Regarding the "mashability" of pumpkin

[benthegrate]

I've read all sorts of speculation on here about whether including roasted pumpkin flesh in the actual mash contributes any points to the beer.

I've been brewing partial-mash pumpkin beers year-round for 4 years now, and while I am the FARTHEST THING POSSIBLE from an expert and know far less about the chemistry and physics of the mash than most of you, I did decide to perform an experiment last night in brewing my latest batch.

I ran my partial mash separate from the pumpkin this time. I "mashed" the pumpkin separately using 8 pounds of roasted pumpkin flesh (in large chunks) with 1 gallon of water. Rather than carefully controlling the temperature as I do in an actual mash, I just barely simmered the pumpkin in the gallon of water for 90 minutes. Then I removed the pumpkin and brought the pumpkin water to a boil and reduced it to 2 cups of liquid.

When my grain wort had cooled, the corrected SG was 1.064. I had to take about a cup of liquid from the 5 gallons of wort to get this reading.

Then I added the 2 cups of pumpkin liquid, stirring, and took another reading, and the SG was 1.070.

I know there are factors here that I don't understand or can't calculate...I ended up with a more "diluted" wort because I added a net cup of liquid to it. And it's entirely possible there are dissolved solids in that concentrated pumpkin water that AREN'T fermentable sugars.

BUT...just in case anyone is curious, I did "up" the SG of my word by .006 by adding "mashed" pumpkin water.

 

[afr0byte]

I've read all sorts of speculation on here about whether including roasted pumpkin flesh in the actual mash contributes any points to the beer.

I've been brewing partial-mash pumpkin beers year-round for 4 years now, and while I am the FARTHEST THING POSSIBLE from an expert and know far less about the chemistry and physics of the mash than most of you, I did decide to perform an experiment last night in brewing my latest batch.

I ran my partial mash separate from the pumpkin this time. I "mashed" the pumpkin separately using 8 pounds of roasted pumpkin flesh (in large chunks) with 1 gallon of water. Rather than carefully controlling the temperature as I do in an actual mash, I just barely simmered the pumpkin in the gallon of water for 90 minutes. Then I removed the pumpkin and brought the pumpkin water to a boil and reduced it to 2 cups of liquid.

When my grain wort had cooled, the corrected SG was 1.064. I had to take about a cup of liquid from the 5 gallons of wort to get this reading.

Then I added the 2 cups of pumpkin liquid, stirring, and took another reading, and the SG was 1.070.

I know there are factors here that I don't understand or can't calculate...I ended up with a more "diluted" wort because I added a net cup of liquid to it. And it's entirely possible there are dissolved solids in that concentrated pumpkin water that AREN'T fermentable sugars.

BUT...just in case anyone is curious, I did "up" the SG of my word by .006 by adding "mashed" pumpkin water.

If you didn't mash the pumpkin with base malt you were not getting any fermentables, unless pumpkin has simple sugar/enzymes Im not aware of.

 

[rycov]

i don't know if the pumpkin has amalyse which is needed to convert the starch into sugars. the malts do, so it would probably have to be mashed with the malts.