Autumn Seasonal Beer Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale (AG and Extract versions)

[Yuri_Rage]

Recipes have been edited to reflect improvements over the past few batches. See the first two posts in this thread.

 

[dibby33]

This is going to be my next brew. SWMBO loves pumpkin. This one could be the one to win her over?

 

[brrman]

I have been drooling over this recipe all year but I wanted to wait 'til I was ready for AG - now its time to brew it!

Do you think a Whitbread WY1099 would be a decent yeast for this? Or a WY1056? Thats all I have around currently.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Whitbread would be just fine.

 

[jacksonbrown]

Yum!!! I just bottled this brew, and it is delic!! I cannot wait for it to be ready. Kudos!

 

[McNasty]

I'm brewing a batch of this tomorrow. I can't wait to try it out! I love a good pumpkin ale.

 

[mkw87]

I just brewed this today, it tasted awesome, but man it was a LOT of work.

I used a fresh pumpkin, cut it open, cleaned it, and then boiled it for 20 minutes. After boiling I cut the skin off the pieces and then baked them for about 45 minutes at 350 ºF. I then steeped the following grains for about 25-30 minutes at 155 ºF:

1 lb Caramunich
1 lb Crystal 20L
1 lb Crystal 40L
1 lb Flaked Wheat

After steeping I sparged, then brought to a boil and added:

5 lbs Extra Light DME
0.75 oz Goldings Hops
The baked "meat" from a soccer ball sized pumpkin.

I boiled for 45 minutes, then added about 1 oz Ginger root that SWMBO sliced up for me. After 55 minutes I added 3/4 tsp Nutmeg, 1.5 tsp of Cinnamon, 1 tsp Vanilla, and 3/4 tsp Irish Moss. Everything had gone great so far, but I knew i was in for trouble because I had tried to put the pumpkin in my grain bag, and it clogged it up, so I dumped the pumpkin straight into the wort.

Even after tediously straining out about 8 quarts of pumpkin, I had some more trouble. When I added the wort to the carboy, I tried taking an OG reading and it came out very wrong (1.030). I knew my efficiency couldn't be that far off and that's when I looked at the carboy and saw some strange layering going on:



So apparently, even after my tedious straining, a LOT of pumpkin made it into the wort. I know that my OG was not accurate b/c I could easily tell the top layer that I had pulled from with a turkey baster was significantly lighter than others. I'll probably have to use the OG that beersmith gave me and see what my FG is. I'm excited for this to finish, should be very tasty.

 

[mstev50]

Will definitely be brewing this next weekend!

 

[brrman]

I have the pumpkin in the oven right now. Can't wait to start mashing this sucker!

 

[killerhertz]

I'm confused. Are we supposed to just strain the wort before transferring to primary as usual? We don't need to use a grain bag do we? I imagine the pumpkin flesh is very chunky and will be a huge PITA for a fine mesh strainer...

I plan on brewing it this weekend.

 

[6fiddyv]

Brewed this back in Dec 07. Tried a bottle last week. In the beginning it was not that good, but letting it mature has done wonders. Crystal clear orange color and really tastes good.

 

[McNasty]

I brewed 10 gallons of the AG yesterday. Everything went well. The only thing is I skipped the ginger root, because I couldn't find any. I can always make a tea and add it later. Or should I just skip it? I guess I'm asking if the ginger makes a noticeable difference or is it safe to skip. All the other spices smelled really good when I put them in the boil. I hoping this will be my best beer yet.

 

[brrman]

I skipped the ginger root, but added 1/2 tsp ground ginger instead

 

[BearsWickedBrew]

I'd like to make my next batch a Pumpkin Ale...& I'm interested in this recipe. Here's the thing...I'd like to do it without having any leftover ingredients (SWMBO is already not happy w/ beer equipment and bottles taking up room in our already crammed apartment)...so that means buying 2 3lb bags of DME and using a full oz of hops instead of .75. So compared to the original recipe...I'm under -.25 DME & +.25oz hops. Anything I could do (aside from buying more DME/using less hopes) to make it less bitter?...Could I just add sugar to the boil?

 

[mkw87]

I'd like to make my next batch a Pumpkin Ale...& I'm interested in this recipe. Here's the thing...I'd like to do it without having any leftover ingredients (SWMBO is already not happy w/ beer equipment and bottles taking up room in our already crammed apartment)...so that means buying 2 3lb bags of DME and using a full oz of hops instead of .75. So compared to the original recipe...I'm under -.25 DME & +.25oz hops. Anything I could do (aside from buying more DME/using less hopes) to make it less bitter?...Could I just add sugar to the boil?

It might be good with a bit of brown sugar added to it, I would consider that (or 1/2 to 1 cup of honey, or both )

 

[MgMt_Home_Brew]

I have been thinking about doing this recipe and I printed one out a little while ago but it is different then the recipe in this thread but with the same name.... The older one that I have I am not sure where I got it from (it was somewhere on this site) but it has a lot more spices, more and more hops. Was this an old version that has now been modified to to this current recipe?

The old recipe that I had has
1oz Cascade (60)
1oz Cascade (20)
1oz fuggles (15)
1tsp allspice
cloves
only 30oz pumpkin

and some other spices too. Does this sound like an old recipe???? Oh and I am going with extract.

