minutes before flame out. No aroma hops at the end. I'm going to just let this chill out in the garage.

Maybe I should have named this "Steal Your Face Pumpkin Porter". I stole the Jack-O-Lantern's face...? A little Grateful Dead homage there.

I made a pumpkin ale about a month ago, took an amber ale recipe, modified it a bit, added a medium pumpkin that had been cooked for 45 minutes at 400oF. Also added 1 cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, and 1 tbls nutmeg.

The beer was made with extract, though. I just added the pumpkin to the boil with 15 minutes left, and strained it out into the carboy.

One month later and now in bottles, I tasted a sample, and it goes down like a smooth pumpkin pie. I'm excited to see how it will taste in 3 weeks time, carbonated.

I let the trailings run fro the mash tun till just now. My final gravity was 1.048 @ 80 deg F.

I placed 3 pints in the pumpkin from the the other porter so each bucket of the other porter has 1 gallon of head space. I hope it's enough.

The pumpkin porter is just shy of the 5 gallon mark. I'll post pictures later. Now is clean-up. My wife is being a big help.

Here is a link to my Imageshack album:

http://img183.imageshack.us/g/halloween2010031.jpg/

Go get you some Dynachrome. Post back after drinking a few!

So did you brew a Porter, then wake up the next day with left over ingredients and say, "Hey! Lets brew again. Wait, I still have my Jack-O-Lanterns!"

For the pumpkin, did you just fly sparge the left over (spent Porter) grains with the pumpkin added and then boil that to its own beer?

Totally keep us updated. I hope it turns out.

Yep, That's pretty much it. I batch sparged a thid time. The grain was still hot after about 8 hours or a little more. I baked the pumpkin and then boiled it down. I used a potato masher to get it started and my wife used one of those hand held electric food processors to whip good.

Then I just laid it on top of the somewhat spent grain and made pumpkin soup on top. I thinned it out a couple of times and let it strain down through the grains.

My final gravity came to 1.046 at 80 deg F. I had a yeast starter going for the porter, so I used the "dirty" starter container with S-04 to stir in dry Nottinghams. I will have two yeasts going. It is already bubbling along quite nicely.

My final gravity came to 1.046 at 80 deg F

Click to expand...

Is that your real FG, or is that the gravity pre- or post-boil?

Sorry - Wrong Terminology? That was the post boil gravity and temperature right when I pitched the yeast.

If it finishes at about 1.014 I should get approximately 3.2 percent alcohol, right?

If you meas. a SG of 1.046 on a sample @ 80 F the corrected (real) SG is 1.048. Since you measured that after the boil, this is your OG (original gravity).

If you suspect the FG (final gravity) will be 1.014, then you will have 4.5% alcohol/vol, how its measured in the US (3.5% alcohol/wt., how its meas. in Europe)

But you may very well get a lower final gravity, thus boosting the %alcohol slightly.

funkswing said:

If you meas. a SG of 1.046 on a sample @ 80 F the corrected (real) SG is 1.048. Since you measured that after the boil, this is your OG (original gravity).

If you suspect the FG (final gravity) will be 1.014, then you will have 4.5% alcohol/vol, how its measured in the US (3.5% alcohol/wt., how its meas. in Europe)

But you may very well get a lower final gravity, thus boosting the %alcohol slightly.

Click to expand...

Stop teasing me! ;-)
(I'd be OK with that).

Final gravity was 1.004.

We bottled this tonight. It has quite an astringent flavor. It's really dry tasting too. There is whole lot of character. It's not definately not Bud light. It still had a lot of starch flavor too. I think this will be something I like, but have to drink up myself. Interested to see what comes from bottle conditioning.

It's going to be somewhat extreme.

A couple days in the bottle and this is really showing signs of improvement. It was getting really enjoyable.

I've put this side-by side with Edmund Fitzgerald Porter quite a few times now and had friends try them. They like the Pumpkin Porter better than the EFP clone.

It drinks dry, kind of Budweiser weight with a lot of tanin and a starch pucker aftertaste.

I'd make it again.

...tis the season. A friend is bringing some free pumpkins.

I am doing this one again. How might I try to tell if I am getting conversion on the pumpkin starch?

I had thought of taking a sample of the last runnings from the E.F.P. grain bed just at the end while it is still running fairly fast.

I could get the "O.G." of that and compare it to the O.G. of the Pumpkin batch. I don't know what letting the grain bed sit does....

The pumpkin is baking right now.

We got some free pie pumpkins from a neighbor. They are pie pumpkins.

They were baked till they showed a decent bit of caramelization and my wife pureed them this morning. The EFP is on to boil and this batch of Eve of Destruction is mashing - or whatever you call it.

I didn't get enough hops for two batches, 1 big, one small, I'm going o borrow 1/2 oz Fuggles and throw in about 1 oz leaf Cascade for bittering. Then I will finish everything in the pumpkin beer with Cascade for the flavoring and the bittering.

OK, Last year I decided to add the spice to the mash. It seemed to get lost, but people liked the beer.

I figured it would be better to get more efficient usege of the spice rather than throw most of it out with the spent grain.

The question is how much? Separate ingredients here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/samhain-pumpkin-ale-140674/

2 Tbs here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/lady-rumpkin-pumpkin-rum-ale-214177/

...question to self - why not just add the spiced rum at the end when putting in the priming sugar?


BTW - I'm going with a little extra pumpkin pie spice because I have about 8 gallons of wort.

I used 4 Tbs of McCormick's

I also used 4 Bigelow's Green tea bags.

I can smell the starch in the steam and the kitchen overall smells like baking pumpkin pie.

BTW - The EF Porter clone I used as a grain bed started out as 28 lbs.

This was made off the spent grain bed and it was about 2 gallons of pumpkin mush on top of it.

I'll see if I can post O.G.'s tomorrow.

The Specific Gravity when I pitched my yeast was 1.047

The temperature was 55 degrees.

This batch was still in stainless steel pots.

We got a final gravity of 1.014 on this batch.

I didn't smell much spice till I scooped out the trub. I kind of think less spice is to my taste.

My wife tried a sip. She said she could taste. the starch.

Waiting will tell.

After a bit over a week in the bottle - it is smooth and I can taste the spices. They are not too overpowering. I don't think it will be to my taste, but I think the people that liked the first batch will probably enjoy it.

.....as usual, I should wait at least four weeks to try it....

I might have to try this with the Pumpkin Porter and one of my not-quite Two-Hearted clones..

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epqklAOhwgM&feature=related]The 4-Pour: 4 Black & Tans in 60 seconds - YouTube[/ame]

I tried it. My two beers mixed. I think my specific gravities were too close.

....it tasted pretty good though.