Imperial Pumpkin PIE porter

Two things, you may want to use roasted pumkin or pumpkin puree instead of the pie filling. I would steep the pumpkin and specialty malts together.
Second, you may be better off using a touch of rum and making a tincture with the pie spices and putting them in secondary. I find the further from the final product you are in the brewing process when adding things like spices or coffee the more muted these things become. By saying further from the final product I mean adding spices in the mash would lead to more muted flavors than adding at flameout, and adding a tincture in your bottling bucket or keg would have the most noticable pie flavors.
shit, did I say two things, I meant three...
lastly, im not sure where your base recipe came from. I am not sure what grains were used to make porter lme, and I would be nervous to add all of those other grains later for fear of having too much of a sweet crystal flavor, or too much bitterness. When I do extract batches I use pilsen lme or dme in place of 2 row or whatever base malt the recipe calls for, then I build up the specialty grains like a regular all grain recipe. If those grains need mashing I use the brew in a bag method and actually mash them with an extra pound of 2row or even 6row to get full conversion.

 

When making a pumkin beer, the roasted pumpkin goes on top of the mash tun and is gently stirred in about 1 inch. I get plenty of flavor and no pumpkin debree in the beer. I spice a t the same time. never used porter LME but that brew sure will be dark and roasty. If you think its gonna be too sweet but want to use the recipe anyways, add another oz of nugget. have fun!!

 

I agree with making a tincture with the spices. Ground cinnamon turns into goop that you won't want in your beer. I add the spice tincture to my bottling bucket.

 

Let us know how it turns out.

 

I have lots of thoughts about this. I'll do my best to keep my post organized and to the point.

1. As @SFACRKnight brought up, the Porter LME already has lots of specialty grains. Assuming you're using Briess Porter LME, you can get a detailed breakdown of what's in it here: http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDFs/Briess_PISB_CBWPorterLME.pdf . Because this extract already has plenty of caramel/crystal and carapils, I would skip the specialty grains and do this all extract. The extract alone will easily give you a monster OG of 1.11-1.12.

2. Wyeast reports that 1084 has an alcohol tolerance of 12% and you're pushing the boundaries of that. It is absolutely imperative that you do everything you can to help this yeast out. Make a big starter (probably with two smack packs), use lots of yeast nutrient, and oxygenate your wort to the best of your ability. Otherwise, this yeast is going to crap out on you and you'll end up with an under-attenuated sugar bomb.

3. When are your hops going in? In general, pumpkin beers aren't terribly bitter nor do they have huge hop flavor. You might consider scrapping the Cascade entirely.

4. My gut tells me that you're going to overspice your beer. I recently brewed an imperial pumpkin ale (more like a Scottish Wee Heavy) that came out at 9.5% ABV and only used a total of 1 tbsp of spices (Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Clove, Ginger, Cardamom) that went in 2 minutes from the end of the boil. Remember that you can always add more spice, but it's impossible to take spice out if you overdo it. Maybe add a fraction of your pumpkin pie spice near the end of your boil, and then also prepare a tincture to increase the spice level up IF you want to at bottling.

5. It would be ideal if you could mash your pumpkin as @GormBrewhouse advocates. Pumpkin is very starchy, and the starch will not convert to sugar unless you make it. You might consider doing a very small mash in a covered kitchen pot with your pumpkin and a pound of 6 row base malt (or something else with high diastatic power) to convert some of the pumpkin starch.

Hope this helps and happy brewing!

 

For a more pumpkin pie flavor, I'd add a vanilla bean tincture at secondary or before kegging. I also like to add a little candied/crystallized ginger (1/2-1 oz at 2 minutes with other spices) in my pumpkin beers to round the spices out. This year I'm looking forward to brewing a pumpkin stout!

 

My vanilla bean tincture = 4oz rum (I prefer rum for pumpkin beers in case a hint shines through) with 3 chopped and scraped fresh vanilla beans. Let this sit in a bottle for a month or so, I like to shake mine occasionally to move things around and expose more surface area to more rum. When you put the beer into secondary (or if you just primary, add it to the primary for a few days before bottling/kegging) add the entire 4oz rum + soaked chopped up vanilla beans in as well and proceed as usual.

You can make a tincture of anything else in the same way. I ordere vanilla beans and bottles for each type of tincture I make from www.beanilla.com Excellent products, fair prices and fast shipping!

 

https://www.beanilla.com/vanilla-extract-infusion-kit/

Here you go...starter kit with beans and directions on how to do it. I'm a fan of the Madagascar beans for most brews. The vanilla tincture/extract is excellent in baking as well!

 

You can also tincture with vodka. The higher the proof the better. Basically the alcohol pulls the essence out of the parent material and stores it in the vodka. Cover the parent material with the vodka. 100 proof is what works well for me. Different materials take different amounts of time. Hope it helps.

 

Vanilla bean tincture. AKA Vanilla extract. This took me 2 years to get my extract where I wanted it and not tasting like I just took a shot of some Smirnoff girly drink. I hope it shapes up quickly for Quint.