dml263
Member
I'm having some issues with a pumpkin ale that I'm brewing. Here's a little background (sorry, this is going to be long).
I'm pretty new to all grain brewing; this was my second batch of all grain (have done a bunch of extract and partial mash in the past). I tried a pumpkin ale recipe that I found on one of these forums and scaled it down from 5 gals to 3 gals (don't have a big enough brew pot to handle a 5 gal boil). From what I can tell so far, the results have been pretty awful.
I added canned pumpkin, a yam that I baked in the oven and the grains to my mash. Added brown sugar, hops, and pumpkin pie spice to the wort during hte boil. O.G. came out at about 1.085. After 5 days in primary with what seemed to be a pretty healthy fermentation, I racked into my secondary, took another gravity measurement and taste tested. That's where the problems come in....
The beer has strong alcohol flavors and almost no pumpkin flavor at all. The gravity reading that I took today was about 1.01. That doesn't seem right.
My theory is that my mash temperatures were off and I didn't get enough (or any?) fermentable sugars from my grains. The original high gravity reading was mostly precipitate from the pumpkin, yams, hops, etc., and my only fermentable sugar was the brown sugar I added during the boil. Hence, very little character other than alcohol and the quick change from 1.085 OG to 1.01 today.
Does that make sense? Can anyone with a little more experience with all grain comment? I think this batch is a lost cause, but I'd like to try to avoid the same mistakes again.
I'm pretty new to all grain brewing; this was my second batch of all grain (have done a bunch of extract and partial mash in the past). I tried a pumpkin ale recipe that I found on one of these forums and scaled it down from 5 gals to 3 gals (don't have a big enough brew pot to handle a 5 gal boil). From what I can tell so far, the results have been pretty awful.
I added canned pumpkin, a yam that I baked in the oven and the grains to my mash. Added brown sugar, hops, and pumpkin pie spice to the wort during hte boil. O.G. came out at about 1.085. After 5 days in primary with what seemed to be a pretty healthy fermentation, I racked into my secondary, took another gravity measurement and taste tested. That's where the problems come in....
The beer has strong alcohol flavors and almost no pumpkin flavor at all. The gravity reading that I took today was about 1.01. That doesn't seem right.
My theory is that my mash temperatures were off and I didn't get enough (or any?) fermentable sugars from my grains. The original high gravity reading was mostly precipitate from the pumpkin, yams, hops, etc., and my only fermentable sugar was the brown sugar I added during the boil. Hence, very little character other than alcohol and the quick change from 1.085 OG to 1.01 today.
Does that make sense? Can anyone with a little more experience with all grain comment? I think this batch is a lost cause, but I'd like to try to avoid the same mistakes again.