Batch# 25 – Pumpkin Porter

Date	Brew:10/16/2014	Rack:none	Bottle:12/1/2014
Days	0	0	47

Recipe:

Extract kit from strange brew. We waffled on adding the pumpkin, but ultimately decided to go for it.  The people at strange brew are super nice and they have an interesting stock of new and used kegging gear. I only wish they were closer to my house.

Goals:

After both of our houses flooded, we hadn’t brewed in a few months. We decided to start back up with a simple extract kit. This was also our first test of Ross’ Electric kettle.

Brew Notes:

	OG	FG	ABV
Recipe	1.000	1.000	0.0%
Recorded	1.000	1.014	0.00%

We started with 2.5 gallons of spring water. Steeped for 24 minutes at 150 ish. No chill, but waited to get down to 160 before racking into the bucket. We didn’t have anything like a thief to get a sample with and we topped up to volume in the bucket, so we didn’t get a OG reading. The aluminum electric kettle was insulated with a yoga mat, and held temp surprisingly well. Only one element was needed once it got up to a boil.

Yeast:

US-05, 2 packets, added dry to bucket the morning after.

Starter:

none

Fermentation notes:

The basement is getting pretty cool nowadays, so it was probably a bit slow of a ferment, but it got down to an acceptable level.

Bottling notes:

orange caps.

Tasting notes:

The pumpkin flavor was surprisingly mild, and the beer overall was lighter than I had expected. It is definitely very porter-ish. I think I had been expecting a stout for whatever reason. I’ll be interested in seeing how this ages over time.

Conclusion:

I’m glad we brewed, it turned out clean and good, but there’s something about making an extract batch nowadays that feels a lot like cheating. It’s hard for me to get excited about it, and I usually don’t expect greatness. This beer could surprise me, but I’m looking forward to going back to BIAB.