Best beer season of the year!

[Scotty]

Another community asked me to detail my exploits in brewing a seasonal beer, so I figured for those old enough to take interest, I'd transpose the email over onto this message board as well to show how much fun and work goes into brewing an ale.

So here's my inspiration for pumpkin ales.  If you can find it in your neighborhood, it's Dogfish Head Punkin Ale.  Behind that are all the grains, the hops, the cans of pumpkin.  Yep, cans.  It's 100% pumpkin, no preservatives, which would skew the fermentation.  Frankly, if I used real fresh pumpkins, I'd have to wait another month or more to find them at the local farmers markets, and by then, the beer would be ready to drink around the end of November, beginning of December, when it's already out of season.



So I'm going through the "Mashing" process.  I heat up 4 1/4 gallons of water to 160F, and dump in all of the grains.  It quickly turns into an oatmeal:



As well as two cups of pumpkin.  The pumpkin mixture is three 30oz cans of pumpkin, about a 1/8 - 1/4 cup of cinnamon, 1/2 a cup of nutmeg, and a 1/4 cup of brown sugar.  I don't want to make it too sweet, or mask the pumpkin flavor too much, and I'm already nervous I may have done so with the 1/2 cup of nutmeg.  Oh well, it'll be a bold flavor!  The rest of the pumpkin will get added when I go to "Sparge" the grains.



The key to the mash is that you want to get it between 144F -152F.  Any lower than 144 and the grains won't release the necessary sugars needed for fermentation, leaving a barley water, any higher than 152F, and it'll release sugars that won't ferment, turning it into a sweet unfermented water.

The sparge was rather colorful.  I had to separate the water from the grains.  I initially started by pouring the pumpkin into a fine mesh cloth and duct taping it to the outside of a 7 gallon plastic bucket, which I intended to pour the wort (grains and water) into.



Well that didn't go too well.  Apparently the bag was a little too fine of mesh, and the wort was refusing to sift through the cloth at any reasonable rate.



So now I had a bag full of grains and water, easily weighing probably close to 70 lbs, and none of it was filtering through.  So I had to separate it out by hand.  Luckily I have plenty of buckets to use as I sift through with my kitchen mesh strainer.





All said and done, it was quite a mess.  The floor was extremely sticky, but mission accomplished.  I had the grains separated from the wort (water), and now it's back on the stove for an hour long boil.





Once it comes to a boil, I add in a handful of whole cloves and ann oz of a specific type of hops, and another .5 oz at the 30 min mark.  At the 45 minute mark, I toss in a can of pumpkin mixed with more nutmeg, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  I let that sit for another 15 minutes (one hour total of boiling), and then take it off the stove to cool down.



I give it an ice bath by setting it in the sink, pouring two bags of ice around it, and run some water through the ice to rapidly cool it down to room temperature.  Once it gets below 80 degrees, I slosh it around between two buckets a couple of times, pitch the yeast in, and pour it back and forth a couple more times, while filing the plastic bucket up to total 5 total gallons of wort.



The reason for pouring it between two buckets is that the yeast best ferments in oxygen rich environments.  Boiling water for an hour removes practically all oxygen from the water.  It is actually quite noticeable, any Boy Scout could tell you what it's like to drink boiled water, it tastes different.  By pouring it between a couple of buckets, I aerate it, adding oxygen back in.  Once I finish aerating, I cap off the bucket, attach a hose to the top that funnels into a jar of water, and set it in a dark closet to begin the slow process of fermenting.



The reason for leaving an air escape is that pressure would otherwise build within the bucket.  The yeast will eat the sugars boiled out the grain, shit alcohol, and fart CO2 (used for carbonation later on).  I have to provide a means for the CO2 to escape, so I stick a hose in the top of the bucket, and feed it into a jar of water.  The CO2 will push out the house, and bubble out of the jar.  The reason for the water is that it makes the bucket air-tight.  The oxygen will eventually get pushed out to make room for the CO2, and at that point, once all air is replaced with CO2, it's perfectly sanitary to leave for a while to ferment and age.

I'll post more as I go into secondary fermentation and bottling!

[Mr Pwnage]

This is beautiful man. How long does fermentation usually take for a batch that size?

[Scotty]

Primary fermentation will take no more than two weeks, secondary should take no more than three to four.  Add in two weeks for bottling, and it will hopefully be ready for Turkey day dinner.

