pumkin brandy

[WooTeck]

i had the idea for pumpkin brandy, searched for a bit and got real excited.

today i saw the first decent looking & sized pumpkins of the season. in the local fresh veg shop. so i got a few.

Ingredients:
fermentables
3 larg... ah medu... eh 7.8kgs of pumpkin
25g of dextrose & amylase(sorta a fermentable )
brown sugar on hand in case of low OG.

Ingredients

yeast and nutrient (all pitched as suggested on packaging)
Young's Dried Active Yeast
Young's yeast nutrient
*i had run out of acids.

i saw on one of the other threads that the guy roasted his pumpkin so i thought what the hell and roasted one half of the smallest. i roasted for about an hour. i forgot to put on a timer . when it came out it was starting to look good.

cut up the pumpkins in to small pieces. i used my handy cleaver but your all grown ups and im sure you know how to cut stuff up. add to the boil pot, i added the gubbins'n'all. but i cut off the stalks. who wants stalks in their brew?

cut up

the main reasons i added every thing are: A. the minor amounts of starch that it may add, every little helps. B. i feel it may be easier to drain and rack with the skins on and the middle mess.

in the pot;)

i boiled it all up in 14l of water for an 45mins.

boil it all up

added 10l of cold water. it dropped the temps to 64°c. i then added the full tub of amylase. wrapped the mash for insulation. going to leave to rest starting at 7.43pm

resume. 12:00am
came back after 4h 20m temps still high. 54c in the tun.
took a sample anyway, what the hell. these are the results.

high temp OG?

not looking to good to be honest. using temperature correction calcs seem to put it at about 1.005/1.009
going to leave it over night to cool and hopefully convert. fingers crossed.
it smells sweet. at least i have plenty of sugar to top up with if it comes to that .

took a quick sample this morn temps @ 30c. 1.009 not really enough but heh , this will be the sugar head version or i may add a kg of malt rye see if that will kick it up a notch.

late additions

stopped by the local brew shop and picked up 1kg of malted rye & 500g of crystal rye.
going to mash that is as normal and add brown sugar to up the OG.

added 3kgs of brown sugar dissolved in extra 3l of water. came in at 1.050 @40c.



*NOTE* this is in progress as you read.

eck

[thisguy]

Did you take all the mess in the middle, seeds and all out? Or did u include that in the boil too? I could go for some pumpkin seeds mmmmmmm

[WooTeck]

Did you take all the mess in the middle, seeds and all out? Or did u include that in the boil too? I could go for some pumpkin seeds mmmmmmm

thats what gubbins is. every thing went in. i figgerd that the mess would help when it came to staining.

[MDH]

I'd recommend blending them to a pulp first if you want efficient conversion.

[WooTeck]

im past that point .

[bearriver]

Tater says he freezes then thaws fruits. Makes them mushy and easier to process.

[bentstick]

Go man go,dont know til ya try! May should of added nutmeg,cinnamon,and some cardamom most spices with oil do carry over!

[WooTeck]

Go man go,dont know til ya try! May should of added nutmeg,cinnamon,and some cardamom most spices with oil do carry over!

good advice . i will give that a go. theres plenty of oppertunaty for infusion. start ferment, end ferment, in the boiler .
im planning to adapt and attempt to make good a pumpkin brandy. so i have a high quality product to bring to my Ky freinds thanks giving.

i am aiming for:
a fruit only.
pumpkin sugar head (honey and maple)
pumpkin sugar head (plain ol sugar)

[Bushman]

Following your progress, last October I wanted to do a seasonal drink and made Pumpkin Pie following the basic steps for Apple Pie and changing it to accomodate the differences in the fruit. I used a juicer and a lot of the pulp carried over, it was OK but nothing like the Apple Pie I made. If your thinking about adding more pumpkin juice for flavor later I would caution about it if you want a clean looking drink.

[WooTeck]

Following your progress, last October I wanted to do a seasonal drink and made Pumpkin Pie following the basic steps for Apple Pie and changing it to accomodate the differences in the fruit. I used a juicer and a lot of the pulp carried over, it was OK but nothing like the Apple Pie I made. If your thinking about adding more pumpkin juice for flavor later I would caution about it if you want a clean looking drink.

more good advice. so far its got a verry light taste of pumpkin (would hope to up it some how). im just worried that when i add rye tonight it may over power it.

[WooTeck]

getting a good strong pumpkin smell now and flavor. hopefully this will only increase over the duration of the ferment

[MichiganCornhusker]

Nice writeup and pretty pictures. I was looking forward to trying this myself this fall, but from what I could find out about pumpkins, they have very very little to give up to the distiller. But if the addition of pumpkin to a simple grain mash adds flavor that will carry over to the spirits that would be well worth trying. Will be following your batch, thanks for the updates. Good luck!

