Author: Malcolm Frazer
Pumpkin vs. Nunkin
I loathe pumpkin beer. I loathe the fact it’s been elevated to such a cult-like status that it has caused a seasonal creep so severe it’s starting to make St. Nick and his 7 dwarfs jealous. Sure, holiday themed corporatizations may show up in late October, and now beers flavored by a seasonal gourd with spicing reminiscent of wintery pies and Yankee Candles are beginning to appear as early as mid-July.
I also love hyperbole– my distaste for beers of this style is at least partly a cartoonish reaction to their pervasiveness. I truly believe all types of beer that are brewed well, deftly showcase the ingredients, and demonstrate balance have their place and time. Admittedly, I make one or two spiced gourd beers every year for friends and relatives or to pour at local events. My major complaint has to do with balance, which reminds me of an eloquent lesson I learned from a great philosopher:
First learn balance. Balance good- pumpkin beer good, everything good. Balance bad- might as well pack up, go home.
Fine, Daniel-san may not have been asking about when he gets to learn how to make pumpkin beer, and I may have taken a little creative liberty with Mr. Miyagi’s response, but the point remains the same– balance is key! With brewers throwing so much spice at their pumpkin beers these days, it’s only natural that some have begun to question whether adding actual pumpkin really even matters. As is often the case with these types of debates, passionate opinions reside on both sides with some believing a pumpkin beer can’t be a pumpkin beer without pumpkin, claiming it does indeed contribute positively to the overall character, while others view its use as merely gilding the lily.
Since my military days, I have come to dislike performing tasks for the sake of ceremony alone– ever wax a white tiled floor in a submarine’s engine room? Yeah, ludicrous. As such, I’m not much interested in adding pumpkin to a beer and dealing with the associated challenges if doing so produces a product indistinguishable from one brewed without it.
| PURPOSE |
To evaluate the differences between two gourd-forsaken Autumn Spice Beers, one brewed with real pumpkin and spices while the other received spices only.
| METHODS |
I started off by designing a malty Amber Ale recipe of medium-high strength with a moderate amount of spices in order to give the pumpkin batch a fighting chance and also make it drinkable for people who are not basic white girls.
The namesake for my non-pumpkin batch was graciously loaned to us by a great local brewery called East End Brewing Company whose owner, Scott Smith, is a good friend to the local beer scene. In addition to welcoming the idea of me using the name, he also invited me to collect data at his premises. Regarding East End’s Nunkin Ale™ recipe, here’s what Scott has to say:
How many pumpkins do we use in this beer? None! It’s not like you can actually taste the squash anyway, so let’s be up front and honest about it, ok? Only available when the Nunkins are in season!
Pumpkin vs. Nunkin Autumn Spiced Ale
| Batch Size | Boil Time | IBU | SRM | OG | FG | ABV |
| 5.5 gal | 60 min | 18 | 8 | 1.064 SG | 1.013 SG | 6.7% |
Fermentables
| Name | Amount | % |
| 2 Row Malt, Great Western Malting Co. | 4 lbs 3 oz | 31 |
| Munich, Avangard | 4 lbs 3 oz | 31 |
| Vienna, Avangard | 4 lbs 3 oz | 31 |
| Caramunich II, Weyermann (SRM 45) | 15.0 oz | 7 |
Adjuncts
| Name/Form | Amount | Use | Time |
| Pumpkin puree | 3.63 lbs (2 large cans) | Mash | 60 min |
| Pumpkin puree | 0.94 lbs (1 small can) | Boil | 5 min |
| Saigon cinnamon, ground | 4.0 grams | Boil | 1 min |
| Candied ginger, crystallized | 2.0 grams | Boil | 1 min |
| Nutmeg, fresh grated | 1.0 gram | Boil | 1 min |
| Allspice, pods | 0.5 gram | Boil | 1 min |
Nunkin recipe included all the same spices without any of the pumpkin puree additions.
