Autumn is Ausumn

Spooky Christmas is again almost here,
so it's time once more for our favorite beer.
Brewed with four pumpkins thrown into the mash,
we'll later add spices but, please, just a dash.
A fistful of caramel and another of chocolate,
a pound of roast malt to make a sweet stout of it.
Just enough fuggles for bittering hops,
we swear that you'll scream, 'this is the tops!'

Batch #65
Pumpkin Stout
8 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb British Roasted Barley
1 lb White Wheat Malt
6 oz British 70/80°L
4 oz British Pale Chocolate
6 lbs Pumpkin flesh (cooked, smushed)
8 oz Rice hulls
1.5 lbs Molasses (10m)
4 oz Lactose, 10m
1 oz Fuggles, 5.1%AA (60m)
1 oz Fuggles, 9.2%AA (20m)
1 tsp calcium chloride (mash)
1 tab whirlfloc (10m)
Safale US-05, 11.5g dry
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.016
ABV: 6.3%
IBU: ~25

Get up earlier than usual. Split, scrape out the seeds, and bake your pumpkins at 300F for an hour to 90m (want the skin to be a little saggy and the flesh to caramelize a bit). Pie pumpkins are best (sweet taste as opposed to just big). I had four pumpkins, weighing almost 17lbs total, to get the 6lbs of flesh (cooked weight). Once cooked, scrape out the flesh and save in a bowl for the mash.

Mashed in with 4 gal water (162F) to reach an initial infusion of 146F (difficult to calculate thanks to the pumpkin and rice hulls (pumpkin = starch, rice hulls = no stuck mash, please). Added tea kettles full of near-boiling water after 15m and 30m mash time to reach 150 and 153F, respectively. This was not my plan. I initially wanted a single infusion at 154F, but the pumpkin threw me off.

Boil 60m, adding hops and adjuncts as indicated. Cool to fermentation temp (I like 68F) and pitch yeast.

So much for that crop

Update 10/4 - Kegged. Tasty! Great hop character and lots of toasty biscuity malt in the finish. So pleased with this beer. SG 1.012.
Update 9/29 - Dry hopped with 1 oz each of Amarillo, Centennial, Simcoe. SG 1.012.
--

Well, the whopping < 1/8oz of hops (dry weight) that I pulled this year appeared moldy today, so I dumped them instead of using them. Hence the name.

Batch #64
Lost Harvest IPA
10.5 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb British 50-60L
1 lb White wheat malt
6 oz Victory
2 oz Carafa II (last 5m of mash only)
1 oz Magnum, 13.1%AA (60m)
0.5 oz Magnum, 13.1%AA (30m)
1 oz Centennial, 9.2%AA (20m)
0.5 oz Amarillo, 8.2%AA (10m)
0.5 oz Simcoe, 12.2%AA (10m)
0.5 oz Amarillo, 8.2%AA (5m)
0.5 oz Simcoe, 12.2%AA (5m)
1oz each Cen/Ama/Sim (dry)
1/4 tsp each epsom and gypsum in mash
Safale US-05, 11.5g dry
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.3%
IBU: ~80

Single infusion, batch sparge. Infusion temp: 152F, settled to 150F. Mash 60m. Collect 7 gallons wort. Ferment at 68F.

The List 2010 - Part III

Airports are stupid.

My List

Brewery List

Winners

The List 2010 - Part II

One festival day down, one to go. Rachel and I conquered the following tasty beverages last night, and will rack up a few more points with the full 10-person drinking team tonight. Current count: 120

In chronological order (yeah, that's right...I took notes!)

Dogfish Head
-Chateau Jiahu
-Grain to Glass

Hangar 24
-American IPA (dWiGhT's pro-am!)

Firehouse Brewery and Grill
-Veles Baltic Porter
-Pete's Support Belgian IPA

Firestone Walker
-Velvet Merlin
-Union Jack

Greenflash
-Palate Wrecker
-Le Freak

Rahr & Sons
-Ugly Pug
-Blonde

Yards
-George Washington Tavern Porter

Weyerbacher
-Imperial Pumpkin Ale
-Double Simcoe IPA

Troegs
-Flying Mouflan
-Hop Back Amber

New Holland
-Full Circle Kolsch

Arcadia
-Hoprocket

Flat Branch
-Green Chili
-Indigo Pale Ale

Fitger's
-Starfire Pale Ale
-Edmund Bourbon Imperial Stout

Goose Island Brewpub
-Sgt. Peppercorn
-Goose Me!

