Master of Pumpkins

Being busy crafting meads, apfelwein, and a backyard hop beer this past fall, I didn't make time to brew a pumpkin beer. This is a shame since it's one of my favorite recipes. I use canned pumpkin though, so in theory I could make it whenever I want; maybe this one will rear its jack-o'-lanterned head again sooner than you think.

Pumpkin beers can be pretty bad when done wrong, especially when brewers are too heavy handed with the spices. I wanted to make something like Dogfish Head's Punkin', which has a perfect balance of spice and pumpkin flavor, in my opinion. Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing shares a recipe for Punkin' Porter, which I used to help me design my Master of Pumpkins recipe. I wanted Master of Pumpkins to have a deep amber, slightly sanguine hue rather than a the darkness of porter, so I replaced the black patent malt with Cara Red. I also made some tweaks to the hop profile, and I added sweet orange peel as a foil to the pie spices. I used Sam's method of mashing the pumpkin with 6 row barley to convert the starches and it worked very well. The beer was not hazy at all.

Master of Pumpkins

Style: Pumpkin Ale

Water:
1 gallon of water heated to 155 F in a separate kettle for mashing the pumpkin with the 6 row barley and specialty grains

3 gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F (hold at this temp while mashing the pumpkin and barley; use a  half gallon of this water to sparge the mash)

Grains:

1 ½ lbs. 6 row

1 lb. of Cara Red

Pumpkin:
30 oz. of plain canned pumpkin (no spices already added)

Extract:

7 lbs. light DME

Hops:

1 oz. Northern Brewer pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Fuggles pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Fuggles pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

Spices:
1 tsp. cinnamon @ 5 min.
1 tsp. nutmeg @ 5 min.
1 tsp. allspice @ 5 min.
¼ oz. sweet orange peel @ 5 min.

Yeast:

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Recipe:

Start by heating a gallon of water and the canned pumpkin up to 155 F in a separate pot of adequate volume (not the brew kettle). Stir in the 6 row barley and the specialty grains. The temperature will slightly drop after the grains are added; if necessary, add heat until the mash reaches 155 F. Cover and hold at this temperature for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. This mash time allows the enzymes in the 6 row barley to convert the starches in the pumpkin into fermentable sugars. Don't use distilled water for this step; spring or tap water is preferred when mashing because the mineral content helps the enzymes do their thing. While this mash is taking place, heat 3 gallons of water up to 155 F in the brew kettle and hold at this temperature.

When the mash time is up, reserve a half gallon of the 155 F water in the brew kettle to use for sparging. I carefully transfer it to a 64 oz. Pyrex measuring cup. I then use an 8 oz. Pyrex measuring cup to dole out doses of sparge water.

Place a large strainer over the brew kettle and pour half of the mash into it. Allow the wort to drain through; pour four cups of the sparge water over the mash and let this drain into the brew kettle. Gently stir with a large spoon to help the sparge water drain through, if necessary. Discard the spent grains and pumpkin solids from the strainer; repeat this process with the second half of the mash.

After this, it's extract brewing business as usual. Follow the ingredients schedule listed above and enjoy the aroma of the hops and spices.

By the way, I want to show off my new favorite novelty tasting glass. It's a snifter from the 2014 Great Pumpkin Beer Festival hosted by Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle. I have not yet had the pleasure of attending the event, but it looks like a lot of fun. I was lucky enough to score this one off of their website. Worship the gourd!

Quail Ale

I haven’t done this one in a few years. It’s simple, but good. I don’t know how I came by the name. Maybe I was thinking of California Quail because it has a base of West Coast hops, or maybe I just like alliteration.

I’ve made a few tweaks to this one, but it should be quite similar to the original product. I should brew it again soon; I remember getting a few compliments for it.

Quail Ale (2015)

Style: Amber Ale

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. 80 L American Crystal Malt

Extract:

6 lbs. extra light DME

Hops:

1 oz. Columbus pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Willamette pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Willamette pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

1 oz. Amarillo pellets (dry hop)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:

OG should be about 1.052, FG should be about 1.012, and ABV should be about 5.3%.

I’m hoping this one turns out a little like Three Floyds Brian Boru, with a bready base and a pineappley hop profile. The Amarillo dry hop is a tweak to the original recipe in an attempt to replicate some qualities of that great dead beer. Why did they stop making it! It was my favorite one!

Townsend Hall Mead

Michael and I are back at it again, this time brewing the nectar of the Norse gods: mead. I guess it's technically a metheglin, which is an Old English term for a mead with spices added; we're adding orange peel and ginger. Apparently metheglin shares its etymology with medicine, and we'll certainly be chugging down this cough syrup as soon as it's ready.

For nostalgic reasons, I want to name this brew Townsend Hall. It is the name of a U of I dorm where Michael and I both lived, though half a decade apart. It was also the site of my first introduction to homebrewing. My friends on our floor brewed a mead in their closet using honey, orange peels, and crystallized ginger. It was a pretty rough set up; basically 2 liter soda jugs with balloons on top in lieu of airlocks. I'm pretty sure that they used bread yeast instead of brewer's yeast too! I remember helping vent the balloons and marveling at the fermentation in action.

At the end of the school year I tried some of the concoction. I remember expecting it to taste like prison toilet wine, and wondering if it would make me go blind like bad prohibition era bathtub gin. When I tried it I was amazed. It tasted like a nice dry white wine; no funk, no skunk. If someone served it to me in a restaurant, I would never guess that a bunch of college dudes whipped it up in their closet.