[stick d00d]

Wow so much work goes into making beer.. how many bottles would you fill from this? Also how much did all of the ingredients cost?

[Scotty]

The ingredients were probably around $100 - $130 dollars.  Unfortunately I pitched the receipts to know for certain, but doing the math, if I were to go into production with the intent to sell (all legalities of selling alcohol aside), I wouldn't break even from this batch.

Doing the math, a 5 gallon batch (which this is), is 128 fluid oz per gallon multiplied by 5 to get 640 total fluid oz.  Divide that by 12 fluid oz (the typical size of a beer bottle), and you get 53.333 bottles.  We'll round down for waste in bottling and filtering out the "trub", or gunk that sits down at the bottom of the bucket that won't make it into the bottles.  So 53 total bottles, which is divided by 6 to make 6-packs, and you get 8 six packs with a couple left over.  If I were to sell each 6-pack at around $7, I would make a grand total of about $42.  Obviously I spent over double, if not triple that in supplies alone, and the 7-8 hours of man power required to make it, there's no way I'd break even.

Good thing I do this purely for my enjoyment.  If I had the supplies to do this at a much larger scale (i.e. my own brewery), I'd be able to stand a much better chance at making a profit, but just imagine what would happen if you had a giant tank full of this stuff and one thing got messed up to screw up the quality standard.  How much money you'd be pouring down the drain.  A good example, Sam Caliogne from Dogfish Head brewery had to toss a bunch of pallets of bottled beer because the bottlers can back with screw top bottles and they didn't catch it until they already had several pallets ready to ship.  They don't use screw tops, since it's common knowledge to brewers that screw tops often leak carbonation more so than pop-tops, causing the beer to run a risk of going flat more easily.  They wound up dumping a bunch of the bottles, and giving a case away to all the employees as part of their paycheck (yeah, their brewers get a check and a case of beer for their paycheck, how awesome is that!).  But the net loss of that little screw-up cost them probably tens, if not hundreds of thousands.

EDIT:  Just remembered, that little screw-up over at Dogfish Head was with their prized and highly valued Punkin Ale seen in the first photo of my OP.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3vqm31vapE

[stick d00d]

That's crazy... hope it turns out good! Might have to try that Dogfish Punkin Ale, sounds delicious.

[T-Rok]

If hadn't explained the fact you were making beer, I would have thought you were making some form of illicit drug from all those pictures. xD

[Hikarikuen]

As an 18-year-old who chooses not to risk drinking underage, I'm really disappointed I can't try some pumpkin ale. Sounds amazing. Enjoy it for me, Scotty :P

[T-Rok]

As an 18-year-old who chooses not to risk drinking underage, I'm really disappointed I can't try some pumpkin ale. Sounds amazing. Enjoy it for me, Scotty :P

Or you know, simply cross over to Canada for a day? 18 in BC, 17 in Alberta. No drinking age over in Quebec if I recall correctly.

[Mr Pwnage]

As an 18-year-old who chooses not to risk drinking underage, I'm really disappointed I can't try some pumpkin ale. Sounds amazing. Enjoy it for me, Scotty :P

Or you know, simply cross over to Canada for a day? 18 in BC, 17 in Alberta. No drinking age over in Quebec if I recall correctly.

Or you could drink anyways and not be an idiot about it. You'll only get caught if your not responsible. And likewise if you don't want to be responsible, make sure you have good friends to look after you and sober ride home.

[Titan]

As an 18-year-old who chooses not to risk drinking underage, I'm really disappointed I can't try some pumpkin ale. Sounds amazing. Enjoy it for me, Scotty :P

Or you know, simply cross over to Canada for a day? 18 in BC, 17 in Alberta. No drinking age over in Quebec if I recall correctly.

Quebec is 18, not including the ones you said I think its 19 most other areas, though I might be wrong.

[Scotty]

Of course I didn't intend on having this conversation go from brewing delicious pumpkin beer to how one can get around the legal drinking age, or anything similar.  I'll just say it to clear my name with the hopes of steering this back on course before someone inevitably comes in guns-a-trolling:

I do not condone irresponsible or under age drinking, nor do I take a stance on the legal drinking age.  Please be responsible, and don't do anything stupid or illegal.

