What did you brew today?

Stuck another Wherry on at about 9:30pm, one of the benefits of a kit is it's done in 20 minutes! I've got a dozen bottles of this left from my first ever homebrew in July which I'm saving to drink with the family at Christmas, this will just be coming good in January and beyond.

Today I did my own version of a Pumpkin Beer.

I finely sliced up a 2kg pumpkin (10p ex-Halloween from Lidl), added four teaspoons of All Spice and boiled it for an hour in about 8 litres of water before hitting it with a handheld blender.

I then went out and bought a Wilco Cerveza Kit while the pumpkin mash cooled down. I got the Cerveza Kit on the basis that it was cheap (£11) and being very lightly coloured should showcase the colour of the pumpkin.

When I got back I strained the juice out of the pumpkin mash through a sieve and then two layers of cotton dishcloth to take out much of the solids and minimise any trub.

I then mixed the malt extract from the Wilco Kit with the pumpkin mash, added 400g of brewing sugar, gave it a good stir, checked the OG (1.034) and pitched the yeast.

With a lot of luck I may have a +/-3%ABV Pumpkin Beer ready for Christmas! :thumb:

BTW

Wringing out and emptying the dishcloths of pumpkin mash is remarkably similar to emptying the old stye "liners" that we used to get our babies to wear. The colour and texture was spot-on but thankfully the smell was a lot better. :lol: :lol:

Incidentally, I do know what I am talking about. Even back in those dim and distant times before women invented "New Men" I changed a nappy to prove that I could do it ... :thumb:

... and then let my wife change the next two thousand after I'd shown her how easy it was! :whistle: :whistle:

Interesting.....I did wonder about pumpkin beer as I have a load hiding in my shed that I grew on the allotment. I thought the pumpkin may have added more sugars as there must be sugars of some sort in their flesh.. What does the pumpkin give to the beer? What batch size and yeast please?

Cheers

Clint
I've just had a Google for pumpkin beer recipes...regarding the starches in the pumpkin a lot say to roast the pumpkin flesh with brown sugar if you like to caramelise as this will give you extra fermentables. Also to use an English ale yeast. Syrup and honey also are traditional pumpkin ale ingredients as used by the early US settlers as grain for brewing was scarce. I might try a wheat beer for this as I think the light colour and natural clove esters will work well with the style.

Clint said:

...... What does the pumpkin give to the beer? What batch size and yeast please?

.......... I might try a wheat beer for this as I think the light colour and natural clove esters will work well with the style.

Click to expand...

I did a 23 litre batch and used the yeast provided with the Wilco Cerveza kit.

From this particular site I discovered that there are Summer and Winter pumpkins and that they have different properties.

http://www.botanical-online.com/english/foodpropertiesofpumpkin.htm

In both instances the carbohydrates (which are probably in the form of fermentable and non-fermentable sugars) made up a large percentage (4% to 8%) of the whole pumpkin.

When calculating my own brew I took a median 6% and adjusted the Brewing Sugar added to the brew to be 120 grams less than I would normally add for an ABV of +/-3%.

From looking at the wort I think that the other thing that the pumpkin will bring to the brew is the distinctive yellow/orange colour. I've used some of my 10p pumpkins to make pumpkin soup and it's as yellow as if I had added Turmeric!

Although I added Allspice to the boil, I didn't smell much of it when I was wringing out the pumpkin mush so that's something that I may adjust with a tincture of vodka and all-spice or cloves before carbonating.

At the moment, the brew is sat on the workbench in the garage wrapped up in an old lifejacket and two duvet covers with a temperature controlled immersion heater keeping a constant 20 degree temperature. As a result, I daren't even take a peak at the brew to see what's happening to the colour!

I read so many recipes that my head was spinning by the time I got out to the garage. As a result I opted for the simplest recipe I could think of!

