Jack's Lantern, Part 3

Fast forward to Saturday morning. 8am. Time to make the Pumpkin Cereal Mash.

Since the pumpkin had cooled in the oven overnight, I wanted to put some heat back in. I turned the oven back on for about 15 minutes, while I heated up 1½ gallons of water to somewhere near 165°.

I put all of the pumpkin pieces into the roasting pan and poured the 2 pounds of 6-Row malt on top. Then I added about 1 gallon of the hot water and stirred it all together.

I tested the temperature (~145°), and put it into the oven.

Since the temperature was lower than I wanted it to be, I turned the oven up to 200°. I ended up leaving it at 200° for the entire 2 hour mash, yet the mash temperature never got above 150°.

At 90 minutes into the mash, I used a potato masher to break apart all of the pumpkin pieces.

While the pumpkin cereal mashed for its final 30 minutes, I turned my attention to the main mash. For the main mash, there were 10¼ pounds of grain. I planned to use 32 oz water per pound of grain, so I heated that plus a couple quarts worth of water to 170°.

I didn't want to risk knocking the manifold loose at the bottom of my lauter tun, so I combined some of the grain and water outside of the tun and stirred it all together. I then poured this newly created mash into the bottom of the tun. I repeated this process a couple of times, until I had mixed all of the grains with the right amount of water.

Then, I stirred everything in the tun to combine, avoiding the bottom inch or so. Finally, I poured all of the pumpkin cereal on top and stirred it into about the top half of the mash. I took the mash temperature (153°), screwed on the lid, and left it to mash for 60 minutes.