CUJO SPICE v. 2.1 – pumpkin rye beer

V. 2.1 on the left, 2.0 on the right

The weekend after my first pumpkin spice rye beer brew day, I decided to do another batch of the stuff for the following reasons:

• My volume came up a bit lower than expected on the first brew day, maybe 4 gallons if I’m lucky
• I love pumpkin beer in the fall, so why not have more?
• Opportunity to experiment with my brewhouse efficiency – does it REALLY matter which brew shop’s mill I use?
• Opportunity to experiment with different yeast strains with the same malt bill, hops and brew day execution

Like I’d mentioned in my post covering the first pumpkin spice rye beer brew day, I’d heard from a guy in my brew club that the mill at Midwest Supplies (where I prefer to buy my grains) generally isn’t calibrated properly and thus under-mills malt, resulting in decreased efficiency. Since I’d purchased and milled my grains on version 2.0 of this recipe at Midwest, the next weekend I decided to buy and mill my grains for version 2.1 at Northern Brewer in St. Paul in order to discern whether there was any truth to the guy’s claim about attaining greater efficiency when milling at Northern.

Here it is right around high krausen a day later

More experiments?
Shortly before buying supplies, I decided I was going to do another experiment with this batch, though this experiment wouldn’t overlap with the first as it would occur post-brew day. Instead of re-pitching this batch on last week’s v. 2.0 California Ale yeast cake (WLP-001), I would try a completely different yeast strain to see how it affected the recipe. Since 001 attenuates very well, I was looking for something that would leave v. 2.1 a tad bit sweeter to see if that made the recipe better or worse. I settled on WLP-004, an Irish Ale yeast most often used for “dry” Irish stouts (yet according to the product’s description, “also great for Irish ales, porters, browns, reds and a very interesting pale ale”). Though this strain touts it’s high percentage of attenuation, it doesn’t attenuate quite as “dry” as WLP-001. Listen here to Chris White, founder of White Labs talk about WLP-004 Irish Ale yeast.

Here’s the recipe I went with for CUJO SPICE v. 2.1 (which was cost me about $29.00 at Northern vs. $24.00 at Midwest…):

Base: 7.75 lbs. American 2-Row, 3.5 lbs. Rye malt, 1.75 lbs. Munich malt
Specialty: .28 lbs. Crystal malt 50-60L, .29 lbs. flaked wheat
Other fermentables: 2 cups brown sugar in at 20″, 15 oz. canned pumpkin (sprinkled with 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice and then cooked on baking sheet at 350* for 15 min. and added in a hop bag to the boil at 15″)Hops: 1.0 oz. Mt. Hood pellets (60″), 1.0 oz. Cascade pellets (2″)
Hops: 1 oz. Mt. Hood (70″), 1 oz. Cascade (2″)
Yeast: White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale yeast (1600 ml yeast starter, 1 c light DME)
Irish moss (15″), yeast nutrient (10″), 1.5 tsp. nutmeg and 1.5 tsp. cinnamon (2″)

If you’re paying attention and have also read the v. 2.0 post, you’re thinking “What the hell Grant? What’s with these other fermentables? I thought you weren’t going to change the recipe!” Ok, so while I was mashing, I was also transfering v. 2.0 from primary to secondary. After thiefing a sample in order to take a gravity reading and have a taste, I found it had gotten down to about 7.1 or 7.2 brix (1.009-1.010), so definitely ready to be moved. BUT… it didn’t much taste like pumpkin. It was spicy, but it was a purely “rye” spice. A perfectly good rye beer, if I don’t say so myself… but not a pumpkin rye beer.

Boil additions and a sample of v. 2.0 taken during the mash of 2.1

My immediate thought was “Fuck holding true to the experiment. I definitely need to have a pumpkin beer for fall” so I made a mad dash for the grocery store where I picked up the only can of pumpkin they had as well as some more pumpkin spice. Got this stuff into the boil where previously indicated. Other changes to the original recipe include 2 cups of brown sugar added to beef up the gravity to my target and that American Cascades with higher alpha acids were used for aroma hopping rather than Argentinean Cascades as in v. 2.0. So now I’m down to a similar malt base but with many different alterations in v. 2.1.

Sparging, the boil and fermentation
This time I sparged for about 3 hours instead of 1.5 in order to ensure I got everything out of these damn grains, as the mill situation didn’t really seem to change the gravity much of the wort I was collecting. Not sure what my issue is, but I think I’ve pretty much ruled out mis-calibration of Midwest’s mill as the culprit.

The wort came out much lighter in color and ended at about 5 gallons in volume. Much brighter in color. More of a light brown/orange verses a mid-brown like v. 2.0. Fermentation took off within 8-12 hrs. at roughly 68-70* on the floor of my basement and completed in about 4 days, but I finally got around to transferring it to secondary after about 9 days. OG on 7/31/11 was 10 brix pre-boil, 14.5 post boil (1.059), which came down to 7 brix, or roughly 1.010 by 8/9/11. This batch is currently sitting in secondary. I’ll probably get around to bottling it near the end of August.