Good Bad & The Monkey
How does the kitchen smell?
Much of the lost weight from cooking is just water, so no flavor or sugar should have been lost?
I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
Prince of Fatness
You could smell it, once it got going. That, and boiling some extract for the yeast starter.
I am not concerned by the shrinkage. Honestly, most of the flavor in these pumpkin beers comes from the spices, so a little less squash will not make much of a difference.
Not at it at all.
Did you taste the squash?
Fuck no. I don't like squash. Mrs Finn was picking on it. And, the son in law tried it. i think that he will like the beer more than the squash.
It definitely caramelized a bit though, you could see it.
I am thinking that tomorrow I will chop it up, into cubes. Small enough to get some flavor out of it but big enough to not get a stuck sparge.
I would mash it up and just stir the sparge. If cooked enough, it may just fully liquefy. If cooked inadequately, it is unlikely to contribute much. I would smash it in my hands!
It is pretty gooey. We scooped it out of the skin last night while it was still warm. I'll at least try to break it up and see what happens.
By the way I took before and after pictures of the roast, and will try to remember to get a shot of the mash.
Whoa. Slow ass sparge. But it went well. And wow, a small bit of spices go a long way. Wow. Pictures to follow.
Can you post smellovision too?
Pictures...
Here is the squash, cut up and ready to roast..
Roasted and peeled..
I followed Trent's advice and mashed it up the next morning..
I had to show a pic of my Barley Crusher. That's the SIL crushing the grains..
Nice! More pics?
SIL? Sister in law? With a beard? Weird.
One more, showing the squash in the mash....
Son in law, but you know that. Those are all of the pics I have. I forgot to get pics of the spices.
As I said, sparging was extremely slow, but it never stuck. It took at least an hour to sparge. Normally it is a half hour or less. I also forgot to get a gravity reading before pitching the yeast. Oh well.
I ended up using 4 whole cloves. They were tiny. I used one nutmeg. For the nutmeg we put it in a baggie and gave it a couple of whacks with a rubber mallet. One cinnamon stick, broke in half. And a half a cup of molasses.
The earliest that this will be consumed will be October, so the spices will have time to mellow. But wow, what an aroma. Wow.
I am going to brew a holiday beer similar to this, taking out the molasses and adding ginger root. I'll get a taste of this beer first so I can tweak the spices if need be.
You can grab a gravity now. What was your final volume?