Hops
| Name | Amt/IBU (Tinseth) | Time | Use | Form | Alpha % |
| Magnum | 15 g/18 IBU | 60 Min | Boil | Pellet | 13.1% |
Yeast
| Name | Lab | Attenuation | Ferm Temp |
| WLP002 English Ale Yeast | White Labs | 70% | 67°F |
A couple days prior to brewing, I produced a 3L starter using two White Labs PurePitch pouches of WLP002 English Ale Yeast, which I selected because I thought its slightly lower attenuation would work well for this style. After harvesting some for the future, the leftover starter would be split between the 2 batches.
My first order of business on brew day was weighing out the same amount of grain for both batches then milling it all in preparation for mashing.
I staggered the start of each batch by 30 minutes in an attempt to reduce (not eliminate) the crazy, the pumpkin version was up first. In order to avoid the dreaded stuck sparge caused by the 2 large cans of pumpkin puree in the mash, I opted to use 1 lb of rice hulls to keep things fluffy.
Shameful of the crime I was committing, I donned an identity concealing protective cover.
To keep things as even as possible, the Nunkin batch received the same amount of rice hulls. I considered attempting to guesstimate the amount of sugar the pumpkin puree would add to the wort (sources list anywhere from 0.002-0.005 PPG) then add the required amount of base grain to the Nunkin batch to achieve a similar OG, but in the end I chose not to as I wanted to limit the impact of any extraneous variables. Any differences between these beers would be a function of the pumpkin. Each mash rested for an hour at my target temperature.
The pumpkin batch was boiling as I was collecting the sweet wort from the Nunkin batch. I added 1 small can of puree to the boiling wort with 5 minutes left until flameout.
I added the pre-measured and ground spices to each batch with 1 minute left in the boil.
The Nunkin batch was treated exactly the same except no pumpkin was added. At the end of each boil, the wort was chilled and transferred to 6.5 gallon glass carboys. Sitting next to each other prior to aeartion and pitching yeast, a big difference was already noticeable. Would this translate into a perceivable difference?
An observation I absolutely was not anticipating was the difference in original specific gravity between the batches. As I alluded to earlier, I considered compensating for the additional sugar I expected would be added by the offending fruit, but ultimately opted against it. Apparently this was a good decision, as the Nunkin wort had a higher OG than the pumpkin wort. What the hell?!
I can only guess the addition of any sugar from the puree was offset by a decrease in mash efficiency, but really, I’m at a loss. Obviously more testing and research is needed before anything conclusive can be determined.
Both beers received the same amount of pure oxygen before the yeast was pitched. They were rockin’ and rollin’ 18 hours later.
When visible signs of fermentation had diminished, I measured the SG of each beer to ensure they’d attenuated to my target FG. Interestingly, while the Nunkin batch started a few points higher, it ended .001 point lower, leaving me wondering if the gourd had reared it’s ugly head.
I let the beers sit a few more days before confirming FG had indeed been reached, then they were cold crashed, kegged, then left to carbonate in my keezer for a couple weeks before being presented to tasters for evaluation. While I usually fine with gelatin, I forgot to do so with these beers due to work and family obligations. I was hoping some extra time might assist in the clarification of these beers, but no such luck. Perhaps it’s my own self-confirming bias, but I actually perceive the mildly hazy-orange as both pleasing to the eye and suggestive of pumpkin, even in the Nunkin batch. After a couple weeks in the cold keezer, I did notice the Nunkin batch had cleared slightly more than the pumpkin beer.
| RESULTS |
Over a 3 day period, 40 gracious participants agreed to sacrifice their taste buds for this xBmt. The panelists included folks from various backgrounds ranging from BJCP judges, experienced homebrewers, professional brewers, bar owners, hardcore craft beer lovers, and a couple casual beer drinkers. Each participant was served 3 samples in separate colored opaque cups, 1 from the Nunkin (spice only) and 2 from the beer brewed with pumpkin puree and spices.
In order to achieve statistical significance with the given sample size, 19 tasters (p<0.05) would have been required to accurately identify the Nunkin beer as being different. Of the 40 participants, only 17 (p=0.11) were able to correctly identify the unique beer in the triangle test, a response rate consistent with chance, suggesting a general inability for tasters to reliably distinguish between the same pumpkin beer brewed with and without actual pumpkin.
