Brewers Best Pumpkin Spice Porter

[124Spider]

Hi,

So, after a year off, I'm brewing again.

Easing back in, I thought another Brewers Best package would be easier than trying my first full-grain brew; my wife thought the Pumpkin Spice Porter would be fun, so we got that (also got a Brewers Best kit for full-grain brew, but that'll have to wait until there's room in the freezer for another vat).

It's happily burbling away in the fridge (natively a freezer, but temperature controlled at 19.5 C for this batch). I read up on the experience of others with this package, and some seemed to feel that the spice is a bit strong. I used the whole package (I thought it smelled wonderful, BTW).

I'm curious as to people's experience with this, and whether it's good, bad or indifferent to either (i) keep it in the brew vat for longer, to let it mellow, and/or (ii) move it to secondary at some point (I typically don't do that, and my results have been fine in the past.

Thanks!

Mark

 

[easttex]

I did this one about seven months ago. I got busy, forgot about it, and left it in the primary for a couple months. I just went ahead and bottled it afterwards instead of going to the secondary although maybe I should have done a secondary to clean it up a bit. I had I let this one bottle age for a bit to mellow out the pumpkin spices in the brew. It's FINALLY becoming palatable. Maybe I screwed something up somewhere along the way but this one finished with a fairly strong flavor.


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[mcmeador]

So to those who have brewed it, what color did yours end up being? The instructions say black, but mine is about 5 days into primary and my sample was a dark transparent brown. It definitely could not be mistaken for anything close to black. I used all the ingredients and topped off with enough water to make 5 gallons, so I didn't dilute it.


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[CJ-3]

Just sampled mine today - right now in fact. In addition to the recipe I also added one can of pumpkin pie filling. Had it in the primary for a week, 2 weeks in the secondary and 2 weeks in the bottle. The color is a very dark brown, almost black. Mouthfeel is nice and velvety, not too thick at all. The taste is definitely a porter with a hint of the spices coming through, but the nose lets you know what is in the glass.

My only complaint is that it is undercarbed. There is barely if any head on it. Followed the recommended 3.5 ounces of priming sugar but it is lacking. I am hoping that if I leave these alone in the bottle until November that they carb up more.

 

[mcmeador]

I wonder why mine is brown. Oh well, the sample I just took tastes good, and the gravity looks about right. Beer is beer!

Speaking on low carbonation, I had that problem recently with a porter I brewed from a BYO.com recipe. I just used the recommended amount of sugar for the style according to the Northern Brewers calculator, but it just seems to get kinda flat quickly even after a few months in the bottle. I'm gonna go with the recommendation from Brewer's Best on this and see how it works out.


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[CJ-3]

Just an update. After 4 weeks in the bottle this has carbed nicely. The hops have also come out just a bit more and now it has a nice subtle hop bitterness to it.