405 replies to this topic

[DoctorShumway]

Pumpkin lager is frementing real slowly. This one is going to end up being a long wait I think. Pretty much last night there was only a slightly growing puddle of yeast doing it's thing on top of the brew. No bubbling in the airlock yet. They say lager yeast may take up to 50 days to ferement, so we'll see. Small design flaw in the beer fridge: the shelf in the door just barely hits the carboy. I'm going to have to take a sawzall to it. In the meantime, I have to lean a two-wheeler against the door to keep it shut and around 45-50 degrees.

I guess I really didn't say exactly what I did beyond "OMG I MADE PUMPKIN BEERZ!". I baked a 5 lb. halved and seeded pumpkin in the oven at 450 for 45 minutes. I then took the skin off and mashed it up. About 15 minutes after removing and sparging the grain bag (probably around 200 degrees or so) I added in the pumpkin and then the malt extract. The recipe said to add the pumpkin when you add the grains, but I thought that was a little much. Dropped in the Willamette hops for bittering and then let it roll. Instead of finishing hops, I added in a tsp. each of cinnamon, nutmeg and orange peel. As I said, the thing smelled delicious. I only hope that smell keeps as long as it's probably going to have to sit in the fridge.

[DoctorShumway]

My pumpkin lager update:

Still fermenting.

Fin.

[Shervz0r]

Any news on the pumpkin lager? A friend of a friend just did a pumpkin brew by adding pumpkin to a kit...he says it's delicious, but then again he looks like a billy goat.

[mothrock]

evil will always win because fruit beers are dumb.

[DoctorShumway]

Any news on the pumpkin lager? A friend of a friend just did a pumpkin brew by adding pumpkin to a kit...he says it's delicious, but then again he looks like a billy goat.

Still fermenting in the beer fridge. Slow, slow going. The pumpkin flavor is probably going to be completely washed out by the time those lager yeasts finish doing their work. I yell at them daily for being lazy and inefficient, but nothing seems to speed them up. Perhaps a cold war era Russian uniform will help. Barring that, I will begin pumping in happy music like Apples in Stereo. Perhaps the cause for their lollygagging is that they are miserable.

[mothrock]

thas wha I'm talkin' bout.

[mig50]

tuesday i'm buying the ingredients for this and then brewing it.

yeah!

[Shervz0r]

So I'm putting together a list of what equipment I want to upgrade in the Derka Brewing Co.

• 3 or 4 buckets. 2 or 3 to store crushed malts (i'm buying a 55 lbs bag of north american pale malt and maybe another base malt), and 1 to modify by piercing a hole in the bottom, fitting with a false mesh-like bottom, and passing a flow-through tube in the hole. This'll be for my mash.
• A large (i forget how many quarts at the moment) brewpot with a spout in it. This runs rather expensive, so maybe I'll forgo it.
• I'm gonna make a wort-chiller from copper tubing. Form a coil and make sure both open ends are at one end, attach garden hose tubes at both ends and pass cold-water through it to chill the wort. Very efficacious, Aaron made one and it cooled the wort to his 62F temp in ~5-10 minutes.
• 5 gallon kegs! I am really, really, really, really sick of bottles. REALLY sick of bottles. Once I get my bottles back from Matsu I won't have any room to store them. These are rather pricey though, if memory serves.

Damn, I wish I had mo dough

[DoctorShumway]

Pumpkin Lager.....F.


Basically the pumpkin didn't hold up well at all. I think given the length of time lager yeast needs, this was kind of inevitable. The pumpkin came out of the carboy in thick grey lumps and the whole damn thing had a sick smell of of rot. Awesome time bro. For reals.

[DoctorShumway]

Yeah man, not good at all. I should have known when the homebrew store employee was skeptical I could pull it off. Selah I suppose. Now I must remedy my problem of an empty carboy.

[mig50]

oh my god

i just got home with all of my ingredients for my pumpkin ale, but now i'm scared after what you said, shums.

however, the pumpkin won't be going in my bucket or carboy. i'm putting it in a grain bag, leaving it in the boil, then getting rid of it.

the guy at the homebrew shop insisted that i really didn't even need the pumpkin. he said it'll just add color. i say its a fucking pumpkin ale, so goddamn it, there will be pumpkin in it.