Rogue
-Old Crustacean
-MaierFest

Pike
-IPA
-Monk's Uncle Triple

Pelican
-Cream Ale
-Scottish Export

Ninkasi
-Tricerahops
-Total Domination IPA

Note: Tiara made of pretzels is cool

Elysian
-Men's Room Red
-Dark o' the Moon Pumpkin Stout

Deschutes
-Black Butte XXII
-Inversion IPA

Alaskan
-White
-Stout

Stone
-Cali-Belgique
-Russian Imperial Stout & 10th Anniv. Blen

Black Market
-Dunkelweizen
-Rye IPA

The Bruery
-7 Grain Saison
-Rugbrod

Russian River
-Pliny the Elder

Lost Abbey
-Cable Car Wild Ale
-Framboise de Amorosa

Pizza Port (Carlsbad)
-547 Haight
-Good Grief Brown

Great Divide
-Colette
-16th Anniv. Wood Aged IPA
-Wild Raspberry Ale

Redstone Meadery
-Nectar of the Hops
-Raspberry Nectar
-Sunshine Nectar (apricot)
[Note: all "Nectars" are same base mead with different secondary additions]

Brooklyn Brewing
-Sorachi Ace
-Local 1
-Local 2
-Manhattan Project
-Black Chocolate Stout

CH Evans / Albany Pumphouse
-Kick-ass Brown

Odell's
-Deconstruction
-Myrcenary

Left Hand
-Milk Stout
-Oktoberfest

Cascade
-Bourbonic Plague

Elysian (again)
-Wise ESB
-Jasmine IPA

3 Floyds
-Sandpebble
-Schwartzbier

Square One
-Bavarian Weizen
-Spicy Blonde

August Schell
-Firebrick
-Hopfenmalz

Bell's
-Porter
-Contrebassite

Boulevard
-Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale
-Unfiltered Wheat

Great Lakes
-Commodore Perry IPA
-Glockenspiel Weizenbock

Fat Head's
-Hop JuJu
-KoKo Head Chocolate Coconut Cream Stout

Thomas Creek
-Vanilla Cream Ale
-Up the Creek Extreme IPA

Terrapin
-Hopsecutioner
-Hopzilla

Sweetwater
-420
-Sch'wheat!

Asher
-Green Monster

Avery
-The Maharaja

Wynkoop
-WIXA Weiss
-B3K Schwartzbier
-St Charles ESB

The List 2010 - Part I

Back in Colorado for the Great American Beer Festival. Day one was spent in Boulder. We ended up at Mountain Sun for lunch and then off to the Avery taproom. From there we picked up some bottles for a small party later in the evening and stopped off at Boulder Beer for a quick sample or two.

Now we just have to figure out how to get to Denver for the opening session at GABF tonight.

Draft...

Mountain Sun
-Hop Vivant (2009 Alpha King winner...delicious)
-Resinous Rye (good...had better versions of the style)

Avery
-Joe's Pilsner (great!)
-Jerry's Roggenbier (nice chocolatey rye)
-India Pale Lager
-IPA w/ Chinook dry hop
-Altar Boy (The Reverend, oak aged and dosed with Brett....excellent)
-The Maharaja (cask...excellent)
-Seventeen Anniversary (hoppy black lager)
-Out of Bounds Stout (cask)
-Missionary (Belgian quad with guava)
-Voltron (sour blend...good but Altar Boy was better)
-duganA IPA

Boulder Beer
-Singletrack Copper Ale (very nice)
-Bourbon Singletrack (nowhere near as good as the straight version)
-India Brown Ale (cask...too much oak)
-Mojo Risin' (DIPA on nitro, nice)

Bottles...

Ska Brewing
-Ten Pin Porter (tasty)
-True Blonde Ale (my last of the night...good, not one of my usual go-to styles)
-Pinstripe Red (great)

Left Hand
-Black Jack Porter (excellent)
-Polestar Pils (very nice)

Great Divide
-Titan IPA (excellent)
-Claymore Scotch Ale (excellent)
-Samurai Rice Ale (only had a drop but Rachel liked it)

Boulder Beer
-Hazed and Infused