[WooTeck]

from what I could find out about pumpkins, they have very very little to give up to the distiller.

yeah pretty much. very little sugars. seems the flavors have been released .

back to business
temps have dropped to 40c. c.
scent. heavy on the malty rye with a subtle pumpkin undertone
taste. malt comes in heavy and fast flowed with delicate fruity pumpkin and fades out with a dry-ish finish.

will be interesting what the brown sugar will do to it and how the yeasties will impact the flavors.

[WooTeck]

for some reason i am unable to edit the original post so ill continue on here.

had a look today

ferment

it still has the undertones of pumpkin but it was hard to smell with the amount of Co2.

today's reading

it spat out a bit of partial solids . im not sure is that will effect the read.
its tasting very fruity and not the worst thing ive drank but its got almost a metallic tone through out. i think it will take some clearing to get nice. im going to attempt that tomorrow and hope there's enough suspended yeast to carry it through to completion. i have a feeling this will be stripped and ran before the rum is complete. im looking forward to attempting the next batch. probably the plain old pumpkin SH.

eck

[MichiganCornhusker]

Metallic could be the brown sugar? I know when using molasses for beer making, one of the problems is a metallic taste developing in the fermentation.
Will be interesting to see how this distills out. I'd like to try this later this year, maybe after end of october when pumpkins should be cheaper and I could get a lot of them, thanks for the posts.

[WooTeck]

by then ill hopefully tested a selection of different recipes spiced and un-spiced. im wanting to do a big batch of my fav when they get cheap .

[WooTeck]

racked it on the 15th learned not to add the guts just more of a pain in the ass than expected, it just turned in to goop and didn't help at all. i picked up some finings tonight as its still real murky and anyone who has read biggest fuck up so far... will under stand that im apprehensive of putting it in the boiler . going to run this weekend after its been cleared .

on a side note im going to start off 2x 20l batches of peated single malt. cant decide if i should open a new thread i do have a few on the go .

[MichiganCornhusker]

Just scored some pumpkins. Found the land of misfit pumpkins, the ones that weren't fit to sell for jack o' lanterns, buck apiece. Got almost 300 pounds for 30 bucks.
My plan is to roast them in the oven this week, sans gubbins, and freeze the pulp until I come up with a recipe plan. Looking forward to any updates you have, Wooteck.

[WooTeck]

planning to run mine tomorrow on the experiment front im total broke this month so its on stand by

[MichiganCornhusker]

WooTeck! I don't really know what I've done here. I started in on roasting my pumpkins, but it's a lot of pumpkin. So far I've roasted 15 gallons of pumpkin and run it through the blender. I was just wrapping up a bourbon style ferment, and instead of straining out the last bits of grain from that, I just started dumping the pumpkin in on top of it. Sort of a pumpkin Gumballhead, but without the sugar. But it is a real pulpy pumpkiny mess. I think I have some fermentation going on in there as the "cap" has a bunch of moon craters in it. I might need to add some fresh wort to the mix just to thin it out a little bit. Thinking about using up may assorted bags of malted grains to mash up for more liquid, and some more fermentables. Will keep you posted.
I did find the perfect pumpkin for the label, though:
Mr One Eyed Jack!

[Bushman]

I would guess if you roasted the pumpkin it would not ferment? When I made my Pumpkin Pie I ran it through my juicer but it still had a lot of pulp.

[MichiganCornhusker]

I would guess if you roasted the pumpkin it would not ferment? When I made my Pumpkin Pie I ran it through my juicer but it still had a lot of pulp.

I'm sort of winging it here, loosely following Wooteck and Mealstrom's pumpkin brandy experiments.
I'm roasting the pumpkins to caramelize them a little bit, and make them easier to blend up. I figure what little sugar there is in the pumpkin will be easier to extract if I blend them up.
From what I've been able to find out, pumpkins have almost no starch, and very little sugar. I guess the most that can be hoped for is that they will bring some good flavor over in the distillate.
I also picked up a few pie pumpkins, finer pulp and sweeter, to try out your pumpkin pie recipe, Bushman. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[Bushman]

I always like new experiments, keep us posted. I think your right about the sugar content of pumpkin because when I researched and made my pumpkin pie I had to compensate for the lack of sugar.

[WooTeck]

due to a exceptionally busy week just past and an exhaustion I was unable to deal with the wine. when I final got round to it I discovered that it had an infections and was turning in to vinegar . was heart broken when I had to pour it out. it was the most expensive batch ive done bar the other fuck up of the corn batch. will fire up a new one this weekend after I run my rum .

[NZChris]

Vinegar has a higher boiling point than water

[WooTeck]

Vinegar has a higher boiling point than water

i dont really know how this is meant to help?

its down the drian now

[Tokoroa_Shiner]

Vinegar has a higher boiling point than water

i dont really know how this is meant to help?

its down the drian now

Now you know for next time. Run it anyway.

[WooTeck]

i may just be being an idiot but was that meant to say water or alcohol? what would be the benifits of extracting the vinegar

[NZChris]

It has a higher boiling point than both, and that means that you can leave the bulk of it in the backset.

[WooTeck]

ahh i was planning on ditching the backset from this batch anyways