"Today is the Greatest (Day I've Ever Known)"

No, I'm not contemplating suicide. But this beer is loosely named after the '90s Chicago grunge band The Smashing Pumpkins, and their song "Today" always springs to mind when I think of Billy Corgan's greatest art performance ever. I would like to brew a pumpkin beer every fall from fresh baking pumpkins, but last autumn I was writing my thesis and not brewing, so I was unable to brew my 2013 pumpkin beer. I did buy two baking pumpkins at the end of September, roasted them, and froze 3 lbs. of flesh for my later use. This sat in my freezer since mid-October and I finally got to brew my pumpkin beer. 2012 saw a pumpkin porter, and this year I planned to mimic Dogfish Head's Punkin, starting with my Brown Jewel's Ale from last year and morphing it into a pumpkin brown ale using how DFH labels Punkin: Brown ale brewed with pumpkin and brown sugar. From there came this brew.

First runnings (left bottom), straining out second runnings (top right), and pumpkin (bottom right).

Hoppity hops!

The mash was the mash, what more can I say about it that I haven't already said elsewhere? The one new thing this time was taking a hydrometer reading after mixing the two runnings before setting them to boil so I could calculate the mash efficiency. Using this calculator from the helpful Brewer's Friend website, one can input their grain bill, the size of the pre-boil wort, and receive the conversion and extraction efficiency of their mash. For the homebrewer this may only be a fine detail that helps the obsessive engineering type better understand their brewing, but it is satisfying to see that you've hit 80+% brewhouse efficiency, which is pretty good from what I've read on the matter. 

Hydrometer sample for mash efficiency calculation.

Also, I mashed with 1 lb of my roasted pumpkin. I put it in a muslin sock and tied that closed so pumpkin wouldn't get everywhere and to make disposing it easier.  The pumpkin mass was a bit cold when I dropped it in so I had to add more heat before putting the stock pot in the 170°F oven for the mash. Since my conversion was fairly efficient I suspect I didn't do too bad with the mash. However, the colder temperatures near the muslin-enclosed pumpkin may have produced more fermentable sugars from that grain, while the warmer grain may have produced more unfermentable sugars. From this brief idea I might have a nicely crisp but full-bodied beer on my hands. I'll find out when I taste it this weekend.

Heat breaking boiling wort.

In addition to putting pumpkin in the mash to extract sugars from it, I also used a pound of roasted pumpkin in the boil, adding it halfway through, and removed it after cooling the wort to pitch the yeast. I didn't want to have to strain it out and have it become a blockage in the strainer during wort transfer so I put it in a muslin sock tied closed to keep the subsequent mess minimal. Because the pumpkin was a tight mass in the sock I made an attempt to get as much of the boiling wort into it, as shown in the below photo of me poking it with my stirring spoon. Adhering to the strict DFH guideline of "brown ale brewed with pumpkin and brown sugar," I added 1 cup of brown sugar at the end of the boil and dissolved it into the wort.

1 lb roasted pumpkin in a muslin sock in the boil.

Brown sugar at the end of the boil.

The yeast was hydrated as usual and when the wort was cooled to pitching temperature in went the wort through a strainer into the carboy followed by the yeast. I completely forgot to take a hydrometer sample before pouring all the wort into the fermenter so I have no idea what the ABV is for this batch, but I did take a sample at bottling and know that wherever it started, it ended low, so I could have a good beer on my hands.

Hydrated yeast ready to pitch.

The start of active fermentation; 5-gal carboy in broom closet.

After pitching the yeast the carboy went into the broom closet as I have no dark place large enough for the 5-gal vessel I borrowed from a friend for this batch that wasn't a closet. The picture above shows how much of the roughly 2 gal of wort filled the carboy. There is plenty of headroom in the larger borrowed carboy as there is in my 3-gal carboy, and this presented a bit of an issue. When I bottled it was very difficult to start the syphon to transfer the beer to the bottling bucket. I realized that the larger carboy needed a taller racking cane, which I purchased for this one-time use and will give to the 5-gal carboy's owner when I return it to him. This taller racking cane needs a taller level of beer to push it up and out, and I found that 2 gal of beer in a 5-gal carboy is not tall enough to start a proper syphon. But once started, the syphon went no problem. How did I start it? The old fashioned way: with my mouth. Some of you reading this might think that I am taking a risk and introducing unwanted bugs into my beer by using the oral suck syphon technique, but I've learned to not worry about my beer after fermentation ends because it's alcoholic and acidic, and that's an environment unfriendly to any random bug. The oral suck method started the syphon perfectly and I pulled all of the beer into the bottling bucket. I got a bit ahead of myself here discussing bottling before its time, so let's now discuss the final pumpkin addition.

Preparing to sanitize 1 lb pumpkin for carboy addition.