I thoroughly recommend that you give it a try. :thumb: :thumb:

Thanks! I'm bottling a stout tomorrow so will have a spare fv. Some kit recipes recommend a dark or amber style so might use a coopers english bitter...think I'm going to sugar and spice the pumpkin before roasting then boil with 500g of malt and maybe a hop steep....I'm going to leave the pumpkin mush in. This sounds interesting and looks like a busy day coming up! Yeah the colour is great...I've had lots of pumpkin soup...turmeric. ...there's an idea!

Cheers

Clint

Dutto said:

I read so many recipes that my head was spinning by the time I got out to the garage. As a result I opted for the simplest recipe I could think of!

I thoroughly recommend that you give it a try. :thumb: :thumb:

Click to expand...

That's what I'm going through now. Trying to make a porter but with orange peel and cocoa. I know that's more of a stout area but I got a bunch of stouts conditioning but I want a lighter type but with that robust flavor. Right now the gris looks wild (at least wild for the very limited number of grains you can get in Japan).
Question for some hop geeks. I can only get access to small range of hops. But I have these:
Tettnang, Saaz, Cascade ( I know, not for porter!), Fuggles, ... Nugget which I use for bittering and some Hallertauer. I'm thinking just using saaz and Tettnang. Any input?

I know this is "what you brewed today" but this is what I'm brewing first thing tomorrow.

All in plenty of time for Xmas and the stout/porter home brew comp month [emoji106]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

JapanBrew said:

That's what I'm going through now. Trying to make a porter but with orange peel and cocoa. I know that's more of a stout area but I got a bunch of stouts conditioning but I want a lighter type but with that robust flavor. Right now the gris looks wild (at least wild for the very limited number of grains you can get in Japan).
Question for some hop geeks. I can only get access to small range of hops. But I have these:
Tettnang, Saaz, Cascade ( I know, not for porter!), Fuggles, ... Nugget which I use for bittering and some Hallertauer. I'm thinking just using saaz and Tettnang. Any input?

Click to expand...

I bottled a porter last week which used cascade (20 mins) and tettnang (5 mins) with bravo for bittering, it seems to be turning out really well.

Maybe I stand corrected.

JapanBrew said:

Maybe I stand corrected.

Click to expand...

It's a clone of a commercial beer (deschutes black butte porter) and the original is meant to be very good although I've never tried it myself.

Just getting this on....

Cheers

Clint

good one Clint ! we only had a small pumpkin this year so all I could muster out of it with some apples and cinnamon etc... was 3ltrs of wine! before anything goes into the compost I'll always look and see if I can ferment it first :lol:

This one was quite big....I got 2.5kg roasting in the oven covered in muscovado sugar for my brew and got 6 x 1 kg bags for making soup..which are in the freezer.

Cheers

Clint

Kit yeast or a wilko....?

All done....
Boiled 2 x cinnamon sticks 1 x star anise 8 cloves and some nutmeg. Added the roast pumpkin puree in a filter bag added 500g of brewing sugar and boiled, squashing the bag along the way. Added the coopers to the fv and strained the liquor out of my pot into the fv, added the malt.The temp was high at 32°c so nipped out for some ice and filled the sink and put the fv in the sink to chill. It soon dropped to 20°c ,volume was 20l and og was 1050 so topped up to 21 l and got 1043 so pitched the kit yeast. It smells like pumpkin "dessert" if you get my meaning...! Cinnamon comes through but not overpowering in the taste. Actually it tastes good...a bit like cake!
It's now beer o'clock!

Cheers

Clint

Still using our 10p Lidl pumpkins (only 1½ left) but now reduced to eating them! :whistle:

Tonight's pumpkin was sliced, peeled, roasted with a tad of syrup drizzled on top and then eaten with an omelette. Superb! :thumb:

Okay, it's not brewing but that's 'cos I don't know what the pumpkin beer will taste like! I'm going to burst into tears at "wasting" 10p pumpkins if it turns out to be a great brew!

Good job clint. Sounds darn good!

Today is brew day. Fv is free! What to brew? Cast your votes!

Today is brew day!fv is free. What to brew? Cast your votes!

Coopers brew A with 1.5kg of malt and dry hop with at least 100g of simcoe, citra, cascade or centennial. ..or a mixture!

Cheers

Clint