Friday, September 30, 2011

Pumpkin Beer

Never made a Pumpkin beer before.  Well I tried once and failed, due to a stuck sparge, even with rice hulls that mash was a failure.  I used 4 lbs of roasted pumpkin in that batch.  That was 3 years ago almost, so I am attempting again but this time with less pumpkin and less alcohol.  I wanted a smallish beer for easy drinking and hopefully full of flavor.  I rested on ~30 oz of pumpkin in the mash.  Trust me that isn't a lot of pumpkin when looking at the mash.  I bought 3 12oz cans of Organic Pumpkin from Whole Foods and just decided to use all 3, which put me at ~36 oz of puree to use.  I just dumped all of it in the mash as I was doughing in.  On top of that I went with a small amount of dark brown sugar (8oz) also Organic, and also from Whole Foods.  I did not want a ton of spice flavor in the beer so I am only adding in 1.25oz of home made pumpkin pie spice.  That includes Cinnamon, Ginger, Allspice and Nutmeg (Organic, Whole Foods).  I added this to a White Labs vial and topped off the vial with Bacardi Dark Rum.  I will add the spice/rum mixture in secondary and let it sit for a week or so.  I hope to have this on tap around Halloween.

Pumpkin Ale

Malt:
9.5 lbs: Rahr 2-Row
12 oz: Crystal 120L
8 oz: Dark Brown Sugar
1.75 oz: Chocolate Malt
1.75 oz: Roasted Barley
30 oz: Pumpkin Puree (in mash)

Hops:
1 oz: Hallertauer 4.8AA @ 60min

Misc:
1 Whirlfloc Tablet


Target OG: 1.046
Target FG:  1.011
IBU: ~18

Actual OG: 1.056
Actual FG: 1.010
Apparent Attenuation: 81.5%

ABV: 6.1%
ABW: 4.8%

Yeast:
White Labs California Ale (WLP001)

Update 10.4.2011: Added in Pumpkin Spice mixture in secondary.
Update 10.10.2011: Started to chill beer in prep to keg.
Update 10.15.2011: Racked beer into keg, set 11psi @ 43degF for around 2.1 co2 level.  Beer came out much darker than I thought, still should be good to drink, just looks more like a brown ale than a nice amber/orange color that I was hoping for.

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