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12/24/2022
this beer came out really good! its pretty much perfect as it is! i cant tell how much the rye contributed. its a smooth slightly sweet, balanced roast but low bitterness brew, love it. i think the faint sweetness flavor i normally dont get from dark beers can be coming from the maris otter.
for next time, i wonder how good this beer if bumped up to 8 or 9% whch was the target. came out to like 6 or 7.
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11/11/2022
notes a little hand wavy on this one. first off I got my waters mixed up on brew day so this beer actually got the water destined for west coast ipa (half RO plus added salts to match light and hoppy profile) so we shall see how the beer handles that.
also on brew day I had a bit extra malt from the planned double pumpkin so i put in a couple more lbs from the bag but did not take note how much. i think it mightve been 2 lb that replaced the pilsner malt i was planning to use. i basically did this beer full BIAB style with almost the entire 10 gallon water bill in the mash. horrible efficiency. (by contrast, the ipa i did on my igloo got 68% efficiency. id wanted to do this porter on igloo but messed up)
the malt from this beer i got from the brew store months ago, it was mostly packaged up and in the bins but possibly it wasnt as fresh? idk, shouldve been about the same, my base malt is older.
used two packs safale s04. calculator says thats good.
brew day OG was 1075. which I originally though was good but now looking at it its quite disappointing. was aiming for 8 or 9% black porter. the color on the wort is more brown.
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11/9/2022
bout to brew this. this is kind of pieced together from ingredients for another beer that i didnt do. there are two pumpkin milkshake bags, each should have 11lb maris otter, 1 lb honey malt, 3 lb wheat malt, 1 lb crystal 40, 4oz acid malt. also have a bag of 1 lb flaked rye. then i have another bag containing 1 lb rye malt, 12oz chocolate malt and 4oz carafa iii. all i need to add finally is 2 lb pilsner malt.
english yeast? or lutra?
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10/1/2022
i have base grain bill for 10 gallons of pumpkin beer. idea here would be to split half of it into a separate mash, omitting the oats and adding some dark grains and two row to boost gravity. leave out th epumpkin and pumpkin spice and vanilla, add rye malt.
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9/10/2022
bumping up the grain bill to get to 7%. changing to safale with higher expected efficiency. acid malt to proper mash ph. possibly will brew 10 gallons
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10/21/2021
measured FG of 1028. adjusting recipe attenuation from 71% to 65 so the recipe FG matches actual. came out to 4.8% abv but still tastes just as good, doesnt taste light in flavor or body at all.
still not sure why efficiency is so low on this beer (it was last year too). if you disregard the oats and pumpkin from the calculation it the efficiency is still low, under 60%. I would like to brew this to 8% some year but not sure what it would take for this beer (i.e. just a lot more base malt? how much? or go the DME route?)
This was the last beer I brewed on my old cooler mash tun and digiboil system. I've started using grainfather which so far has better and more consistent efficiency so it would be interesting to brew this same recipe on GF to see how much better it does.
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9/13/2021
updating for 2021. not sure what happened in terms of efficiency last year but this year i will be intentionally brewing it to 5% range for wifey. As alluded to below, I suspect the eff issue is oats and pumpkin not really contributing as much as this calculator thinks. I think I will just rebrew this thing exactly with no adjustments this year, see if i get the bad eff again.
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10/29/2020
calling it and kegging today. 10days. FG 1024
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10/26/2020
brewed this on 10/20/2020. need to update recipe from notebook but i believe it only came out at 1065. i think the flaked oats, wheat, and pumpkin dont contribute as many points as this calculator says it does....we will see.
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10/03/2020
reviewing notes and recipe from last year, going to combine kind of what i was trying to do and what i actually did. removing 1lb 2row and adding that to the maris otter. going to keep the 1lb honey malt, 1 lb lactose, 1lb wheat malt, 1 lb flaked oats, 1lb flaked wheat, 1lb 40L
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9/30/2019 brew day
there was snafu with ingredients. i had the homebrew shop pick my order last week. one bag was supposed to have 2lb oat malt and 2lb wheat malt. as far as i can tell it was just 4lb of flaked oats. so i just used 2lb of that flaked oat, then i had a bag of 1lb wheat malt and 40L (wouldve preferred not to use the 40L but it was mixed) so i added that and another lb of 2row.
Also for simplicity i scratched the existing spice bill and just did 2.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice. (using charlie papazian pumpkin recipe as reference for the approximate spice amount)
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/beer-recipe-of-the-week-cucurbito-pepo-pumpkin-ale-2/
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9/25/2019
changing from pilsner to maris otter
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9/16/2019
Based on the award winning mango maya recipe. Considering coconut!? Bumped it down from 8 to 4oz. taking the hop schedule and pumpkin and spice amounts from 2017's pumpkin single 2. (pumpkin single 1 used brown sugar which is counterproductive in this milkshake beer) changed 2row back to pilsner. color estimator looks pretty orange but considering adding some crystal malt? biscuit malt has highest lovibond from original recipe....