I wanted as much pumpkin in this beer as possible, and decided to use all 3 lbs of roasted pumpkin I had been saving since October: 1 lb in the mash, 1 lb in the boil, and finally 1 lb in the fermenter before bottling. I used 1.5 lbs of pumpkin in the porter I brewed in 2012, so naturally I wanted at least twice the pumpkin in this beer, and I didn't want to have some random small amount of pumpkin leftover after this brewing. The pumpkin in the mash was to extract sugar, the pumpkin in the boil was to extract essence and flavor, and the pumpkin in the fermenter was to extract flavor and aroma. This was all well and good, but getting the third muslin sock of pumpkin through the narrow neck of the carboy was quite difficult. I first boiled a few cups of water and then dropped the muslin encased pumpkin, tied with a length of string, into the water for a few minutes to sanitize the cloth, string, and pumpkin. I removed the sanitized muslin encased pumpkin from the boiling water, cooled it down to 70ish °F, and inserted into the carboy.  I assumed that since the sock and pumpkin are malleable I could squeeze it into a tube shape and simply push it into the carboy, but this was not the case and I had to push it through with two fingers, getting as much through the neck with each finger thrust until the entire mass was in the fermenter, and I made a mess all over the exterior of the carboy and the countertop. But the pumpkin was in the beer! The length of string used to close the muslin sock was also used keep pumpkin from sinking to the bottom of the beer, which wasn't an issue as it floated, but to also remove it after bottling.

Soaked pumpkin removed for bottling syphoning.

So that the pumpkin-in-muslin didn't obstruct the syphoning of the beer into the bucket for bottling I used the string to suspend the mass above the beer, as pictured above. After bottling the beer and clamping on the caps I had to clean out the carboy, which meant removing the muslin sock of pumpkin. I used a scissors to cut into the side of the sock and as I pulled it out through the carboy neck the pumpkin was squeezed out into the trub and yeast cake at the bottom of the carboy and wasn't too difficult to clean out

I bottled about 1.3 gal of pumpkin brown ale into 12 12-oz. bottles and one bomber bottle. Why so little beer from a supposed 2-gal batch? I suspect the larger carboy and the use of pumpkin may be partly to blame. I didn't notice anything wrong in my pumpkin beer from 2012, so I most suspect that where the low height of beer made starting a syphon hard it also didn't compress the trub layer enough, allowing it to occupy a greater volume than it there was a taller liquid height above it. I don't think my water calculations are off since my first 2-gal batch, The Dude Abides, produced nearly 2 gal of final product. Following Occam, it must be the larger fermenter which allowed for the trub layer to take up a greater volume and rob me of precious beer. From now on I will only brew 2-gal batches in my 3-gal carboy, and am working on my water calculations to produce as close to 2 gal of final product from each batch.

Beer bottled for conditioning.

And now the recipe. I started with the Brown Jewels Ale recipe I made up in 2012, adjusted some ingredients, added pumpkin and brown sugar, and brewed what you see below.

Smashed Pumpkins Ale

Grain Bill:
3.5 lb Marris Otter Malt
0.5 lb Caramel/Crystal 60L Malt
0.4 lb Victory (Biscuit) Malt
0.2 lb Rye Malt
0.15 lb Chocolate Malt

0.12 lb flaked wheat

1.0 lb roasted pumpkin
Strike 7.3 qt H2O at 163°F.  Mash for 1 hour at 153°F.  Sparge with 6.6 qt H2O at 170°F.

60-min Boil:

0.3 oz Chinook hops @ 60 min

0.3 oz Chinook hops @ 30 min

1.0 lb roasted pumpkin @ 30 min

0.6 oz UK Fuggle hops at 15 min

1/2 tsp irish moss @ 15 min

0.55 oz US Golding hops @ 5 min

1 cup brown sugar @ flameout

Cool to 70°F in ice bath.  Hydrate and pitch 1 packet Safale-04 yeast dry. Sanitize and add 1.0 lb roasted pumpkin into fermented beer 1 week after brew day. Bottle with 1.3 oz priming sugar for 2.0 vol CO2.

And that's that. Looking back at this recipe I can see I might have not had enough sparge water and that likely added to the low final output. I'm currently looking into online mash and sparge water calculators and comparing them to my homebrewed calculator.  You can view a full gallery of photos here.

I tried the first bottle this past weekend while brewing all day Saturday. It's pretty good! I think another week of conditioning will mellow out a sharpness I detect in the flavor. This might also be the unknown alcohol content, and by the end of the first bottle I was sure that this batch came out decently alcoholic. But overall I like it! I may have another winner, and only time will tell.

Have you used frozen fruit/plant matter in your brewing, either prepared fresh and frozen or purchased frozen? How did it turn out?

Until next time friends, happy brewing!