Pumpkin Porter Question

[bfpierce]

I'm going to make my favorite porter this weekend, the Captured by Porches clone from BYO. I'd like to try experimenting more and thought of turning this into a pumpkin porter. My issue is I want both, I only want to mash once, and I only want 2.5 gal of regular porter and 2.5 gal of my pumpkin porter experiment in case it sucks and I have to toos the batch.

So I thought of splitting the batch after primary so that the pumpkin porter could secondary on pumpkin and the spices. I don't need conversion from the pumpkin so I figured I could get away with it not being in the mash.

Any thoughts? Will the pumpkin porter pick up enough spice and pumpkin flavor from sitting in the secondary? I could also bottle / keg with spice too to increase flavor.

 

[ColoHox]

According to the guys on the Brewing Network, you get zero pumpkin flavor out of pumpkin. If you toast it, you can get some caramel flavors, or vegetal. All of the "pumpkiness" you get comes from the spices, and it is extremely easy to over-spice your beers. It certainly wouldn't hurt anything to add some pumpkin in secondary, just don't expect much.

I tend to spice in secondary, after soaking the spices in bourbon. For a 5 gal batch I use:
0.5-1 tsp ceylon cinnamon
0.25 tsp ginger
0.125 tsp nutmeg
0.125 tsp clone

The various quantities can be adjusted based on your taste, with usually means less ginger and clove, as they can be overpowering.

Unless you have 2.5-3 gal carboys, I would be concerned about the amount of headspace with half-batch in a 5 gal fermenter.

Hope this helps, it's all pretty fresh, as I am planning my pumpkin stout for brewing next weekend.

 

[smokinghole]

I think the claim of no flavor from pumpkin is BS. There are people making pumpkin wine, and I would assume that it had no flavor they wouldn't bother. I made a stout and used 10lbs of puree in the mash. The pumpkin flavor is certainly there. I used very little spices so its not like what I am tasting is cinnamon, it tastes like pumpkin.

I advise whole cinnamon sticks at about 3 to a 5 gal batch for a low level cinnamon flavor 10 min left in the boil. You can go up from there. Plus whole sticks are easy to fish out. Cinnamon bark contains bitter alkaloids and they can easily be extracted if left in hot wort too long. In fact cinnamon bark and cassia(often labeled as cinnamon) are both used in producing cocktail bitters. Then the other spice I put in is nutmeg. I freshly shave it with a microplane and put it in a stainless tea ball. I used only half a whole nutmeg in my 9.5 gal end of boil volume. I do not know what the weight was but it wasn't much. The spicing is subtle enough its a compliment to the smooth roast from carafa III not a competing flavor. Less is more with spices plus you can always add more but you have to make more beer to decrease to spicing if its over the top.

 

[ColoHox]

I have an anecdote too. I made 2 batches, one with pumpkin in the mash and one without. The only difference was increased mouth-feel in the with-pumpkin batch.
Now I only add some pumpkin in the boil to smooth out the mouthfeel, and disregard having a thick mushy pumpkin mash.

Listen for yourself if you'd like: http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/916

 

[smokinghole]

I hear ya. My mash was about 18 lbs of grain and 10lbs of pumpkin puree. I went big and had no issues with a sticky mash, I just put it on top after the mash settles. So my mash was a very high proportion of pumpkin compared to some recipes. I had intended to use less bit on the fly I used all six cans that I purchased.

 

[bfpierce]

So I made the two beers today. Used 60 oz of pumpkin puree in the boil. Also probably way overspiced it based on what I'm reading ... for 2.5 - 3 gal pumpkin porter, used 2t of cinn, 1t ginger, 1 vanilla bean, 1/2t allspice, 1/2t nutmeg, and 1/2t cloves. Hopefully not too undrinkable but my favorite pumpkin beers have lots of pumpkin and spice. I guess this is why I split the batch so at least I'd be drinking something in 4 weeks.

 

[realtree2]

Just checked the gravity my own pumpkin porter and drank the sample. I used 3 15oz. cans in the boil and it has a very nice mouthfeel and not overly "pumpkiny". I will be adding 2 vanilla beans to the secondary and a teaspoon of spice. Also I'm priming with dark brown sugar. Good luck with yours, let us know how it works.

 

[Jonas217]

I cut a ten pound pumpkin into small cubes. I sprinkled a cup of brown sugar over the pumpkin and baked it for an hour at 350 degrees,
This really caramelized the pumpkin. I placed the pumpkin in grain bags and added it to a brown ale that was in a secondary. I used a bucket as a secondary because of the pumpkin. I kept the pumpkin in the secondary two weeks. There were no spices added to the beer. The pumpkin flavor was noticeable as well as the increase in mouth feel. I think the key to adding pumpkin flavor is to add a lot of brown sugar and bake it until it is really caramelized.

 

[TechMiller]

These sound awesome, I am also about to try a 2.5 gallon split of my brown ale, it's in primary now, going to split into 2, 3gall carboys and pumpkin and spice half.

 

[te-wa]

'tis the season, heh.
i just racked a nice porter to secondary, and in two weeks or three, i'll keg it. at that time, i have a cup of vodka poured over a t. of allspice and 1.5 t. each nutmeg and cinnamon. it's a homemade extract and i can add a little or all of it, depending. no real pumpkin used. just spices.
the vodka / extract is pretty much what Jasper's (boomchugalug) does recommend in all of their "spiced" kits. it worked out well when i bottled a spicy winter warmer, but this time i'll use a coffee filter to strain out any sediment. plus, im kegging. thoughts?

 

[ColoHox]

thoughts?

Capitalization...;-)

Sounds pretty standard. Good thinking with the filters.

 

[te-wa]

I THOUGHT CAPILALIZATION WAS CONSIDERED BAD FORM?

lol... heh.

i was testing the coffee filter method on some similar sized non-soluble items and it is really slow. i'm now thinking of using a tea ball to filter out the "sand" -OR- just dump it in.. the keg exit tube is trimmed to be about 3/4" above the bottom where this "sand" would come to rest.. a question quickly, is it ok to just add the vanilla bean to the keg, and let it sit there (bottom of keg) until all the beer is consumed? for up to a month that is?

 

[ColoHox]

I THOUGHT CAPILALIZATION WAS CONSIDERED BAD FORM?

lol... heh.

i was testing the coffee filter method on some similar sized non-soluble items and it is really slow. i'm now thinking of using a tea ball to filter out the "sand" -OR- just dump it in.. the keg exit tube is trimmed to be about 3/4" above the bottom where this "sand" would come to rest.. a question quickly, is it ok to just add the vanilla bean to the keg, and let it sit there (bottom of keg) until all the beer is consumed? for up to a month that is?

Just dump em in. If you let your keg sit for a bit, you will pull off the settled sediment with the first few pints.

I've only used vanilla in secondary. I wouldn't leave it in a keg for that long. The bean in a muslin/hop bag tied with dental floss and floated in the keg would avoid getting the bean sucked up in the dip tube. Then you could pull it out when the flavor is right.