Autumn Seasonal Beer Samhain Pumpkin Ale

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I think that they would produce relatively similar results. I have tried sever yeasts with this style of beer and have been most satisfied with the U.S. 05. It finishes so clean when fermented at the right temps (62-65 in my opinion) with no diacetyl. The malt flavor is preserved more so than with others. You will not be disappointed.
 
So lhbs let me down. Hopefully things will work. I'm going all maris otter. I'm not roasting a lb nor using golden promise. I also could only find red torrified wheat and caramalt 20. Lastly I'm changing the spices up. Going light on the ginger, no clove, increasing cinnamon/nutmeg and adding cardamon. Hopefully I can snag some Saigon cinnamon. Finally adding some oats, 90 oz of slightly roasted Libbys puree, and adding some vanilla beans possibly two in the secondary. So I guess it's a different recipe at this point! I suppose we shall see. Interesting how originally I was going with the exact recipe and then found myself where I'm at- completely different.
 
Question for the group, did any of you guys have an issue sparging with the pumpkin puree in the mash, etc... I'm adding approx 11 oz of rice hulls to the mix given the wheat, small amount of flaked oats and pumpkin. I purchased a mesh bag for the pumpkin but would rather have all of the content dispersed through out the mash. With that being said I don't feel like getting a stuck sparge. I've delt with them enough this year resulting in me buying a $165 LEGIT false bottom.
 
I have a 10 gallon mash tun. When I make these large batches I usually have around 20 pounds of grain plus the pumpkin needs to be mashed as well. It is quite complicated, but you can put the pumpkin in your mash water in the pot to begin with. When you get it to strike in temperature and then you can add and that strike water to the mash tun.
I have also done in a slightly different way by adding the pumpkin on top of the greens in the mash tun. Even with 15 pounds of pumpkin I have not had a stuck mash doing it this way.
 
Stuck sparges.... all day long. 5 lbs of roasted pumpkin gave me a heck of a time. 11 oz of rice Hulls was not nearly enough... just my experience of course..

BTW was at 152 on the button. Actually overshot on the O.G. and boiled off a tad more than I anticipated during the 1 hr boil. A challenging day to say the least but better than work I suppose.
 
Hey Folks,

I'm about to brew this recipe with a bit of variation from the original recipe. I'm going to use roasted, mashed sweet potato instead of pumpkin and I'm also going to use some home grown Mt. Hood (hoping the earthy, spiciness lends a nice compliment to this beer).

I am debating tossing in a vanilla bean and maybe half a cup of lactose (in sanitized syrup form, of course) when this moves to secondary. I've always enjoyed notes of vanilla in pumpkin or sweet potato dishes, and I thought a little dose of lactose could give this a creamier, fuller mouth feel and a hint of sweetness. But reviews for this recipe in its original form have been overwhelmingly positive and I don't want to end up messing up a good thing haha. Any thoughts on this?
 
I'm going 2 vanilla beans in the secondary next week sanitized in some rum. Unfortunately I can't offer past experiences but I'm thinking it can't hurt and in fact a lot of pumpkin recipes use vanilla.
 
So, I followed this recipe (aside from changing the hop variety and substituting sweet potatoes for pumpkin), but my OG came out REALLY low... Like, 1.025 low... I don't get it. Makes no sense to me whatsoever.

At any rate, the beer smells and looks great, so I'd like to try to save the batch if possible. Any thoughts? I was considering making a simple syrup with some brown sugar to add some fermentables, but wasn't sure if this would be a good option or not. Any suggestions?

I don't need a beer that's going to knock me on my ass after a single pint, but the prospect of a 2% beer after the time (and money) that went into making this batch is not encouraging. HELP! :confused:
 
madscientistbrewNq said:
Did you use molasses? Did you sparge?
Click to expand...

Yes and yes 😕

My LHBS wondered if I might have a faulty hydrometer. But a friend brewed an IPA with me that day and used the same hydrometer, getting a 1.065 reading, which was on par with what he expected so I don't think it's faulty. I also haven't seen much airlock action yet and we are approaching 48 hours since pitching my yeast.

The LHBS also suggested letting it ferment, tasting it, and then if it's obviously terrible adding some brown sugar simple syrup and DME and moving to secondary to try to salvage it. Thoughts?
 
With 11 lbs of grain and molasses, it's got to be higher. I imagine you mashed for an hour... I would calibrate the hydrometer first. What temp did you take your gravity reading i.e. was it super hot? If so you need to adjust your og. Did you pitch dry and what temps are you fermenting at right now? If you pitched liquid and didn't do a starter the lag is to be expected in my opinion. I had a brown ale that took 3 days to start bubbling.