Since we failed to reach significance for this xBmt, despite using a slightly more liberal statistical test, the comparative evaluations of those participants who were correct on the triangle test are arguably meaningless. Because of this, I urge caution when interpreting this information and would recommend not using as a basis for your decisions.
The 17 tasters who correctly identified the unique beer in the triangle test were asked to compare only the 2 beers that were different, the nature of the xBmt remaining unknown. Very few experienced the aroma (3) and flavor (4) as being not at all different, with most reporting them as being either somewhat similar or exactly the same. Five of these tasters thought the mouthfeel of the beers was not at all similar, while 9 felt they were somewhat similar and only 3 thought they were exactly the same. Pretty inconsistent, if you ask me. Comments were all over the place, with one person describing the Nunkin beer as “less harsh” while another person said the beer made with pumpkin was “smoother.”
These tasters were then asked to select the beer they preferred and, interestingly, 13 of the 17 (76.5%) endorsed the Nunkin batch. Following this, the nature of the xBmt was revealed and the tasters were instructed to select the beer they believed was brewed with spices only. The responses were split, 9 got it right while the other 8 wrongly believed the Nunkin batch had been brewing with pumpkin.
My Impressions: I hadn’t really developed a strong opinion regarding whether or not the use of pumpkin in such a beer mattered all that much, though it has been common for me to do so in the past. I must say, I was pleased with how both the Nunkin and pumpkin beers turned out, they were pretty close to what I’d envisioned when designing the recipe. Even with my involvement in the process, and despite the different OGs, distinguishing between these beers was more difficult than I expected. In multiple “blind” trials, I was unable to tell them apart. However, and likely as a result of bias, I do feel like I developed a better ability to tell them apart after sampling them side-by-side many times. To me, the batch with pumpkin had a minor vegetal note that, with the spice character of the beer, came across as somewhat like zucchini bread, and I experienced the mouthfeel as ever-so-slightly fuller when I really paid attention to it. I also thought the spicing in the Nunkin beer was a little more assertive and upfront. Honestly though, these beers were far more similar than they were different.
| DISCUSSION |
It was humorous to watch people react when they first approached the sample cups for this xBmt, despite being an extremely popular style and having a ravenous fan base, such Autumn inspired beers are certainly polarizing. Where a subtle look of joy would wash over some tasters’ faces as their noses entered the cup, as if they’d just smelled fresh baked cookies, others would quickly shoot me a look of utter displeasure. I came to enjoy this part of the process. One panelist joking declared they’d been duped into drinking a “godforsaken pumpkin beer”, while a group of young women asked for more. While the contentious opinions regarding this style overall will likely persist, perhaps the results of this xBmt have shed at least a little light on the question of whether pumpkin is a requisite addition when making such a beer. From a purely statistical perspective, and based solely on this single xBmt, it would appear to have minimal impact.
One caveat to this xBmt is the fact I used pumpkin straight from the can, whereas some brewers prefer roasting it first in order to remove water and create maillard reactions that purportedly intensify the flavors. It’s wholly possible such treatment would impart enough character that a non-gourd’d version would be more reliably distinguishable by tasters. We’ll have to get to this one another time, maybe next season, once I’ve washed the essence of pumpkin pie spice completely from my palate.
So, to pumpkin or not to pumpkin?
Well, if you tend toward a decision-making approach that relies primarily on empirical evidence, or if you simply prefer less complicated brew days, you might opt to forgo using pumpkin in your next seasonal spiced beer. On the other hand, if you like employing traditional methods for the sake of custom, or trust the tongue of yours truly, go ahead and toss some pumpkin in. Assuming an otherwise sound process, both approaches are likely to result in similarly decent beers. Like with most things in brewing and life, do what you think works best and provides you the greatest degree of enjoyment. Oh yeah…
HAPPY FALL!
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31 thoughts on “exBEERiment | Impact Pumpkin Has On An Autumn Spice Ale”
While roses contain 1200-1500 organic molecules involved in their scent, only one is used to make an artificial rose scent used in commercial products. When asked to identify which scent was “true” rose, people overwhelmingly chose the artificial rose scent. — Paraphrased from Hops by Stan Heironymous
Very interesting to see the same thing happen with pumpkin.
