Help with recipe - new to AG

[GoHawks]

Hey everyone this is my first attempt at a Pumpkin ale. I am also new to AG brewing.

5.5 gallon batch

Grain/additives:
7# Pale Malt, Maris Otter
1# caramel Crystal 20L
1# caramel Crystal 40L
1# Munich
1# wheat
Rice hulls
2# pumpkin (canned and roasted in oven added to mash)
1/2# brown sugar to boil
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice @15 min
1/2 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice @ 5 min

Hops:
I have 1 oz of fuggles and 1 oz of E Kent golding hops laying around... Any suggestions?

Mash w 15 qt water @ 165* with ending temp at 155*
Sparge w 22 qt water @ 175* ending at 165*
(Does that sound like too much volume?)

Yeast: Danstar nottingham yeast

Add 1-2 cinnamon sticks to 2ndary (maybe boil instead?)

bottle using brown sugar


This is my first attempt to create an all grain recipe on my own. Any advice would be great! Thanks in advance.

 

[emjay]

Everybody I'm aware of who makes a good pumpkin beer strongly recommends avoiding canned pumpkin... it's difficult enough to get even the smallest hint of a noticeable flavor contribution from pumpkin to begin with, causing many brewers to make these beers without any of the fruit at all and really just relying completely on pumpkin pie spice alone to give it a character that people will associate with pumpkin. So if you really want to try and get even a tiny bit of actual pumpkin character in there, it's extremely important to put in just a bit more effort and go the extra length by using fresh pie pumpkin instead.

If you're interested in doing it "the right way" (although whether it's "right" for YOU is entirely up to you), I'll gladly type out Jamil Z's process for using fresh pumpkin in beer (and perhaps somebody else's too, if you want). IIRC, it's not all that much more complicated than what you plan on doing with the canned stuff anyways.

 

[944play]

(Does that sound like too much volume?)

You'll find out on brewday. I usually prep about 8 gallons of liquor for a Corny keg (5 gallons finished beer) batch, but when batch sparging the actual sparge volume is equal to the target preboil volume minus first runnings volume. That is, after you run off, just look into your kettle and see how much more you need in it. The tun deadspace and grain absorption have been accounted for at that point.

Your recipe is quite complex with seven different fermentables. Nothing wrong with that per se, except that it makes it more difficult to determine what flavors in the final product come from what ingredient. I'm a huge proponent of SUPER-simple recipes to start with, from which you can figure out what changes to make for the next batch. I'd leave out the Munich, wheat, C20, and sugar, then taste the finished beer to reveal if it needed something that one of those ingredients imparts.

 

[GoHawks]

Thanks for the help so far everyone. Im going to do a little more research then head to the local homebrew supply store. Lookin to brew today.