Pumpkin ale

[Woolsocks]

Trying to work up a recipe for my first-ever (except a couple homebrews) fruit beer.

Idea is to put pumpkin in the mash tun. Questions I have for those who've done it:

How much pumpkin do I want for a subtle pumpkin flavor in a 15bbl batch?

How much will stick my lauter?

Do I need to mix the pumpkin with pectinase to help with clarity, stuck lauter, etc.?

Canned pumpkin, fresh, baked, boiled? I assume that some heat needs to be applied to the pumpkin somewhere to break it down a bit, and then it needs to go through a food processor?

How much sugar can I expect to extract per pound of pumpkin?


Thanks in advance --

[beertje46]

Trying to work up a recipe for my first-ever (except a couple homebrews) fruit beer.

Idea is to put pumpkin in the mash tun. Questions I have for those who've done it:

How much pumpkin do I want for a subtle pumpkin flavor in a 15bbl batch?

How much will stick my lauter?

Do I need to mix the pumpkin with pectinase to help with clarity, stuck lauter, etc.?

Canned pumpkin, fresh, baked, boiled? I assume that some heat needs to be applied to the pumpkin somewhere to break it down a bit, and then it needs to go through a food processor?

How much sugar can I expect to extract per pound of pumpkin?


Thanks in advance --

I wouldn't use any pumpkin meat at all. Use pumpkin pie spice with a light hand in the last 15 minutes of your boil. I've used pumpkin meat, deseeded and roasted until soft enough to scoop, in the mash. I find the initial earthy "squash" flavor turns to something funky fairly quickly.

I would make a big deal out of "I used 150 lbs. of oven roasted organic super pumpkins"

No one will know the difference.

My 2 cents...

Pumpkin Thread

[ECB]

I like the idea of just using the spices. I've always been scared to use actual pumpkin. Which spices and what ratio per barrel have you had success with?

Thanks,

With ther weather being so bad in the North East lately, it seeems that Thanksgiving will be in a few weeks!

Tom

[Jephro]

I have done it several ways, the most successful was using 2 cases of large cans of pumpkin (per 10 bbls) from our kitchen. I put it directly in the mash while mashing in, i did have an agitator on that MT, otherwise you may want to have some oompa loopa's handy to assist you mashing in. The mash did run slow sometimes, but if you start ever so slowly, run a hot sparge, and cut your bed frequently it's not too bad. I had one runoff take 8 hours, but i did 14 batches that year, and most only ran an extra 1-2 hours.

The spices were boiled into a tea and added to the BBT just before filtration. Filtration could be a bit difficult as well. All said, i hated making it and never drank it, but we sold that stuff hand over fist. Never tried it with just the spices, although it certainly would be much less of a headache.

...and man that mash was heavy

[Greenbrewmonkey]

Sorry Dave,

I think if you are going to call a beer a "Pumpkin something" it should have some pumpkin in it somewhere. I don't really like it when people call something a pumpkin beer when it is really a pumpkin pie spice flavored beer.

I use a little more than 0.5 lb / gal roasted pumpkin meat in the secondary. I usually like to do firkins this way. It does add quite a bit of sugars. Enough to blow the shive or keystone and shower your cask cellar with pumpkin if you're not careful.

Add some light cinnamon, allspice, ginger and maybe a bit of lactose, and you have the finest "pumpkin pie in a glass" money can buy. Even for folks who swear they don't like pumpkin beer.

You knew I'd have to chime in with "use the real stuff!", didn't you?

Cheers,
Ron
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales

[beertje46]

You knew I'd have to chime in with "use the real stuff!", didn't you?

Cheers,
Ron
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales

I sure did! I reread all of the posts from the linked thread and you had a load of info. there. And for those who wonder, I am all about the real stuff, except pumpkin. I have made several versions and IMHO squash doesn't have a place in beer. I'm sure there are some good pumpkin beers out there, I just haven't found one yet. {Insert pitch to Ron for free samples of his} I'm also sure there are a bunch that contain no pumpkin only spice. None of us got into this biz to be safe or sane brewers did we.

Alright now ladies and gents, flame on!