I would love to see this done without pumpkin spice additions — just a brown ale or porter, one with ~15% of its fermentables from pumpkin, and one without.
15 percent of the fermentables? Meaning 15% of the extract is from the gourd?! Wow. At a generous composition of 1.005 per pound per gallon that’d be an immense amount of gourd. Maybe Dickinson squash have more, or Sugar Pumpkins? Not sure.I would need to do more in depth research. From the back of a Libby’s can – 1/2 cup (122g) of puree provides only 10g of carbohydrates – half of that is sugar and the rest dietary fiber.
5 ppg at around 8 pounds per gallon is around 1.040 for pumpkin, which is on par with the prickly pear juice I got out recently. I just used it in substitution of water. This means for a 6 gallon batch of 1.040, he’d need 8 pounds of pumpkin.
Note that the grains we used are dried — I’d bet you that if he used pounds of dried pumpkin, there would be a much more stark gravity difference, in the other direction
Matthew,
At 5ppg and 8 lbs you’d have only 1 gallon of 1.040 wort. If you divide that by the volume into the fermentor (for me it’s about 5.5-6.0 gallons) you’d have 5.5 gal of ~1.008 wort.
That sounds about right to me. 4.5 lb of pumpkin puree would contain about half a gallon of water – and, as you noted, almost no sugar. I actually just calculate it as water for purposes of determining strike water additions.
Great article, couldn’t agree more on pumpkin beers. Was tasting one I bought for my wife this year and finally said to myself. “Ya know I just don’t really like pumpkin beers all that much”. Too much of a novelty and don’t really lend themselves to drink-ability.
That said if I was making one I’d have to use some pumpkin, otherwise it’s just a pie spiced beer. Throw one can in the mash. Might not come through in flavor but at least you can say you used real pumpkin.
That is odd about the gravity. I’ve brewed a pumpkin ale once with and once without gourds. I’ve also brewed that same recipe with gourds 3 times now. I’ve also brewed a different pumpkin stout. For my Pumpkin ales my recipe for 3.5 gallons uses 30 ounces of butternut squash and 15oz of pumpkin (all purees). Compared to the non-gourd using recipe as well as based on calculator math and my typical recipes, I get right about 1.005PPG both using purees of the canned stuff as well as using my home grown edible pumpkins that I have roasted and made puree out of. That is up at a 156F mash on all of them. The Stout is a more mild 1.064OG and the Ale a more aggressive 1.086OG all using San Diego Super (okay, my first one used S05 a couple of years ago).
As for taste…I did try a bottle of the no-gourd next to the bottle of the gourded stuff and I could tell easily. The handful of friends I’ve tried with blind NON-triangle tests could all tell which beer was which. Of course it wasn’t as good a trial as the participants new the nature of the test and they were always served two separate beers. They also were served on several occasions over a couple of weeks. Also one beer was about 6 weeks older than the other beer (they were about 3 months and 4 1/2 months of age each).
Neither was a bad beer, but the one with the gourd had pronounced pumpkin flavor which the non-gourded one was lacking in (and I don’t mean pumpkin spice, I mean pumpkin). Whether that is because I am using butternut squash primarily, which was recommended to me a couple of years ago as leaving a real pumpkin flavor, where pumpkin doesn’t leave much of anything, or if it is just gourds in general with the recipe I am using, that has been my only experience.
I dunno, the times I’ve used butternut squash and pureed pumpkin, both home grown edible pumpkins as well as canned stuff, I get MUCH higher gravity contribution. I’ve averaged about 1.010 PPG with about 60% average fermentability when it is all mashed in (I always mash all of it). All mashes have been conducted at 156F and BiaB stirring every 10 minutes for an hour with a batch sparge at 168F for 10 minutes.
Also having brewed the same Pumpkin Ale recipe 3 times and one version without pumpkin ale, but with the same OG and the exact same spicing between them, about 10 people I tried them out on could easily tell which one was which when served blind and over a couple of week period (including multiple trials of several people). A couple of those people couldn’t tell, but it was well over half of them got it right and consistently right. I could easily tell which one was which.
