Pumpkin ale, keep primary or go secondary?

[dcodd87]

My pumpkin ale is coming up in 2 weeks primary so I figure it's time to ask the question.

I plan on adding 45oz of pumpkin to the fermenter. Should I just add it to primary, or rack to secondary and then add?

I've already added about 50oz of pumpkin to the boil.

 

[Revvy]

I'd add it to the primary, then in a couple weeks, rack it to a secondary. If you added it in secondary, you'd find that you'd more than likely then need to rack it to a tertiray to let the pumpkin solids fall.

 

[dcodd87]

Never thought of doing that, maybe I'll add it tomorrow, then in about a week which will be the 3rd week, rack it in the secondary for about a week, giving it 3 weeks primary - 1 week secondary?

 

[Revvy]

The purpose of a secondary is to clear the beer. You don't arbitrarily decide how long you secondary it for....you secondary til it's clear, and then longer if you want the flavor to marry. But you don't really declare that you're planning to secondary it for a week, then just rack away because that's how long you planned it. You're really not in charge of this, the yeast is. So if you want it to clear, you at least wait til it's clear. Unless you have the means to cold crash it.....If you don't then you have to let nature take it's course.


And with pumpkin, it may be much longer.

 

[Transamguy77]

+1 to what Revvy said, I did a pumpkin last year and didn't secondary and wished I did, I did a long primary but I still ended up with pumpkin in the bottles.

Oh and remember that pumpkin absorbs a lot of beer, I started with 5.5 gallons and ended up with around 4 gallons.