Ideally, roasted malts should be no more than 10% of the grist. Beers at the higher end of this range can be acrid depending on the blend of roasted malts, I've gone with de-husked Caraf III instead of the traditional Black Patent malts to prevent the beer from being too astringent. For most porters, A 40/60 mix of highly kilned and lighter kilned grain like black and chocolate malts, strikes a nice balance of sharper roasted notes and less burnt coffee/chocolate notes. In this beer we're going for mild caramel, toffee and malt flavours to complement the pumpkin. Black malts and roasted barley should be kept under 5% of the grist.
You can used canned pumpkin but I prefer fresh sugar baby pumpkins from my garden. Smaller pumpkins will have a higher concentration of sugars, try and find fruit no bigger than a soccer ball. For fresh pumpkin - chop in half and roast cut-side down on a sheet pan. Rub with 1tbsp brown sugar and roast for 40min at 400°F until dark brown and caramelized. Note that even with a very sweet fruit, the amount of sugar imparted to your wort from the pumpkin is going to be negligible (1-8 PPG). For the purpose of recipie building it's safest to treat it as having zero effect on the OG. Pumpkin will lose much of its water-weight when roasting; 5lb of fresh pumpkin will roast down to about 2lb. No pumpkin? Acorn & Butternut squash from the grocery store is a great alternative (I actually prefer it to pumpkin).
Liquid starter process:
- Add 1/2 litre of hot tap water to a flask and dissolved 100g of dry malt extract.
- Top up the flask to bring the volume of liquid up to the 1L mark.
- Put the flask on the smallest burner on your stove and heat VERY CAREFULLY on the lowest setting for 15 minutes. Keep the solution just under boiling and watch for boil overs.
- Tightly cover the top of the flask with aluminum foil and remove from heat. Let cool for 30 minutes and then move it to the refrigerator.
- When the flask is cool to the touch (below 75°F), pitch the yeast and shake vigorously. Replace the foil, keep covered and let ferment until brew day (24-48 hrs).
https://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/02/homebrewing-tips-techniques-how-to-make-a-yeast-starter-for-high-alcohol-beer.html
Brew in a bag procedure:
- Heat strike water to 76°C (168°F)
- Add grains to brew kettle in nylon bag
- Stabilize the grain bed at 68°C (154°F) and hold for 60 minutes.
- Remove the nylon bag and transfer to another vessel.
- Sparge with boiling water to bring mash bed back up to 68°C (154°F). Add runnings back into the wort.
- Hang or squeeze out the bag to extract any remaining sugars. Add runnings back into the wort. If necessary, top up with clean water to reach the boil volume of 6gl (you should have lost about 1.2gl to grain absorption).
- Boil the wort for 60 minutes, adding the hops and spices as indicated in the ingredients list.
- Cool to 21°C (70°F)
- Oxygenate and pitch the yeast.
- Start fermentation cool, at about 64°F (18°C), to inhibit diacetyl production and prevent the production of fusel alcohols. After 72 hours or so, let the temperature rise by a few degrees (to 68°F/20°C) is good), and hold it there for the rest of fermentation.
- (Optional) Transfer to a secondary and let fermentation complete and settle for 7 days.
- Bottle or keg, condition for ~2 weeks before drinking.
Edits:
- 2018-11-16: Way too much roasted malts and pumpkin. Removed extra roasted barley and reduced the pumpkin. Spices in the boil did nothing - add whole spices to the primary fermenter instead.
