First Brew Day (Pumpkin Ale)

So my plan is to have my first brew day (all grain) (if i'm going to do it might as well start with all grain!)

the goal is to do it on the 22nd of September!
it should be a 6hr brew day with the mash and all we'll see..
i'll be looking up and possibly tweaking a recipe here shortly,
and i need to get some odds and ends..

if anyone wants anymore info let me know..!!


3 options here...


Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: WY1450PC Denny's Favorite 50
Yeast Starter: yes
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.5
Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.012
IBU: 22 IBU
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 12 SRM
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 30
Tasting Notes: Subtle spice aroma expands to blend with pumpkin and malt notes on palate. Delicious!

Amount Item Type % or IBU 

8.00 lb Golden Promise (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 50.38 % 
3.625 lb Pumpkin* (2 x 29 oz. cans of Libby pure pumpkin) (3.0 SRM) Grain 22.86 % 
1.00 lb British Caramalt (34.0 SRM) Grain 6.30 % 
1.00 lb Toasted Malt** (27.0 SRM) Grain 6.30 % 
1.00 lb Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM) Grain 6.30 % 

1.00 lb Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 6.30 % 

0.25 lb Molasses (80.0 SRM) Sugar 1.57 % 

0.50 oz Magnum [13.40 %] (60 min) Hops 21.9 IBU

1 t. cinnamon (5 min)
1/2 t. allspice (5 min)
1/2 t. ground ginger (5 min)
1/4 t. nutmeg (5 min)
1/4 t. clove (5 min)

*Pumpkin baked uncovered for 1 hour at 350 degrees to caramelize some of the sugars and gelatinize starches
**Maris otter malt toasted for 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven

Mash at 152 degrees for 60 minutes. Pumpkin should be included in mash. Be sure to use rice hulls as the pumpkin will make for a slightly sticky sparge.

Boil for 60 minutes. I used magnum to bitter but you can use any clean bittering variety being sure to adjust amount to get 22 IBU. Add molasses with 10 minutes left in the boil. Add all spices with 5 minutes left in the boil.

I used Denny's favorite 50 yeast but us-05 or it's liquid equivalents could probably be substituted with no ill-effect since Denny's yeast is a seasonal strain and could be hard to find. You may want to mash at 154 if you use us-05 since it should be slightly more attenuative and Denny's seems to give a bit more mouthfeel that mashing higher if you use us-05 should emulate. Having said that, if you can source some Denny's, use it!


_____________________

Grains

9.5 lbs. American 2-row
2 lbs. Munich Malt
.5 lbs. Crystal 80L
.5 lbs. CaraPils/Dextrine Malt

Hops/Fruit/Spices and Schedule

3.63 lbs. Canned Pumpkin (2 big cans of 100% pure pumpkin) boiled 90 min.
.75 oz. Northern Brewer (Pellets, 9.0 %AA) boiled 60 min.
1 oz. East Kent Goldings (Pellets, 5.50 %AA) boiled 30 min.
2.5 Tsp Cinnamon, boiled for 10 min.
1.5 Tsp Nutmeg, boiled for 10 min.
1.5 Tsp Allspice, boiled for 10 min.

Yeast

Safale US-56 California Ale Yeast or Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Mash Schedule

** Note the 90 minute boil. Make sure you have enough pre boil wort during calculations.
Strike grains at 165 degrees.
Mash grains at 153 degrees for 60 minutes.
Sparge with 170 degree water.

Boil Instructions

Bring to boil and add hops per schedule.
At end of 90 minute boil cool wort quickly, when it reaches 80 degrees pitch yeast.

Measurements (Spice/Herb/Vegetable Ale)

Since the pumpkin ale falls into the Spiced Beer category it has no style guidelines for OG,FG,SRM or IBU.

Ferment Instructions

Primary ferment between 63 – 70 degrees for 1 week, then rack to secondary for 2-3 weeks.  The longer racking adds better overall mouthfeel.

Bottling Instructions

Prime with 3/4 cup corn sugar and bottle. Condition in bottle for at least two weeks.