I've never tried to adjust after the fact. I suspect it's possible but wouldnt know how much to add to achieve a given endpoint. There's got to be a calculator somewhere. Also I believe there is a thread on here that mentions how to do it. In the thread it talks about boiling an amount of water and disolving the fermentable. I imagine you would then cool the liquid to the temp you are fermenting and add to the wort.
 
madscientistbrewNq said:
With 11 lbs of grain and molasses, it's got to be higher. I imagine you mashed for an hour... I would calibrate the hydrometer first. What temp did you take your gravity reading i.e. was it super hot? If so you need to adjust your og. Did you pitch dry and what temps are you fermenting at right now? If you pitched liquid and didn't do a starter the lag is to be expected in my opinion. I had a brown ale that took 3 days to start bubbling.


I've never tried to adjust after the fact. I suspect it's possible but wouldnt know how much to add to achieve a given endpoint. There's got to be a calculator somewhere. Also I believe there is a thread on here that mentions how to do it. In the thread it talks about boiling an amount of water and disolving the fermentable. I imagine you would then cool the liquid to the temp you are fermenting and add to the wort.
Click to expand...


I used less than 11lbs because I did a smaller batch, but I adjusted the amount proportionately to the batch size and had my LHBS double-check my math in case I had screwed up.

The OG was taken before it was completely cooled, but not super hot. I think it was around 90F when I took it. I used liquid Wyeast (Denny's 50) and gave it a full 3 hours to start inside the slap-pack before pitching.

The LHBS says that you will generally gain about 15 gravity points for every 1/3lb of DME you add per gallon of brew. So, if my ultra low reading of 1.025 proves to be accurate, I would probably add 2/3lb DME for every gallon in hopes of raising it 30 points to 1.055. He says to water it down a bit in order to thin it out some and heat it enough to dissolve it into a consistent syrup, then add it to the secondary and rack over it. Also said to let it cool some (obviously you don't want to add 165F DME syrup to the brew), but not completely or it may thicken up too much to mix well into the batch. The volume of cooler liquid being added will keep the overall temperature of the batch from rising enough to have any significant negative impact it.
 
Hmm when I used the smack packs I've gotten pretty good fermentation in 24 hrs. I'm at a loss because at 90 degrees the og would only change by a couple of points like 0.003. Well sir I'd check my hydrometer and if it's accurate go the route you outlined. I have an interesting situation in my carboy. I sanitized my secondary 5 gallon carboy. I poured the starsan out but there was a lot of foam. I said ah whatever. Transferred the beer with the end goal of adding 2 rum soaked vanilla beans. I looked at my carboy yesterday and there's two layers. It looks like a layer of starsan unfortunately. Now I'm thinking I will need to rack from underneath this unknown layer. I thought maybe it was the beer clarifying but it hasn't gotten any bigger.
 
Got the ingredients for this last night, spices were a small fortune hope it turns out
 
Reread the recipe and I'm not sure about the grains I subbed in and the problem is I'm not even sure that I correctly remember which grains I subbed because my LHBS had almost none of the correct grain

I know I misread and used roasted barley instead of toasted MO so it's probably gonna be darker than intended, I'll go over the recipe and try to remember what else I subbed in a little bit.
 
Definitely messed up I bought

8lbs MO
1lb caramel 40l
1lb roasted barley
1lb torrified wheat

The srm calculator says 10.xx for the original and 29.xx SRM for mine.

The main problem is I milled all the grain together already, I may wait on the pumpkin stuff and just brew this as a different beer, will have to see what kind of hops I have left. Seems like it might be an interesting Amber.
 
Brewing this up this weekend, quick question:

I am not going to have time to mess with the toasted malt, what is an adequate substitute for this?

a) just go with another pound of golden promise and forget it

b) biscuit

c) amber malt

d) victory

e) vienna
 
**EDIT** - you probably meant that what's in your list is what you have on hand and don't have time to hit the LHBS, so my bad. I'd probably go with the amber dude.

Maybe some Munich 20L and bump up the amount to 1.25#? Just a thought.
 
I can go with anything, I wont buy grains until tomorrow after work. My LHBS is a good one and they have about everything.

Somebody else mentioned brown malt, that is an interesting suggestion. I have never used it, and to be honest I dont think I have tasted it in anything but Taddy Porter.
 
Hi,
just a qucik question.
I found this recepie and like to brew it. Since pumpkin time is upon us my question is has anyone used fresh pumpkin for this beer and if yes which pumpkin type?
TIA
 
Ravenor said:
Hi,

just a qucik question.

I found this recepie and like to brew it. Since pumpkin time is upon us my question is has anyone used fresh pumpkin for this beer and if yes which pumpkin type?

TIA
Click to expand...


Yes I just made a Pumkpin Ale that turned out freaking amazing as well as a chocolate Pumkpin Porter that is bottle conditioning right now. For 5-6 gals I used 5# of Butternut Squash split in half, deseeded, roasted in the over at 400F for 1hr or until soft, then I used a fork to pull out the meaty sections while trashing the skin. Weigh what you have because you CAN ADD TOO MUCH. Also you might need to get 10-11# of uncooked to get 5-6# cooked. One more thing, either add it to your mash for light flavor or MAKE SURE YOU PUT IT IN A MESH BAG IF YOU ADD TO THE BOIL!!! Boiling will give you more flavor so you might add a little less or just give it more time to mellow out after it's been kegged or bottled. If you don't put it in a bag you will have pumpkin in your tank until you bottle, and a lot of it. You might not be able to harvest the yeast either.

