Pumpkin juice reduction for a Pumpkin Ale

[spinlock]

Last year after roasting pumpkin for a batch of ale I ended up with about 2 cups of run off in the roasting pans that I decided to boil down to a reduction. The end result had a sweet caramelized pumpkin flavor to it that was very tasty. Needless to say, I just threw this into the boil.

This year I plan to forgo the typical use of pumpkin in the mash and/or boil and run about 10lbs of oven roasted pumpkin through my juicer, reduce the juice by at least 50% on the stove, then strain, and use this in the last 10 min of the boil. I will be using standard pumpkin spices as well.

I found a recipe for a pumpkin liqueur that uses the same idea: http://chefmom.sheknows.com/recipes/pumpkin-liqueur

I have no idea on how this will affect the gravity or how fermentable it will be, but I imagine it will add a little haze.

Has any one ever tried this? Thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[bobbrews]

Eh, pumpkin is mostly water so if you evaporate that water by roasting it or reducing it, the flavor will concentrate either way. But if you went with the juice, then you wouldn't be getting much by the end of the reduction. You would also miss out on the caramelized/roasty goodness with this method. Pumpkin is also quite fibrous, so juicing it would yield a ton more puree than juice. Puree doesn't exactly reduce either.

 

[spinlock]

I'm going to do a test run on the reduction method as soon as pumpkins show up on the market and see what comes out on the other end so to speak. I do plan on roasting it before it hits the juicer.

 

[bobbrews]

The roasting process evaporates water, so afterward, you're left with mostly solid puree... very little liquid.

 

[spinlock]

The roasting process evaporates water, so afterward, you're left with mostly solid puree... very little liquid.

obbrews, I picked up a LARGE fairytale pumpkin and did the deed with 1/4 of it. You were completely right. It basically made pumpkin baby food. Quite a mess, but it did taste good!

Not discouraged I went ahead and tried a different approach. I took a remaining 1/4 of the pumpkin and juiced it raw with yielded 8 cups of juice. I ran the juice through a mesh strainer to remove any pulp that passed through the juicer and transferred to a pot. There was quite a bit white starch left over in the juicing vessel, which I rinsed out and threw into the pot as well.

I proceeded to slowly heat the pot on the stove over low heat with the intent to gelatinize the starch. I had to keep an eye on it and stir as the starches were constantly gelling on the bottom of the pot. Around 180f the entire mass started simmering and became very thick, mission accomplished.

Knowing that a pot full of orange pumpkin goo wasn't going to get me to where I wanted to be, pumpkin syrup, I knew I needed to convert the gelled starches into more simple sugars, so I transferred the liquid, now 5cups to my 4L Erlenmeyer flask and let it cool to to room temp. I went ahead and added 6 crushed beano tablets to the mess and let it run on my stirplate over night, with hopes that it would convert the starch.

The following morning, much to my delight, the gooey mess had become a water like sweet orange liquid. Conversion accomplished. I transferred it to 2qt container, trough a finer strainer, and let it sit 12 hours in the fridge. At that point it had steeled out into a clear orange liquid, and pumpkin solids. I proceeded to filter the it all out in an effort to remove the remaining solids. Remaining was about 4 cups of a mostly clear orange, sweet liquid, with a gravity of 1.051 and brix of 10.3!

I then reduced this syrup in a sauce pan to about 1/2 cup, at which point it had caramelized. The resulting caramel was very sweet and had a very strong roasted pumpkin flavor. Success! It is too thick for me to get any reading on it, but I would guess the ppg is about 30-35 on it.

I intend to do the process again on my remaining pumpkin and probably another in an attempt to gather 1-2lb for my next pumpkin ale, recipe TBD.

Hopefully this wright up will be of help to others.