Farmhouse Pumpkin Ale, your thoughts

[vabeergeek]

OK I am a big fan of Hardywood's Farmhouse Pumpkin ale. Unfortunately, I no longer live in Richmond. So I figured I'd take a stab at the recipe. This would be my first saison recipe. I can only guess on specifics based on their video on youtube on what they put into it.


So here's what I got here (I know I left off the spices I'll add those in fermenation)
9 1/2lbs Pilsner
8oz Munich
1 1/2lbs Rye Malt
1 lbs Flaked Wheat
2 1/2lbs of Pumpkin in Mash
2 1/2lbs in boil (probably 15 min)
3/4lbs of Orange Blossom Honey (only because I have a lot of this and need to get rid of it)
1lbs Rice Hulls
1oz Ginger root in mash
1/2lb dark brown sugar in boil
1/2lb light brown surar in boil
.3 oz Magnum 75min
.3 oz EKG 30min
.3 oz EKG 5min
.5 oz Saaz 5min
1.75oz Saaz 0 min
1oz EKG 0min
Ferment with Wyeast 3724 Saison yeast.

Batch size is 5 gallons.
Brewhouse effiency 70%.

Spices will be put in at kegging to taste. I'll play with that to get that balance I enjoy.

So thoughts on what I got going here?

 

[UncleRusty]

I've never had the Hardywood's you're referring to, but the recipe looks good to me. I just brewed a similar Pumpkin Saison similar to the recipe below on the forums:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=275598

It's still aging, and I'm trying to get it to creep down from 1.01 to 1.00 but we'll see what happens with the WLP 565 yeast I chose. So far it tastes very smooth with the strong booze in the background from already being ~9.2% (1.08 OG). There are some interesting phenols going on from the Saison yeast, almost like it's already spiced even though I haven't added any pumpkin spices yet.

 

[m00ps]

Ive got a bottle of that stuff on my beer wall of fame. I remember it had a good balance between the pumpkin spices and saison yeast character.

If youve never done a saison before, biggest thing to read up on is how to handle the yeast. Saisons are all about yeast character and you need to be able to coax it out of the yeast especially with that finnicky strain. That being said, I would say that is definitely the closest thing to use. To my memory, there wasnt the bright lemony zip of WY3711, the other most popular saison strain, or the fruity flavors WLP566 can make. So im pretty sure you picked the best suited one.

You should pitch at normal temps but get the fermentor hot. I usually use a rope tub and aquarium heater to push mine into the mid 90s. Next best option would be to insulate the fermentor with some blankets or put a very heavy winter coat zipped around it. This will trap in the heat from fermentation and should keep it around 80 for a week or so

also, looks like they are using real pumpkins in the video. Just use canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix). Trust me, its much less hassle and will work better in most cases. From a list of pumpkin beer tips from Elysian, it looks like most commercial breweries do this too