Pumpkin Portery Goodness

[brokenanchor]

Well tis the season for pumpkin beers so I'm brewing my second one of the year Thursday. Since I'd like to be able to drink it by Thanksgiving I'm not going as big as I did with the Rich's Pumpkin Ale. This one's supposed to be a porter, but I'm waffling on the grain bill and spices. I'm also not sure whether to add the pumpkin to the mash or the boil. I'd really like to add it to the mash, but I've only got 1/2 lb of rice hulls, and hearing about other people's slow sparge times I'm not 100% I want to commit to that long of a brew day. I'm also not sure I'll be able to get my hands on the carafa by Thursday, so it may lack that note of complexity, but it'll still be beer. Here's the recipe as it stands now (and yes the formatting sucks beersmith is miles away right now).


Grain:
45% pale
30% munich
10% 60L crystal
5% Chocolate malt
2.5% black patent
2.5% carafa
5% Oatmeal

Hops:
Bitter to 15 IBU's with Willamette

58 oz of roasted pumpkin mash

Spice Tea:
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Ginger

Mash at 152 for 60 minutes using 1.25 qt/lb

Ferment at 68* with US-04

Spice Tea in Secondary (if needed):
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Ginger

Anyone else have any pumpkin porter recipes or suggestions?

 

[WorryWort]

I haven't drank my pumpkin ale yet so I'll reserve judgement on the recipe, but I will say that 1/2 lb of rice hulls for a 5 gallon batch was all I needed at 2lbs of pumpkin. It had no problem whatsoever. I could have done without the rice hulls entirely.

Are you using fresh or canned pumpkin? I used canned.

Also is an oz of spices more than 1/2 tsp? If so, your proportions seem great, but I think that's going to be a lot of spice overall. (How big is the batch?) Maybe I'm wrong though. Either way, I'd add about 1/2 teh spices at the end of the boil, and then the other 1/2 once you've tasted a sample in the primary. If you over do it it won't be ready in time, that's all.

 

[FishinDave07]

If you add the pumpkin to the mash its going to be a SLOW sparge. Rice hulls help, but its still going to be slow.

If you add pumpkin to the boil, you're going to have A LOT of trub. You can assume to lose 2-3 gallons of wort so brew a larger batch to compensate.

You could also omit the pumpkin and make for a less stressful brew day. I will be brewing soon 10 gallons of pumpkin ale; 5 with pumpkin, 5 without just to see the contribution (or lack of) from the pumpkin.

Call me a skeptic, but i'm thinking pumpkin doesn't play a considerable role in beer other than a novelty.

 

[brokenanchor]

Are you using fresh or canned pumpkin? I used canned.

Also is an oz of spices more than 1/2 tsp? If so, your proportions seem great, but I think that's going to be a lot of spice overall. (How big is the batch?) Maybe I'm wrong though. Either way, I'd add about 1/2 teh spices at the end of the boil, and then the other 1/2 once you've tasted a sample in the primary. If you over do it it won't be ready in time, that's all.

Homer Simpson moment right there...Doh...yes I'll be using teaspoons not ounces...that would probably end up to be a pretty horrid concoction, like when I saw my roommate had an addition of 1 lb of coriander instead of 1 oz. I'll be using libby's canned pumpkin (the pumpkin not the pie filling for all you worryworts). Good idea on halving the spice additions I'll put that into action.

Having done multiple pumpkin brews and trying some with canned pumpkin and some with pumpkin spice I can taste a huge difference between beers with real pumpkin and one's that have been "pumpkin spiced". That might not be the case for everyone, but I really want to use actual pumpkin in this brew. When I've boiled the pumpkin I've always put it in a 5 gallon strainer bag. While some of it obviously seeps through I tend to lose less than a gallon per batch to trub.

I'm assuming that once you add the pumpkin to the mash it all gets mixed together. So, I guess my second question is: Are there any techniques while adding the pumpkin to the mash that reduces the stickiness of the sparge.

 

[FishinDave07]

stir a lot and use rice hulls..thats all i can think of

 

[dontman]

My sparge (I do double batch) with 1/2 lb of rice hulls went pretty much exactly like normal except for a couple minor slowdowns during the runnings. Then it would pop clear and just move right along again.

I'm betting this has to do with two things: 1. I use a manifold, not a braid (I bet this makes the vast majority of the difference) and B. I stir up and reset the grain and pumpkin bed after the mash and after the first sparge.

I was surprised how quickly this grain bed set and cleared during vorlaufing. Maybe within the first 16 to 24 oz. Usually I vorlauf 3 times that amount.

I am in secondary with mine right now and it was crystal clear during the rack at 2 weeks. Plus, I lost no more than the usual amount of trub during racking. Maybe I'll use rice hulls more often.

 

[brokenanchor]

How many pounds of pumpkin did you use? I use a manifold in a Coleman Xtreme, and if the major case of slow/stuck sparges are with braids, then I'm charging forward on the pumpkin mash idea.

 

[dontman]

I used 58 oz of Libby's Pumpkin (2 cans)

 

[brokenanchor]

I'll scale the recipe accordingly. I'm assuming that the flavor lost from the extra can I was going to use in a boil will be gained by the pumpkin being mashed. Game on.

 

[WorryWort]

I used 2lbs of pumpkin in a 6 gallon batch and noticed absolutely no change in the run-off speed. It was not a goopy mess. 1/2 lb of rice hulls too.

 

[dontman]

Oh yeah, it was the best smelling mash I ever had. And this was before any spice addition. Don't know how that smell could translate to nothing carrying over into the final product, know what I mean? At least some of that delicious goodness has got to translate to mouthfeel and flavor in the beer. Right?

 

[brokenanchor]

I'm hoping to do exactly that. It smells hella good in the oven when it's roasting, and even better in the boil...so I'm hoping it smells better two fold in the mash