Reducing cost of first time extract brew

[Twinnie]

Hi, I'm just about to try my first extract brew and it's that pumpkin ale recipe that's been knocking around a while on the Internet. I was just interested in possibly reducing the cost a little as it's starting to look a little expensive and I'm likely to have loads of spares afterwards. Could someone a little more knowledgable possibly just look at this list and tell me if I can remove some bits to bring the cost down?
https://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/wishlist ... d487e3333/

I was mostly thinking about the hops, I'd have two bags with loads of spares but if there's not much difference between the two I could just use twice as much of one and save myself a few quid.

The complete recipe is here:
http://www.thebrewsite.com/2004/10/11/p ... recipe.php

I was also wondering if it would be a good idea to use (or at least top it up with) this malt extract as it's so cheap and been suggested as an alternative:
http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/pages/ ... =477&sid=0

No worries if no one's heard of that one, I'll just forget it if so.

Thanks.

[potatoes]

Hi Twinnie,

Welcome to the Forum. This seems like one hell of beer for you first extract brew. I have never tried pumpkin beer. Just a couple of thoughts, firstly do you really want to make pumpkin beer? You could make a normal british ale or american ale and then try something extravagant for your next brew.

Secondly, you need to mash Vienna Malt and Wheat Malt. Were you going to use the mash option in the recipe or the soak grains option in the recipe?

In relation to just buying 1 hop instead of two, you can do this. Just make sure you are adding the same amount of bitterness. You will want to buy the Hallertauer but there is difference in bitterness. The Alpha is 3% on the Hallertauer and 4.8% on the mount Hood. So you need to use about 50% more Hallertauer in your early hop addition to get the bitterness flavour.

Also, instead of using Wyeast you could use Safale S-05? It is cheaper and produces good results.

Dan

[Paddy Bubbles]

Pumpkin beer?? As potatoes has already said, you're not making things easy (or cheap) on yourself, especially for your first brew.

Get 2 or 3 kg of spraymalt, half a kilo of medium crystal malt, some Fuggles or Kent Goldings hops and some yeast (s-04 or nottingham) and make a nice ESB. A fraction of the cost and effort. Ok, you may not like bitter, but I just say this to illustrate that you can make a great extract beer with very few ingredients.

[Twinnie]

In for a penny in for a pound.

To be honest it was a Halloween themed thing I was going for and that the only reason I was going for a pumpkin ale. I know I was cutting it close but I tend to enjoy the more complicated things so I just fancied doing it and I thought I'd be able to brew some in a week, bottle it, and leave it outside so it would be nice and cold to clear faster (or, depending on if the weather was looking cold enough, maybe keg it; our nights are coming close to freezing at the moment). And to answer the question I was going to use the soak grains method because it sounded the simplest, not to mention I don't have sparging equipment.

How about this recipe instead:
http://www.arachnyd.com/david/pump2004.html
I've only just found it now and I haven't read into it so much but I did make out the words "Super simple" so I figured I might be on the right track.

Two fermentables, one type of hops and yeast, plus flavourings. I could even soak the pumpkin rather than using purée if I felt like it I guess.

One more question, I'm new to beer but I've been making spirits for about a year now and I was wondering how much the yeast strain affects the flavour of the product. When making spirit I would often just head to the supermarket and get some free bakers yeast. Is this completely out of the question for beer?

Thanks.

[jimp2003]

That second recipe seems a lot more straightforward. I always recommend Rob at MaltMiller for his extract HERE just because it is so cheap and is good quality. He also has the hops and yeast you need.

Regarding the yeast in that recipe, he does not mention a particular strain but I assume he means US-05 or S-04 and either of these would work IMO. the type of yeast used in beer brewing is very important and can be used to introduce its own character to the beer or a restrained strain can be used to let the other ingredients shine.

Good luck with the brew.