Cheers
 
I believe its golden promise (english version of 2-row if I'm not mistaken) toasted. I used MO as I assumed it would be a better choice than american pale malt given it was toasted.
 
I'm sorry the mo is the toasted malt. I didn't toast and went all mo. I had the byo magazine pumpkin additio if you will and noticed most pumpkin clones went mo so I just went with it. Now my home brew store had golden promise so I could have went with it.
 
I brewed this up several weeks ago. I modified the recipe somewhat this time around. This was the third or fourth time I've brewed it. I added some additional golden promise and I used another can of pumpkin purée. I also upped the spices just a little bit 1/4 tsp more of each (except the clove and nutmeg, just a pinch more). Anyways, OG was 1.062 and it finished out at 1.014. Still a very clean tasting brew, didn't think the spices were overpowering. It's been in the keg for a few weeks now and it's looking and tasting good. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1444873360.330380.jpg
 
I was pretty excited about this one. It has been in the bottle three weeks now and I have had a couple a long the way, and unfortunately I'm pretty disappointed. I measured out the spices correctly, but unfortunately the only spice i can taste is the clove and it is extremely overpowering. Sad because I was really looking forward to this recipe!

I doubt it is the recipe since so many others have had great success, but more likely it was the quality of the spices I used or something? the cloves were fresh ground via mortar and pestle, the other spices were all bought pre-ground (we always have those spices in the house). In retrospect I probably should have upped the amount of all spices other than the clove and reduced the clove by half or maybe even more...

Anyways, for anyone out there attempting this recipe for the first time, be careful about the spices. it might be better to add the spices at bottling time and sample it as you go or something.

Thanks for the recipe, I'll try again next year!
 
What is the estimated lovibond of the toast MO?

I had to make some quick substitutions at the LBHS and I ended up with

8lbs MO
1lb crystal 40l
1lb torrified wheat
1lb ROASTED BARLEY!

the toasted barley worries me so much that I've put off brewing this for a few weeks, now I don't want to waste the grain, but the pumpkin and spices weren't cheap so I don't want to make a bad pumpkin
Ale either.

Maybe on that small o a percentage it won't be as bad as I perceive but it seems like a batch ruining mistake to me.
 
I did BIAB (twice). It is a mess, the pumpkin clogged my bag. Plan on lots and lots of squeezing to get the wort out of the bag thru the pumpkin. Other than that, it is just like any other all grain.

For the record, I did not use the rice hulls....maybe they would help, IDK.
 
Really out of season for a pumpkin ale but I've decided it to brew it with the dark grain to avoid wasting a whole order of grist, still unsure if I'm doing BIAB or not but I'm preheating my oven now
 
Corrected preboil Gravity was 1.045

Off to a rolling boil now it's definitely darker than the original recipe but it smells ok. I'm more concerned with fixing my efficient issue than actually making a good beer seeings how I botched the grain bill
 
I brewed this last October and it was awesome. I added 1/2 the spices in the boil and the other 1/2 was put in Maker's Mark for a week to extract the flavor. only the makers was added back in, but only the spices came through.

This was one of my favorite batches and I will totally brew it again.
 
wtaylor3 said:
Also has anyone done this BIAB?
Click to expand...

I did this BIAB as well. I added the pumpkin directly to the water not the bag when it was time to mash in. Yes, there was a lot of stuff in the bottom after cooling the wort and the beer was cloudy, but I am ok with that. With this method I had no trouble hitting OG.

Next time I will add the pumpkin directly in after mashout. I didn't feel a need to bag the pumpkin as I wanted as much as possible to get in the beer, and I am not sure mashing the pumpkin does that much for it (let me know if I am wrong). The finished beer had a very subtle sour vegetable note that I really enjoyed.
 
I brewed this recipe again for the fourth or fifth time. It's always a big hit with friends and family. OG was 1.066 (but I beefed up the base malt a little as I usually do). Followed the recipe exactly as the OP except for adding 2lbs of golden promise and I experimented with a half pound of lactose this time. Always a great fall brew.
 
1) Do the spices need to make it into the fermenter? I intend on filtering the wort using my BIAB bag as I transfer it into the kettle. I'm not sure how much of the spices will get caught.

2) Does the Maris Otter need to be toasted on broil? Or is 350F for 30 mins enough?

3) Is it okay to crush the Maris Otter before toasting? I usually crush my grains at the LHBS.
 
I'm making this tonight! I had to replace the Golden Promise with MO, but I'm a big fan of MO so I think it will turn out great in the end. I also added some spices to Organic Pumpkin Puree before baking it to give it a little more punch. The house smelled fantastic. I really enjoy the pumpkin spiced flavor. I will let you know brew day goes.
 

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