[Lingus]

This is awesome Scott. I didn't know you got into home brewing. As you probably know, we're very much into craft brews. I know a few people that home brew, and I occasionally get to taste the results of their labor. There's one guy who we know from being in the Stein club at Gordon Biersch who brews on a bit larger scale (basically a very small craft brewery). We've been to a few of their tapping parties, and some of their stuff is very good (they made a pineapple wheat beer that went over really well). I know that if we had the space/time/money/patience, my brother and a few of our friends would love to be able to try out the home brewing process.

In any case, I hope your pumpkin ale turns out well. If it's anything like the dog fish head I'm sure it'll be awesome.

[Scotty]

This is awesome Scott. I didn't know you got into home brewing. As you probably know, we're very much into craft brews. I know a few people that home brew, and I occasionally get to taste the results of their labor. There's one guy who we know from being in the Stein club at Gordon Biersch who brews on a bit larger scale (basically a very small craft brewery). We've been to a few of their tapping parties, and some of their stuff is very good (they made a pineapple wheat beer that went over really well). I know that if we had the space/time/money/patience, my brother and a few of our friends would love to be able to try out the home brewing process.

In any case, I hope your pumpkin ale turns out well. If it's anything like the dog fish head I'm sure it'll be awesome.

Thanks for the well wishes.  It definitely requires patience, as there are some stages where you can't cut corners, or you may end up with a failed beer.  I'm already starting to get a bit nervous at how fast the fermentation is going.  Typically for ales, it takes 2-3 days to ferment fully.  After day one, the fermentation slowed drastically, so I'm resorting to try and shake up the bucket to kick the yeast back into action.  I don't want to pitch more yeast in, so come tonight, I'll have to measure the ABV and see if it fermented as expected, and be patient if it looks like it is still fermenting.

A few key points in patience I learned are things like the diacetyl rest.  Diacetyl rest is a period in which the yeast cleans up after itself.  Diacetyl is a natural byproduct of fermentation, something that the yeast generates, and then cleans up after it's done pooping alcohol.  If you don't give the yeast adequate time to clean up after itself, you'll have an abundance of diacetyl in your beer, and it'll taste like butter (a.k.a. yucky).  A lot of people will just ferment until the bubbles stop, give it a day, and then move to secondary fermentation or even bottling, within giving the yeast enough time to clean up the diacetyl.

Another good example of patience is letting fermentation complete fully.  I did a ridiculously high ABV beer a little over a year ago (a barley wine, around 17% ABV), and the fermentation methods for it were very... Interesting.  Everything from adding sugar every day it ferments for two weeks, to aerating it with an aquarium oxygen pump for an hour or two before I store it away for fermentation.  The thing is, when you go to bottle your beer, you have to mix in a low amount of dissolved sugar to the mix to reactivate the yeast just enough to produce enough CO2 so that it will carbonate.  I either added too much sugar, which is likely given how intense the fermentation process was, and how much yeast I added in, or I didn't let it ferment fully before going to bottling.  When I went to go crack a bottle, the beer, quite literally, shot out of the bottle like a busted fire-hydrant, going everywhere.  Had I given it more time to ferment, or been more careful with how much yeast I added in to the mix throughout the fermentation, I likely wouldn't have ran into that problem, but hot damn is that funny to pass to your buddy to have him open, even more so if he asks why you chose to given him safety glasses with a bottle opener. 

Expenses aren't really that bad.  I actually over-estimated my previous cost, because I had to replace a few supplies that could easily account for half of the costs.  Actual core ingredients, including the grains, the yeast, hops, and cans of pumpkin probably amount to ~$50.  The expensive part in brewing is getting started, and getting all the supplies you need to brew.  Things like the large pot seen in my photos above that I boil the wort in cost about $150 dollars, and the buckets are each about $20 with the lids, on top of the grain bags, hydrometers, hoses, etc...  That's where the cost is at.  Grains aren't much more than $3-$4/lbs. and hops are around $4-$5 an ounce, yeast is about the same.  So it isn't much in ingredients, more in supplies.  You only need a few things to get started, but there are obviously things that'll make your life much easier down the road, so I always wander by the supplies racks at my local home brew store to see if there's anything that can make my life easier, or things that might need replacing.

[Mr Pwnage]

So when your actually bottling it, do you have to add additional CO2 into the bottle in order to keep everything pressurized for flavor? Or does just the excess which you leave in the beer itself escape into the bottle? And if you accidentally allowed for too much does it actually affect the beer itself or does it just become an issue when bottling something too pressurized?