I’m brewing my first pumpkin beer this weekend and have formulated my recipe. I’ve decided to use pure canned pumpkin rather than try to hunt down and puree my own. In researching mashing techniques, most recipes recommend a 90 minute mash. Most of those, however, are using their own sourced pumpkin. Is it necessary to mash for 90 minutes using canned pumpkins or will a typical 60 minute mash suffice? Also is it recommended to do a protein rest using canned pumpkin or is it unnecessary?
I’ve done a few pumpkin beers, it’s always been a 60 minute mash. One thing I’ve learned is to put the pumpkin in the top of the mash, and slowly stir into the top half of your grain bed. I had a seriously stuck sparge the one time I stirred it all together. I fly sparge.
The recipe I use calls for two 20 oz cans of pumpkin. I also used .5lb of rice hulls to help with lautering. As mentioned in a previous post, 30 min protein rest and a 60 min saccrification rest.
Thanks for the suggestions. 30 min protein and 60 sacc it shall be. Anyone seen any significant difference between a 60 and 90 minute boil? Here is my actual recipe as it stands now. It’s for my brother who wanted a pumpkin ale, not a stout or a porter and between 7-8 abv. It’s basically an imperialesque amber with pumpkin.
Fermentables Efficiency: 60.0 % Batch size: 5.5 gal
Hop Amount Time Use Form AA
Magnum (US) 1.0 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 13.0%
Yeasts
Name Lab/Product Average Attenuation
Safale S-04 Fermentis S-04 70.0%
Extras
Name Amount Time Use
Yeast Nutrient (Wyeast) 1.0 tsp 10.0 min Boil
Whirlfloc Tablet 1.0 each 10.0 min Boil
Pumpkin Pie Spice 0.75 tbs 0.0 min Boil
Pumpkin Pie Spice 0.25 tbs 0.0 min Primary
Mash steps
Step Heat Source Target Temp Time
Protein Rest Direct Heat 125.00 °F 30 min
Sacc Rest Direct Heat 154.00 60 min
Predicted Stats
do you really only get 1 ppg from pumpkin? I would expect a yield similar to other starchy adjuncts, more like 40. which would bump your OG another ~25 points or more.
I hadn’t thought to consider brewtoads accuracy. Anyone have an idea on the gravity points that 4 pounds of pumpkin would yield?
Yep, I did the same thing. Surprisingly, it seems pumpkins aren’t particularly starchy. I guess I’ll leave the DME in to boost the ABV. My cooler size + jetburner boil-off rate has trouble making a full 5 gallon batch post 90 minute boil of a beer above 7.5, it needs the extra DME boost.
I think the water content and they are more fibrous than starchy. They aren’t all starch like potatoes. Think about how stringy they are compared to how solid a potato is. That’s fiber.
Since you are using 12 lb of six row, I would boil for 90 min. If IIRC, 6 row usually has more of the DMS precursor SMM. A 90 minute boil would drive off more and lower the risk of developing DMS in the finished beer.
That actually makes a lot of sense. dry polenta is ~41 ppg but that’s pure starch (more or less) with no water. if you dehydrated an lb of pumkin puree you would end up with what? about 4 ounces or less? so the dry ppg of pumpkin would be in the ballpark of 32 ppg.
Since you are using 12 lb of six row, I would boil for 90 min. If IIRC, 6 row usually has more of the DMS precursor SMM. A 90 minute boil would drive off more and lower the risk of developing DMS in the finished beer.
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Good point, the only true lager I ever brewed used 6-row and it was a creamed corn disaster.
I didn’t actually consider that. I merely observed a number of pumpkin beer recipes using 6-Row (Charlie Papazian and Ray Spangler), so I just mimic’ed the same.
Yeah, I think those recipes are either leftovers or misunderstanding about the diastatic power of 2 row. Although it wasn’t always true, these days 2 row has pretty much the same diastatic power as 6 row. At least enough that you don’t need to worry about using 6 row to get adjunct conversion.
Most of what’s below is just me thinking out loud. But thinking about beer is a worthwhile pleasure, so here goes:
I’ve been thinking about brewing a pumpkin beer and going over what seems to me to be conflicting information in my head.
Above, it is suggested to include a 30 minute protein rest when including the pumpkin in the mash. But in Palmer’s book, he says that doing a protein rest with malts that are already well modified can rob the beer of body and render it thin (1st paragraph, http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14-4.html). So, I’m picturing doing a sort of split mash, with the pumpkin and a few pounds of the malt for 30 minutes at 125F followed by 60 minutes at 154F, mashing the rest of the grains for 60 min. at 154F in parallel, and then combining the runoffs.
From what I’ve read, though, it’s clear that thin body isn’t really vexing anyone, either because the protein rest isn’t really that harmful, or the pumpkin puts back in some of the body, or some other reason I haven’t thought of. Equally clear to me is that this scheme is likely to triple the amount of work for zero or nearly-zero benefit. It would be a fun experiment, but never having done it the conventional way, I’d have no basis for comparison and wouldn’t know whether I had learned anything.
But it also made me wonder whether there are other scenarios where a mash is split up somehow where there really would be a reason to do so. I know some people cold steep dark grains (and others argue that if the pH is correct it’s unnecessary), which is a similar idea.
there is a cereal mash. I recently did this for the first time on a CAP. about 1 lb of pils malt was milled and mixed with ~3 lbs of polenta in water. I brought it up to mash temp (~154) and held there for ~20 minutes. the idea being to reduce the viscosity of the whole mass before bringing it up to a boil to gelatenize the starches and adding the whole mass back into the main mash.
At that point the ‘mash’ portion of the exercise is intended to break down proteins and some soluble starches from the maize so that it’s easier to boil and gelatenize the starches with the boil portion.