Kegging Instructions

Fill keg, purge oxygen and set to force carbonate at 12 psi at 40 degrees for one week. Drop CO2 regulator to 4 psi before serving.

___________________

Ingredients: Fermentables

• 9 pounds American 2-row malt (90% of the grains)
• 0.5 pounds 40°L Crystal malt (5%)
• 0.5 pounds wheat malt (5%)
• 6-10 pounds roasted pumpkin
• 6 ounces molasses (about ½ cup) (optional)

Hops and Spices

• 1 ounce Mt. Hood (4.6% alpha acid) for 60 minutes (bittering)
• 0.5 ounces Mt. Hood for 15 minutes (aroma)
• 1 teaspoon Irish Moss for 15 minutes
• Pumpkin pie spices for 5 minutes/steeping

Yeast

• Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

Process

• Single infusion mash with a target of 152°F for 1 hour or until conversion
  • Mashing grains and pumpkin together
• Sparge and boil for 60 minutes, with 1 ounce of Mt. Hood hops the full duration for bittering
• After 45 minutes, add the remaining 0.5 ounces of hops for aroma, and the Irish Moss
• Add the spices when there are 5 minutes (or less) left
• Chill, transfer to your primary fermenter, aerate thoroughly and pitch yeast

Notes

Roasting the pumpkin. I used a baking pumpkin and a pie pumpkin that yielded about seven total pounds of pumpkin meat for the mash. To roast, I split the pumpkins in half, discarding the stems, and removed the seeds and strings (I kept the seeds and roasted them separately to snack on). Placing them face down on foil-lined baking sheet (sprayed with non-stick spray for good measure), they were roasted in a 325°F oven for about an hour and a half, or until nice and soft; they came out with nice caramelization on the edges as well. You can easily scoop the meat out of the shell and mash it up.

In my extract recipe, I spoke against using canned pumpkin for the mess you’d end up with; however, the treatment above leaves the pumpkin in a similar state and when doing a proper all-grain mash, you’ll have less messy results than you would for an extract-based recipe. This is because the alternative techniques you may employ to get the pumpkin in the beer for an extract recipe, I believe (and experienced), don’t leave you many options for filtering. In other words, for an all-grain approach, you could get away with canned pumpkin just fine.

Mashing. I’m using the batch sparge technique outlined in How to Brew, so my grain amounts are more that what I listed above due to the lower extract potential batch sparging yields: the adjusted numbers call for a total of 15 pounds of grain rather than the base recipe’s ten. This means I used 13.5 pounds of 2-row, 0.75 pounds of Crystal malt, and 0.75 pounds of wheat.

I heated the pumpkin up with the strike water so it wouldn’t affect the mash temperature (since you already need to account for the temperature of the grain when you mash in)—I found this to work really well and though my target mash temperature was 152°, I hit just above at 153°. This didn’t seem to effect the overall efficiency too much though—when I racked it to the secondary this weekend the gravity was 1.008.

With both the pumpkin and the half pound of malted wheat in the mash, I did encounter a bit of a stuck sparge—not enough to set me back significantly, but enough so that I think I would use a pound of rice hulls in the mash next time to help the filtering.

Miscellaneous notes. I only had three ounces of molasses instead of six on my brew day, so that’s what I went with. Molasses is of course completely optional; I rather like the subtle character it lends to the beer but you could omit it entirely or substitute with a variety of other sugars—some of the natural brown sugars like Demerara or Turbinado would work very well.

For my spice mixture I used 1½ teaspoons of cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon of ground ginger, and ¹/₈each teaspoons of nutmeg, cloves, and mace. (Allspice would work as well, as an addition or possibly substitute for the mace.) You could add vanilla also—my extract recipe calls for an optional half teaspoon but I didn’t use it this time.

If the spices are too subdued to your liking—especially after a vigorous primary fermentation that can effectively “scrub” them away—you might consider adding them to the secondary (and Ido recommend a secondary fermentation/rest). You could use the (powdered) mix similar to what I listed above, or you might even considering using some whole spices—cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, that sort of thing. Simply add these directly to the secondary.

Bottle with ¾ of a cup of corn sugar when ready. And enjoy!