mally wrote:Have a look through this post
here.
It looks like it gets retained here, but as laserghost said, I am sure it will be fine.
Mally,
I'm honored that you would link to my thread regarding my very first BIAB, All-Grain, No-Chill attempt. I still have a couple bottles of that Pumpkin Ale around. It's a bit over-carbed, and I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with the result. Of course, it could be that I haven't sampled enough professional pumpkin ales to know what it's supposed to taste like.
Herne,
If you get a chance to read thru the thread on HBT (the one containing the recipe that I referenced in the post in the link above) a couple folks discuss the process of baking the pumpkin prior to mashing. The HBT thread by Reno eNVy has grown to an unmanageable size. I've learned that you have to read thru a recipe post, because some improvements to the recipe or process described in an opening post may be mentioned later. At the point in that thread where I brewed my batch, I had gone thru the entire thread, copying pertinent information, along with the link to the person posting it, and pasting it into a WORD document with the idea that I could learn from the experience of others who had brewed that recipe (it's burdensom to have to read thru a hundred posts consisting of little more than "I brewed this, can't wait to taste it". IOW, I can take the original recipe and learn through the experiences of others later in the thread to adapt the recipe. Many times, even the OP offers some changes later.
While many folks mashed with the pumpkin, I chose to take the advice of someone in that thread. I baked my pumpkin in the oven. Instead of mashing it, I steeped it in the water during ramp to strike temp. The water turned a golden orange. This was much like the steeping of specialty grains when doing extract brews. At strike temp (probably 20 min or so of steeping the pumpkin), I pulled out the pumpkin bag, squeezed a little causing a bunch of pulp to get into the brew, then placed my BIAB bag and doughed in.
A recurring theme in many of the pumpkin ale threads is that the pumpkin, itself, is optional. Many aver that the "real pumpkin" adds very little to the flavor of the final beer. Supposedly, it's actually the spices in the beer that our minds associate with having eaten pumpkin pie that fakes us off and makes us think we're drinking a pumpkin beer. I don't have the experience to agree or disagree. Many do agree that the pumpkin adds a mouth-feel or fullness to the final beer.
The next time I brew a holiday beer, I think I will skip the pumpkin and simply make a spiced beer.
Respectfully,
Keith
