It is that time of year...pumpkin season! I decided to try my hand at a pumpkin ale this year, but where to start. Fortunately for me this month's Zymurgy had a recipe that looked good that I decided to follow. Out of copyright respect for them, I won't publish the recipe right now as it is their current issue. However if they post it later I will put a link up.
What I will say is this recipe called for canned pumpkin, not fresh. Next year I plan to make it out of fresh pumpkin. There is also an addition of pumpkin spice, honey, and maple syrup. The brew day started well enough, but quickly hit a wall. I have heard of how pumpkin can stick a mash, man they weren't kidding! I had already put 1 lb of rice hulls in, so when I stuck I threw another lb in.
Let me try to describe what a stuck mash acts like, and feels like. First, since I use a HERMS system, my mash is always moving. What will happen is that the site gauge will start to go lower and lower. This is because a vacuum effect has started on the bottom of the kettle. Then when I put my paddle in the mash, it was like hitting a rock. I was really surprised at how much this solidified! It took me a few minutes to break it all up, and mix it completely again. Once done, I turned my pump back on and was good to go for a bit. The mash stuck about 3-4 times in the beginning during the protein rest phase and while getting up to 154, but once up to temp it really didn't stick again. I suspect it was two things, first I was mixed more and more of the rice hulls up into the mash, maybe they were not so evenly distributed on first mixes. Second I suspect the warmer temp mash just allows things to expand and the liquid to be more viscus.
After mash I went into mash-out, and hour sparge, then boil. The recipe did not call for much in hops, so the boil was pretty easy. I exceeded my SG a little, the recipe called for 1.070, and I hit 1.072. Color and taste were good of the wort, I am looking forward to seeing how this turns out!
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