pumpkin Ale

Hello,

I recently found and brewed a pumpkin ale that called for 5 lbs of real pumpkin roasted. I roasted the pumpkin and purreed it in the blender. This was probably a mistake because of the pulp it took forever to rack into primary through my funnel screen. Even though it went through the screen Alot of pulp remained in primary. I did alot of things wrong with this beer but Im mostly worried about the pulp and what it will do later with the body and texture of the beer. Will I have problems bottling it? will it taste gritty or fibery once its time to drink? I really have no idea what to expect with this one regarding the pulp

However it is a beautiful color and smells wonderful. Fermenting nicely.

It shouldn't really taste much different but when you go to bottle you will probably find it coming up quite short on the amount of bottles filled. The trub will get too dense near the end so you'll be stopping earlier. Are you doing extract or AG? If you're doing AG just put the pumpkin in the mash and when you drain you will leave it behind in the mash tun - sooo much easier. Doing it in the boil is really not the way to go.


Rev.

i think you will be fine, although it will depend on how much you spiced it. for future thoughts, my last pumkin beer i did i used the pie filling and it was so much easier and it gave the same characteristic as real pumkin with a lot less hassle. really you should be fine. when you rack siphon from the top down and it will reduce your risk of any nonsense with bottling. :rockin:

It settles with the trub. Youll be ok,just give it more time than average. Alot of people bottle when their beer is clear,but that doesnt always happen,sometimes it does when you cold crash,which made loose pellot-dry hopping wayyyy easier for me a few times as opposed to trying to rack it with hop debrie floating everywhere.Never tried cold crash with pumpkin though or even though about it when I made them-You just bottle anyway-it will be beer. Just keep all the junk out when you bottle(stop like you would when you get to the yeast/trub(thick stuff) normally-when your racking to a bottle bucket), but account for the voulume loss when you calculate your priming sugar-very important,you dont want overcarbonation or bottle blowouts for shure. Good luck,give it time, my short experinece is to let it age if it tastes weird at first.Pumpkins seem to have a trend of needing some age it seems,maybe not all the time but in general- kinda like stouts or doubles or big beers.
What else do you think you did wrong? youll only learn more if you explain. And you could even teach something new to an "experienced" brewer.

I have a pumpkin ale in the keg right now that went really well that I did in an all-grain batch. I couldn't figure out how to properly incorporate the (canned) pumpkin into the mash so I calculated my infusion temperatures without the pumpkin. Then, I added the cans to some brewing liquor in a separate pot prior to doughing in, heated it up and stirred it up until it was a consistent "soup" and I was at the sacc rest temperature. Then I started the mash as usual without the pumpkins and after I had hit my mash temps, added the pumpkin "soup" at the same temperature.

Now, with REAL baking pumpkins this is going to be a bit harder - I would suggest baking the pumpkins in the oven until they really break down to a similar consistency as the stuff in the cans and proceeding the same way.

However, the impression I'm getting here is that you put it in the boil. I've never really understood why that would be necessary - Pumpkin *does* have a flavor itself, but its actually quite vegetal for lack of a better word. However, if you want to do that, I would suggest trying to cook down the pumpkins in the oven a little longer until you can really really break down the pumpkins into a little more. I wouldn't really worry about the flavor in the primary, either. If the pumpkin was going to add a bunch of weird flavors would probably have already been imparted by boiling the pumpkin, and you said it seemed to taste good.

well that was the big question I had when I set out ot do this. After research of many recipes there was no real hard way to go either canned or real pumpkin. I cut, cleaned and quarted the pumpkin I had and baked it till soft. Then pureed it in the blender and added the puree into the water with the steeping grains, after the steep was done then I boiled and added the extraxt and bittering hops and spice at the last 15 mins.

then the fun started when I couldnt hardly strain the wort through my funnel screen to go into the carboy. It did smell look and taste awesome but then again im a noob at all of this so who really knows.

It was very active in primary and needed a blow off tube (my first) but has calmed. secondary will be interesting