[potatoes]

If I were doing the first recipe, I would mash the ingredients. Making it not an extract brew and a big learning curb! The second recipe seems a lot easier, so I say go with this. The recipe writer brings up a good point, that the pumpkin pulp causes problems. Maybe invest in a Muslin, steralize it with rest of your gear, then stretch it over the FV and pour the wort through it. This should stop the pumpkin pulp getting into your beer. Good luck and post some pictures if you get this underway.

Cheers,

Dan

[Twinnie]

Thanks guys, I ordered the ingredients and it'll arrive tomorrow so I'll have fin this weekend getting this going. I already have a muslin bag from back when I fancied having a go at making gin but never got round to it. I'd been hoping I'd get round to using it one day. I'm anticipating a big mess so it's going to be done round the girlfriend's house (shhhh, don't tell her).

[potatoes]

Nice one gov, I won't say a word. You might enjoy these pics of pumpkin beer! It aint me, but the guy really needs to be commended. This is the kind of crazy brewing I would like to see more of....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cog_nate/s ... 400060222/

[jimp2003]

Potatoes that is hilarious! I thought it was a joke at first but that guy really is using that huge pumpkin as a mash tun and another as a FV - What a legend!!

[potatoes]

Yeah Jimp2003, it is quality. I wonder if the guy is on Jims?

[ead101]

Yes... The yeast is arguably the most important thing...just ask Wolfie.
Don't let them put you off I did ginger ales and apple ales when I started with extract. Until I realised it was a lot of hassle and all I wanted was to know which hops to pick and to have a nice pint. It's part of the fun of homebrewing!

Love to see the results and get a large sieve for getting rid of the pulp.

[Twinnie]

I tried a bit of both in the end with the pumpkin, I didn't have a pot big enough to do it all at once so I did it in two goes and tried extract with one and mash with the other but the pumpkin was so soft after roasting that they were both basically the same, filtered using a muslin bag. I made three bottles and kegged the rest and nothing was ready for the party (in fact the keg still isn't ready) but the bottled stuff was really good. In fact the girlfriend said it was the only ale she's tasted which she actually liked (she doesn't drink a lot of ale). I'm gonna have a taste of it tonight, haven't checked it since the weekend.

[potatoes]

Nice one Twinnie. A sucess all round if the girlfriend likes it. Maybe I will give it a go. Does it taste of Pumpkin? Did you have any troubles with Mash one? Let us know which recipe is best and so we can give it a go.

[Twinnie]

Sorry to bump such an old thread but I found it while trying to put this recipe together for another year (giving myself a little more breathing space this time around) and it bugged me that I never gave any info about which recipe I used.

In the end I used this recipe:

http://www.arachnyd.com/david/pump2004.html

from my second post except I made a few tweaks.

I didn't use the pumpkin puree, I cut a large pumpkin in half and then roasted it. I'm not sure what I was on about in my previous post but I think I had things mixed up; what I actually did with one of my two mashes was to mash the pumpkin and put it into a muslin bag. With the other one I cut it into smaller pieces and dropped it into the extract boil (the hops were still in bags) but it pretty much dissolved so it probably doesn't matter if you mash it first, and then I used a muslin bag to filter it when it came out of the syphon into the FB. That was a messy job and I don't recommend it. I also added a cup of brown sugar and half a cup of molasses (Lyles Black Treacle in my case) as well as adding half a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the wort as you stop the boil. I don't think I used allspice in my recipe, I'm assuming this because I can't find any with my spices and I don't remember ever using it for anything else; It's not really something that gets called for a lot in England and I probably couldn't find any on such short notice.

I boiled the lot at 65c for an hour (hops in after 15 minutes, spices 15 before end, vanilla as you take it off). Nowadays I do all-grain boil-in-a-bag but other than that I'm going to do it largely the same this time round but I'll have the pumpkin in small chunks in a muslin bag and I'll give it a few more weeks in the keg.

Again, sorry for bumping an old thread but I wanted to write this down and get it worked out for my own reference (nice idea not writing anything down 10 months ago) so I figured I might as well put it here in case anyone else would like to read it.

Now I just have to find a pumpkin in August.