Pumpkin Ale !

This stuff is bubbling away, and the pumpkin crud is tumbling all around! I let it sit for a day, and by then there was so much crud in the blow out tube I actually had to remove the tube to clean out the hops and allow the foam to escape. Here's my recipe, which is a modification to several recipes I found floating around on the internet:



7 lbs. United Canadian Amber liquid malt extract
8 lbs. pumpkin
1 lb. Vienna malt 4L
1/2 lb. crystal malt 40L
1/2 lb. wheat malt
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 ounce Mt. Hood hops (boiling)
1 ounce Hallertauer hops (finishing)
1 teaspoon irish moss
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 ounce freshly grated ginger
Wyeast 1056, American Ale

I smacked the yeast and let sit. I removed the guts from one pumpkin, cut it into large chunks, and baked in a large pan with a small amount of water for 1 hour at 350 degrees. I added the pumpkin to a 3 gallon kettle filled with water and steeped at 170 degrees for 1 hour. In between here I didn't feel that the pumpkin was roasted thoroughly from the previous step so I picked the pieces out and mashed them, then added back to the kettle. After the hour was up, I removed the pumpkin pieces and added the steeping grains (Vienna, crystal and wheat). I steeped at 170 degrees for 30 minutes, then removed the grain with a small strainer. The reason I steeped the grain separate from the pumpkin was there was not enough room there was so much pumpkin! I added the sugars, extract, boiling hops and enough water to completely fill the kettle, and brought to a boil. I boiled for one hour. After 45 minutes of boiling I added the finishing hops and irish moss. At the end of the boil I added the pumpkin spices. Then I funneled the wort to a carboy without sparging and topped off the concoction with enough water to make 5 gallons. After it cooled down to 80 degrees I pitched the yeast, attached to a blow out tube and put it in my closet.

Thoughts: I would add less finishing hops next time, like half as much. Also, I would cook the pumpkin longer, until it was really soft. I would also mash the pumpkin after it was fully cooked, before adding to the kettle. I am not confident that the pumpkin flavor fully transferred to the wort and probably should have cooked the pumpkin longer.

Hobo Delicious

That's the name of my cider. It was the cheapest brew I've made so far. I bought 5 - 128 ounce jugs of pasteurized apple cider NOT from concentrate. I added 1/4 pound of brown sugar, 1/4 pound of honey, and 2 cups of corn sugar (it was laying around and I didn't have enough brown sugar). I threw in a couple clove stems, few too many dashes of cinnamon, and pitched Wyeast 3184 sweet mead yeast. After 3 days I felt like I wanted something darker and stronger, so I heated 2 more pounds of dark brown sugar, and a pound of honey in water, funneled into another carboy, and racked the cider on top of it. I had too much for the 5 gallon carboy! For some dumb reason I decided to bottle one bottle and I left it out on the deck in case it exploded. Little did I know that this cider was not even close to done and when I opened the bottle the next day it erupted like a volcano all over the deck. It's been three weeks now and the fermentation is just beginning to slow down. The sweet mead yeast seems to work a lot slower than ale yeast. It hasn't been racked since I added the brown sugar and there's barely any yeast at the bottom of the carboy. Probably because the apple cider was so filtered, being bought from the store.

Peaches 'N Wheat are coming your way !

Peaches N Wheat

My latest brew-ha is a modification to a recipe from the Wine and Hop Shop, on Monroe Street, Madison WI, called Winsome Wheat. I wanted to make a fruit ale this time around. I thought about raspberry ale, but I can't drink very much tart beer. Then I remembered a really great tasting apricot ale from Pyramid Breweries Inc. called Apricot Weizen. It was very refreshing and even my wife who doesn't like beer enjoyed it. I went with Peaches because right now they're really ripe and in season. The Winsome Wheat kit was a bit darker than my desire, so I replaced 1.5 pounds of the dark liquid malt extract with 0.25 pound dry wheat malt extract and 1 pound of honey. This probably won't lighten the beer as much as I want, but it's all I had on hand at the time. I cut the amount of hops in half to reduce the bitterness. Just for kits I also doubled the amount of crystal malt. I used 5.5 pounds of freshly pureéd peaches. I picked Bavarian Wheat yeast from Wyeast Laboratories.

Cooking the wort went very smoothly. I steeped the peaches for 15 minutes at around 170 degrees Farenheit. It smelled like Peach Cobbler. Yummy! I didn't sparge this time because I wanted the peach pureé to sit in the fermenter during the first stage. Also, I am using an open blow tube during the first stage fermentation because wheat beer is usually too explosive for an airlock during this time (I learned that with my Trippin Trippel). This will also give the added benefit of removing hops residue through the blow tube, which I could not sparge because of the peach pureé.



Hydrometer reading: 1.033 (1.030 + .003 correction) ~4.55 % alcohol potential

Ale For All

Just bottled my new brew. I'm calling it Luke's Trippin' Trippel. It's a Belgian Style Ale. It already tastes good, and it hasn't even been conditioned! Very strong too.

Hydrometer: 1.0195 (1.018 + 0.0015 correction) ~2.8

My initial hydrometer reading must have been wrong, because that gives me a 2.45 % alcohol level, and that stuff is MUCH stronger.

Oh Well.