Thoughts on my first recipe: Squashmas Pecan Porter

[NWesterner47]

This fall I got an itch to brew a pumpkin beer. But then I remembered that every pumpkin beer I've ever had sucked! So I scoured the interwebs to see if I could find something to go on. I found this website helpful. I didn't want to use all pumpkin for the squash flavor because I think the irony of pumpkin beer is that pumpkin is actually its Achilles heel. So taking into consideration that Ive only been all-grain brewing for my last 5 batches or so and this is the first recipe I %100 tried to put together myself on Beersmith, this is what I came up with.

Squashmas Pecan Porter
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Est Original Gravity: 1.056 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.017 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.1 %
Bitterness: 17.0 IBUs
Est Color: 25.5 SRM


Grainbill

• 7lbs 2-row US
• 1lb caramel malt 80 6-row
• 1lb flaked wheat
• 12oz biscuit malt
• 6oz chocolate malt
• 1lb rice huls

Squash

• 2lb sugar pumpkin (mash)
• 4lbs butternut squash (mash)
• 1lb rosted pecans (half for mash half for boil)

Hop additions

• 0.5 oz Northern Brewer (first wort hopping)
• 0.25 cascade 15min
• 0.25 Mt. Hood 5min

spices

• 1 Tbs fresh ginger
• 1 cinnimon stick
• 1 Tbs Nutmeg
• 1 Tbs Allspice
• 5 oz ish of spiced rum

Other Fermentables

• 1 lb light brown sugar (boil @ 20min)

yeast

• white labs english ale

I planed to roast the squashes until they started to caramelize scoop out the meat and add that to my mash and half my roasted pecans. single infusion mash at 156F for 90 min. then Mashout, sparge, firstwort hop, add half my spices at 5 min and the other half (soaked in the rum) to secondary (hopefully I can finish my fermentation chamber before it gets friggen cold in New England). Then keg.

I'm going to brew this next week or some version of it so if anyone who wants to give their two cents on my grain bill, hops/schedule, or ratio of my spices, Im open to it.

 

[NWesterner47]

I just wanted to fallow up on my squashmas porter. This turned out really well for me. It has all the roast flavors of a porter I like while being nice and dry. That is balanced out with a nice squash flavor and smooth mouth feel without being overly spiced. unfortunately the the pecan flavor is totally absent, not sure what I did there, might require somthing different. also I think next time I may just go full butternut and just skip the pumpkin, way better squash in my opinion, save the pumpkins for jack'o'lanterns.

on another note after thinking about beer while watching the SWMBO make pumpkin pie. I realized how much of the pie flavor comes from milk. ive never made any kind of milk stout, but I wonder how some lactose could add to a pumpkin beer. so maybe next year I will be making a spiced butternut milk stout. Just a thought