Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Porter

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metalsniper

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So I'm new to the forums and only have a few brews under my belt but I wanted to take on a recipe designed from a mixture of different recipes but I need some input. I'm going for a seasonal (ready for Christmas) pumpkin beer with a bit of mellowness. Not too spicy but with good pumpkin flavor and good body.
I'm using BeerSmith2 but don't know if there is a way to copy my recipe from there, so here it goes.

Mash 60 min @ 156
30 oz Can Pumpkin
30 oz can sweet potato or yam
8lbs American two-row pale malt
6lbs Munich malt - 10L
1lbs Chocolate Malt

Boil 75 min
.5oz sterling (75min)
1tsp cinnamon stick (75min)
.5tsp nutmeg (75min)
.5tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (75min)

.5oz sterling (30min)

.5tsp irish moss (10min)

.5cup Cocoa Powder (5min)
1tsp cinnamon stick (5min)
1tsp pumpkin pie spice (5min)
.1tsp nutmeg (5min)

S-04 yeast for 5 days in primary, 10 days in secondary then bottle conditioning
 
In selecting your canned ingredients, I recommend picking something that has no preservatives. Shell out the extra money and get the all natural stuff if you have to.

Also, my understanding is that boiling the spices severely takes away from their flavor. I think that you can leave out the initial addition of spices and add the spices in the last five minutes of your boil.

I would also leave the wort in primary for twice as long, give the yeast time to clean things up.
 
Thanks, sounds like solid advice and easy to change things. On what you said though, would you just remove all the initial spice or add it to the last five min spices?
I suppose in terms of taste I'll have to wait until I make it to see how it actually turns out.
 
I would completely remove the initial spice. I know that I don't like many pumpkin ales because the spice overwhelms everything else, and you said you wanted a mellow spiciness. Plus, you can always taste it when transferring to secondary and add more spice then if you think it needs it.
 
That is going to be very chocolatey with the 1lbs. of chocolate malt and the cocoa powder. The chocolate malt will also impart a coffee/roasty flavor as well. If you're going for chocolate flavor alone, stick with the cocoa powder. Up it to 8oz. and reduce the choco malt to .5lbs or less. The cocoa powder will impart some bitterness, so plan for that with your hopping schedule.

Also, go easy with spices. They can be overwhelming if overdone. I made a spiced porter once that took about a year before it was drinkable. Definitely don't put them in early. Go for late addition (less than 10mins) or add them to secondary. You will lose some aroma from the spices during primary fermentation as the yeast are going nuts and that Co2 is pushing the aroma out of your airlock.
 
After the input I've eliminated the pre boil spice addition and cut the chocolate malt down to 12 oz and increased the cocoa powder to 4oz. I did it that way because I would prefer the roasted flavor to over bittering.

I've lengthened my primary to two weeks and I'll play secondary by ear, depending on if I deem it necessary to add more spice.

by calculations I'm sitting at an aprox og of 1.065 with 18 IBUs and a color of 21.9 SRM

any idea at what temperatures I should be fermenting or mashing this?
 
I think those are good improvements. I would try to mash around 152 and ferment around 70.

When I made my batch of pumpkin beer I put the pumpkin in the oven for about half an hour to caramelize the pumpkin, then mashed the pumpkin with the rest of my grains. In retrospect, I would wait until the pumpkin cooled off before mashing it; I put my pumpkin in the mash tun hot, and it brought the mash temp way up.

You might want to go ahead and secondary just to give the beer a chance to clear a bit more. Usually there is a LOT of sediment from a pumpkin beer.
 
I agree with the 152 temp. I would also agree with the secondary. That cocoa powder turns to a thick sludge in the bottom of your fermenter and the pumpkin is just going to add to that.
 
Alright, so cook the pumpkin first. I was planning on a secondary as well, I actually planned the batch as a 6.5 gallon with the intention of losing about 1.5 gallons to the trub/sludge.

Thanks for the advice everyone. This weekend hopefully.
 
Alright, brewed on Monday and it is fermenting. I ended up using 8oz of cocoa nibs instead of the chocolate powder but I don't know what that might change. By Tuesday morning the ferment had gotten too hot so I hope that can level out over a long ferment. It spiked up to about 78F 12hrs after pitching at which point I moved it to my garage and chilled it with some ice around the bucket.

This ones going to get a long primary then a decent secondary to help it clear up.

OG: 1.064
 
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