After this, I started reading Charlie Papazian's books. Several years later when I had the nerve to spend the money and go all in on what I have to call a lifestyle rather than a hobby, I bought my first 5 gallon setup and a pale ale kit. The rest has been history. I want to thank my college floor mates for sparking my interest in this. To Mike, Alex, Will, Jon, and Todd: Skal!

Michael and I brewed our mead a few days ago. What you see above is the mead must: 13 pounds of local wildflower honey aerated with five gallons of spring water. We are going to add sweet orange peel and ginger root to recreate the taste of the original Townsend Hall mead. We're also going to add golden raisins to the primary to hopefully add a Moscato-like finish, although I'm guessing the final product will be pretty dry. The recipe is as follows.

Townsend Hall Mead

Style: orange ginger metheglin

Water:

5 gallons of spring water

Honey:

13 lbs. of Sunny Hill Honey from May’s Honey Farms in Harvard, IL

Fruit:

1 lb. of golden raisins

Spices:
½ oz. of sweet orange peel
¼ oz. of dried ginger root

Yeast:

2 packets of Lalvin 71B-1122 (dry wine yeast)

Other Ingredients:

3 tsp. of Wyeast Wine Nutrient Blend (1 tsp. stirred into the must on days one, three, and five).

1 ½ tsp. of LD Carlson Yeast Energizer (½ tsp. stirred into the must on days one, three, and five).

Recipe:

First, rehydrate the two packets of yeast in four ounces of warm water (104 to 109 F). I recommend sanitizing a small pot and heating up some of the spring water to the desired temperature, and then pouring it into a small sanitized measuring cup. Add the contents of the yeast packets into the warm water and let stand for 15 minutes without stirring.

Add 2 ½ gallons of the spring water to a sanitized 5 gallon bucket. Add half of the of honey as well. It helps if you immerse the containers in hot water first; it really cuts down the viscosity of the honey when you pour it. Thoroughly incorporate the honey and vigorously aerate the mixture with a sanitized plastic paddle. This will take about ten minutes. You now have mead must. Pour the well-aerated must through a sanitized funnel into a sanitized 6.5 gallon carboy.

Add 2 ½ more gallons of spring water to the bucket and mix in the rest of the honey. Aerate once again and add then pour through the funnel into the carboy. Add the first dose of yeast nutrient and energizer to the must and stir thoroughly to fully incorporate. The total volume of the must in the carboy will be over six gallons, so be very careful when moving it. I use a brew hauler (shown above), and it's made transporting large quantities of wort and must much easier and safer.  

Take an original gravity reading; it should be around 1.079-1.080. Stir the yeast well with a sanitized spoon and pour it into the must. Gently stir the carboy again. Attach your airlock and put in a safe place to ferment.

Add the quantities of nutrient and energizer specified above during the first five days of fermentation. Stir the must to incorporate these additives and to degas it.

On day seven, boil the golden raisins, the orange peel, and the ginger in a quart of spring water for five minutes. Cool to room temperature in an ice bath. Gently muddle the mixture with a sanitized potato masher to break open the raisins, then pour it into the carboy and stir.

After one month in the primary, rack the mead into two sanitized 3 gallon secondary fermenters. Fill the carboys up as high as they can go without interfering with the stopper, ideally to the base of the neck. Avoid transferring the yeast lees, the raisins, and the spices. Put in a tight fitting stopper and airlock. Make sure it has a good seal, as the mead will stay in the secondary for at least 3 months. Also make sure to check your airlock and keep it filled with sanitizer or vodka to the appropriate level.

Bottle when the mead has reached its final gravity and cleared (approximately 3 months). I would estimate that this one will be pretty dry, so the FG will likely be around 1.000.

Good things are worth waiting for! I'll probably taste some of this shortly after bottling to bring in the spring, but most of it is going to get saved for the years to come. Time should add some pleasant complexity.

Nostalgia is bittersweet like this mead. I know that future sips of it will transport me back to the hall where its ancestor brew was conceived. Not your traditional mead hall, but a mead hall nonetheless.

BILCO: A Brother-in-Law Collaboration

My brother-in-law Michael has become quite the craft beer aficionado over the past few years. He has also become a skilled hop cultivator as well, and we recently merged his homegrown Cascades with my homegrown Chinooks for a memorable joint venture.

This is our recipe for BILCO, a Brother-in-Law Collaboration. We aimed to make a big IPA and added 5 ounces of our dried backyard hops to the kettle. The final product had a hop presence that was closer to a pale or an amber, but we got a lot of compliments from our friends just the same. Perhaps in making a more balanced beer we appealed to hop heads and mainstream beer folk as well. We're definitely making this one again!

Besides combining our brewing and hop cultivating efforts, this recipe merges two IPA traditions as well. We paired caramelly British specialty grains with our piney, orangey backyard American hops. This brew was destiny; the Atlantic Ocean couldn't keep these ingredients apart.

BILCO

Style: IPA

Water:

3 gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

½ gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Thomas Fawcett & Sons Pale Crystal Malt

Extract:

9 lbs. extra light DME

Hops:

2 oz. Chinook, whole cone (bittering @ 60 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (flavor @ 15 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (flavor @ 10 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (aroma @ 5 min.)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:
Original gravity should be around 1.073 and finishing gravity should be around 1.015, making for an ABV of 7.6%. You could certainly recreate this recipe using pellet hops. If you use whole cones like us, I would recommend tying them off in muslin bags to make it easier to remove them from the wort when the boil has finished. Using a large strainer, you can press the excess liquid out of the bags and back into the kettle if you're worried about losing any hoppy goodness.

This was an amazing fall beer/winter warmer, but brew it anytime you please. Cheers!