My recipe uses 30oz of Butternut squash and 15oz of pumpkin in it (3.5 gallon recipe). I’ve also done a pumpkin stout recipe with 32oz of home grown pureed pumpkin (4 gallon recipe) that was roasted at low heat for a few hours to caramelize it heavily.
So, dunno. I can’t speak to the Pumpkin stout, but the ale, I found using my recipe, you can tell pretty easily which is which with a more pumpkin (but not spicy) note, but also more body on the one that used the gourds, vs the one that didn’t. Both were good, but I know which one was my preference.
I forgot to add, I don’t really like pumpkin beers, so I started brewing my own both because my wife does love them (and she wears yoga pants to, but in her defense (maybe it makes it worse) she is a yoga instructor) and because I wanted to make them MY way. So that hopefully I’d like them. Mixed results, I don’t mind one, but not something I’d ever sit around and drink several of (even over the course of a night). The Pumpkin stout is right up my alley though. Tastes kind of like pumpkin pie crust, but I need to reduce the ginger probably 25% next time. I could probably drink a couple of those in a night. Still not really my thing though.
Why the hell do people mash the fucking pumkin? I know this advice is all over the place, but that’s sure as hell not what I’d do to make a blueberry beer or a jalepeno beer or a turnip beer. If I wanted a beer to taste like pumpkin, I’d put the pumpkin in the fermenter, like with any other fruit.
More potential for longer chain sugars that may have the ability to be converted if mashed. Most other fruits tend to be much more simple simple sugars. This is my weakly researched guess – I have not done a true in depth look at the sugar make up – but simply pumpkin is less sweet than say blueberries.
Pumpkin has starch. You wouldn’t add flour to the boil
To also add, pumpkin and butternut squash are fairly PH neutral, unlike some berries and fruit which are relatively acidic, which can mess up the PH of the mash. Ask me someday about the time I stupidly mashed cranberries with my grains and the disaster that cranberry stout ended up being. Only thing I ever mash is pumpkin/butternut squash and it works really well. Everything else is end of boil or post primary fermentation in the carboy.
“ever wax a white tiled floor in a submarine’s engine room? “, why yes I have
Did it seem like a good idea? Did you do it anyway? Multiple times? Hahaha. I can needle-gun like a mo’fo.
Could the lower OG in the pumpkin version simply be due to the pumpkin puree having a lower concentration of sugar than the wort? A quick google search reveals pumpkin puree is only about 3% sugar. Unless the boil volume was reduced to compensate I would expect this to drop the OG as it would dilute the wort. Or maybe I’m missing something?
I count myself lucky to never having had one then! Not popular around here, but I dread the time closer to winter when I accidentally order a spiced winter warmer. That said, a local brewery makes a nice golden ale with kafir and lemongrass!
Nice post Malcolm. Your writing style is spot on for this content.
On sugar content, it isn’t terribly high, but it does have a fair amount of starches. The bit I have teased apart is that butternut squash and pumpkin both have roughly .5oz of carbs per 4oz. Of that .5oz of carbs you are looking at around 25% sugars and 75% longer carbs like starches. So, it makes complete sense to mash them. I haven’t personally tried comparing a pumpkin mash vs a no mash, but I’d bet almost anything that the no mash leads to lower final gravity. Also one other thing to account for on OG, there are a lot of fine particulates (and not so fine) that pumpkin or butternut squash would add, which will increase OG somewhat, but will settle out after fermentation, pulling down FG (just like taking a gravity reading with a lot of fine silt dissolved in the solution would do).
So the clarity of your wort when you take a measurement as well as the clarity on run off I would think, would also make some difference with something like puree being added. Even if only a few points of gravity.
No idea if having more of the particulate matter make it in to the carboy would make a difference on extracted sugars in the end or not, or if you would have dissolved out all possible dissolved sugars by the end of the boil. In my experience with puree and my general zero filtration to the carboy method of brewing, pumpkin ales have 3 sediment lines, pumpkin/squash, yeast cake and finally hop material on top. It also means I have a much thicker trub due to a lot of the pumpkin and butternut squash puree making it in to the carboy (whatever wasn’t captured in the grain bag).