 

[mkw87]

I transferred to secondary today, it tasted a LOT like water. I think I'm gonna get some pumpkin spice and maybe some brown sugar to add to it while in secondary. Any suggestions on improving flavor?

 

[beerthirty]

Bears, I just took mine from the primary after 5 weeks. I dont think an extra .25 oz of hops would hurt it. I could smell more pumpkin than I could taste and it had very little spice flavor. I think this is gonna make a nice light drinking beer.
mkw, This is a light tasting beer, if you add brown sugar, it will either kick off fermentation again or make it sweet. Be careful adding spices It could easily mask the more subtle flavors that will become more apparent as it ages.

 

[McNasty]

I transferred to secondary today, it tasted a LOT like water. I think I'm gonna get some pumpkin spice and maybe some brown sugar to add to it while in secondary. Any suggestions on improving flavor?

I brewed a hefe that tasted a LOT like water once too. I tried it while taking a gravity reading. But it ended up fine with tons of flavor when it was finished. I'm still a beginner but I bet yours will be fine.

 

[mkw87]

I brewed a hefe that tasted a LOT like water once too. I tried it while taking a gravity reading. But it ended up fine with tons of flavor when it was finished. I'm still a beginner but I bet yours will be fine.

While I imagine you are right, I think I'm going to at last add some pumpkin spice and some allspice (I didn't have any at the time of brewing) to the secondary to improve the flavor. I won't overdue it, let it sit for a week and then sample it, if it needs more I'll add a little more at bottling.

Thanks for the vote of confidence though

 

[Putzenbrau]

Did you use a yeast starter for the fermentis, or just hydrate the yeast and throw it in?

 

[mosquitocontrol]

I made this yesterday as my 2nd batch ever. My OG reading was higher than the recipe at 1.063. Any ideas on why is was so high? Is it because I was lazy and just threw the hydrometer in the primary? I'm expecting it won't effect the final product.

 

[BeerPressure]

After tasting dogfish head punkin ale i want to brew a pumpkin beer. Contemplating making this one.

edit: do you add the hops at 60 minutes or what?

 

[beerthirty]

thunderstruck is a lightly hopped beer so it doesn't overpower the pumpkin. there are only bittering hops in it and not much of those. yes 1 hour hop boil.
I only use starters if I'm using liquid yeast or making a big beer. most dry has a higher cell count than liquid. Just follow the instructions on the packet. Some say rehydrate and some say pitch it dry. pitching dry is less of a hassle and less chance of infection while rehydrating.

 

[kaplanfx]

Has anyone done this as a partial mash, with the grains and pumpkin mashed prior to the extract boil? I'm thinking this will help with the pumpkin extraction and the issue of straining the wort.

-kap

 

[Beards Brews]

Ok, I didn't get to brew this as soon as I would like, but it should be ready by Thanksgiving - a little pumpkin ale w/ pumpkin pie sounds mighty fine.

I built a mash tun out of a 48qt cooler I had in order to accommodate the pumpkin and now wonder why I never used this cooler before. I put a pound of rice hulls in here and used a false bottom out of my 5gal round cooler mlt. No stuck or slow sparges at all. I actually was able to bump up my brew house efficiency to 78% today. It is tucked away nicely in the fermenter and bubbling away.

Only bad part to my brew day was the gravity check I performed with a glass carboy full of 5gal of star san. Instant explosion on contact and a slightly cut foot (flip flops aren't exactly the safest brewing footwear). On the positive side, I now can justify buying some better bottles.

 

[kaplanfx]

Brewing this today extract version.

-kap

 

[FishinDave07]

Reviving this one...On page 3 there is a conversion for 5 gallons. I plugged the 15 gal recipe into BeerSmith and came out with these numbers:

Brew Type: All Grain
OG: 1.053
IBU: 14
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Volume: 7.67 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 % (I get around 68%)

7.70 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US
1.83 lb Crystal Malt 60L
0.92 lb Biscuit Malt
0.37 lb Wheat, Flaked
1.10 lb Rice Hulls
60.00 oz Pumpkin (Canned) (Mash 60.0 min) Misc
0.82 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (60 min)
0.55 tsp Clove (Boil 5.0 min) Misc
0.55 tsp Nutmeg (Boil 5.0 min) Misc
1.10 tsp Allspice (Boil 5.0 min) Misc
1.10 tsp Cinnamon (Ground) (Boil 5.0 min) Misc
1.00 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60.0 min) Misc
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) Yeast-Ale

Anybody else get different #'s when converting down to 5 gallons?

 

[Putzenbrau]

Just brewed up a batch yesterday. I decided to make a 6 gallon batch, so just used 2/5 of all the ingredients in the 15 gallon recipe (except I used 90oz of pumpkin - I like pumpkin). Everything went swimmingly, except I forgot the wheat flakes. Oh well - I hope it doesn't effect the taste to much. I used 1.5# of rice hulls, and the sparge took less than an hour. I got 10 gallons of wort which boiled down to 7 - hooray, extra beer! the O.G. was ~1.054.



Moral of the story: using a metric crap-ton of rice hulls, this will sparge through even an s-braid just fine.

 

[Full Throttle]

I am brewing this right now, just did the first sparge and slow but no real problems, Igloo ice cube with manifold I made. I added 1 LB rice hulls, doing 5 gallon batch. 60 OZ. pumpkin. I may add some orange zest to the boil too just wating to see how it smells. So far so good
Mike