[Woolsocks]

Spice extract

No one has mentioned this yet, so looking for thoughts:

What about steeping the spices in vodka to make an extract and then adding it, by drops, into a pint of the beer to determine the ideal ratio, and then adding that amount to the bright tank and filtering on top of it to mix? Seems like you'd get the most spice flavor for the least amount of spice?

[Bill Madden]

Punkin Beer

I am a firm believer in putting pumpkin in pumpkin beer. I thought about just using the spices years ago when I heard another brewer say that was all he did. Then I got to thinking of when that first customer asked "so how much pumpkin in your pumpkin beer?" I could not tell a bold faced lie....

What I did in my 15 bbl days was use 100 pounds of pumpkin and not your average ornamental type. I used a heirloom varietal called Cinderella that I bought from a local farmer. These are cooking pumpkins and they are quite stunning in coloring, brite orange, red and green. They would go on display around the brewhouse to let customers know that the Punkinator was coming. Took the pumpkins, cored them removing the seeds (which I would brine and roast cause the staff and I loved them) then roast the pumpkin meat at 375 F until soft and the sugary juices appeared. The sugar contribution was minimal to the starting gravity of the brew so I just did a 13.5 plato beer and did not concern myself with it. I did all the pumpkin prep the day before the brew and would put the cooked meat in lexans and then lay them in the mashtun and underlet with hot liquor until just covering the lexans. I did this so as not to add cold pumpkin to the mash (it was an infusion system w/o steam jackets). I would mash in and add the mush like pumpkin to the bed slowly, no mixing. Run off seemed like usual, no problem.

For spices try Penzeys. Really nice and fresh blend. I cannot remember the amount used but I did hydrate before adding so it did not clump up and remain as big balls in the trub cone. I never filtered this beer and cannot imagine how bad that might be. We sold a heck of alot of this beer between three restaurants, about 45-60 bbls if I recall correctly.

Cheers,

Bill Madden
Vintage 50 Restaurant and Brew Lounge
Leesburg, Virginia

[Jephro]

Re: Spice Extracts

As I mentioned we made a tea that was added to the BBT, it would seem to me that cinnamon and nutmeg are water soluble and boiling would do the trick. On the other hand alcohol can extract oils that hot water will not (i.e. dry hoping).

I can say the beer i just recently made using Kaffir Lime, i liked the flavor profile i got from adding the leaves in secondary more than i did from the ones i added to boil. Maybe the same would hold true with the spices.

[Zucker Bee]

What I did in my 15 bbl days was use 100 pounds of pumpkin and not your average ornamental type ....then roast the pumpkin meat at 375 F until soft and the sugary juices appeared.

I dont see how I would cook 100lbs of pumpkin that way. Would I achieve the same results by boiling them?

Zb

[nwcw2001]

I dont see how I would cook 100lbs of pumpkin that way. Would I achieve the same results by boiling them?

Zb

No you wouldn't. Boiling wont give you the camelization of the sugars to give you that "pumpkin pie" taste. Boiling will convert the starches to sugars but you wont get that great flavor you are looking for. Granted by just boiling, you will get an amazing color, but it will be a flat flavor.

John

[Zucker Bee]

and that would be by roasting slices or roasting the whole pumpkin and skin it aftarward?

Zb

[Bill Madden]

I cored the pumpkin to remove the seeds mostly since I like eating them so much. They would probably also make for a real mess. I have only worked in brewpubs my entire career such that access to large convection ovens was always possible. Roasting the pumpkins with skin on and using them in the mash tun was no problem in my single infusion mash/lauter tun. Now I am working on a temperature program system with a separate mash mixer and lauter tun. With all the mash pumping that goes on now (including spent grain removal from the tun) I am thinking a little differently. My farmer has not enough pumpkins ready yet so I have some time to mull it over.......

[Woolsocks]

How many pumpkins do you need? How much of the weight of the pumpkin is the guts and skin?

[Fred Scheer]

Pumpkin Ale

I did a Pumpkin Ale both ways, i.e. Pumpkin meat and pumkin spiece.
The customers liked the "spiced" one over the "whole Pumkin meat";
what a better judge than the customer who enjoys the nectar.
I have to agree with David Pierce, the squash flavors turned funky, mostly descriped (again, by customers....) as papery, musty............

Fred