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, just did a zero-spiced pumpkin and squash english ale and it has no real observable gourd flavor. I get your mash point if the goal is to get maximum *sugar* from the pumpkin, but isn’t that offset by the fact that the yeast will simply consume it?
I’m about 5% confidence here, but I’m kind of with fool101 above here — what’s the point of converting the long chain pumpkin starches just to feed them to the yeast? If the goal is pumpkin flavor/feel, this seems to work against you.
It begs the question: what the hell is it, exactly, that is providing the “pumpkin” flavor many of the commenters here are saying they can easily identify. Is it simply just the pumpkin sugars? If so, you definitely shouldn’t be mashing (or more precisely, shouldn’t be adding pre-fermentation). If it’s something else, I can see the mash potentially being a good extracting environment for whatever the “other” stuff is, and if it’s not sugars/starches, then it’s not being converted or consumed, so who cares.
All that said I have no idea. Been trying to figure out what & how to brew next to try and identify pumpkin in a non-spiced beer.
In cooking with gourds and pumpkins, I found that the canned stuff is flavorless and basically useless. Especially that organic whole foods brand. Instead, take a cooking pumpkin or even your jack-o’-lantern and cut it up into big chunks scoop out the insides and roast in the oven for an hour. Use the resulting mush. It’s a totally different animal and the end result is vastly superior.
Decorative pumpkins usually have even lower sugar content and less flavor. They smell like latex paint – a very raw chemical like aroma.
Yup, this is why I’ve been primarily using canned butternut squash (which does have plenty of flavor) and this year since I started growing cooking pumpkins, I’ve been using those. Cut them in half, scoop out the seeds and then roast for an hour at 350F. Then scoop out the meat, puree it, spread it in a pyrex dish and then bake it again for an hour at 350F. Gives it some very nice caramelization and oddles of flavor.
I usually use 12 – 15 lbs pumpkin for 6 gallons. I slice it, roast it, skin it, dice it, and cereal mash it with some 6 – row…. add to Belgium styled wheat or porter/stout recipes
I wonder if all that work is worth it, outside of the enjoyment you get from the exercise itself. Is it perceivable?
I actually LOVE pumkin pie, so I make a few pumpkin pie beers each year. Not pumpkin beers, but pumpkin pie beers. Pie has the spices. I roast the pumpkin with brown sugar until brown and caramelly, and mostly dry. This goes into the boil kettle and the 155F wort sits on it with no heat for about 30mins to “mash” the pumpkin. The wort is boiled and cooled, then goes through a strainer into the ferment bucket to try and remove as much matter as possible. After krausen the single tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice is added. The beer finishes and is packaged as normal and is about as balanced as I could imagine a pumpkin beer could be. Most commercial beers are too heavy towards a single element, and mine are just even and crushable!
Good reminder, Beerswimmer. We may need to look at this again.
I had a chance to do a comparison of just a non-spice pumpkin ale. A local brewery, Green Flash, a few years ago did a pumpkin ale with their golden ale. If I wasn’t given any detail about the beer I would’v notice that it was a good ale and wouldn’t be able to discern any pumpkins in it. But having the side by side comparison, the pumpkin does add body and mouth feel to the beer. Maybe a better approach would suggested is just pumpkins only. I would use real pumpkins and not can pumpkins. I think that would have detrimental effect on the beer. Can anything really sucks compared to the fresh. I know it’s easier to use but I think the effort is really worth it in the final product. I enjoy the humor. I always think it’s funny how someone hates something just because it’s popular (think hazy IPAs now) or likes something because it isn’t popular. Do trends really have an impact on flavors? I guess we humans are a weird bunch. Cheers!
I reread the post and the line “Can anything really sucks compared to fresh.” By ‘can’ I am referring to a product that has been canned.
When will part 2 be published? Looks like you really fear to make another batch of pumpkin beer!
Would rather take something like a butternut squash for a second xBmt. Make it cook and roast and then, maybe, something is going to be significant.
Keep up the great work =)
Not sure. Fearing it? no. But certainly not excited about doing it. Haha. I do like the idea of a Yam or Squash beer though.