Pumpkin pie smells delicious… and my pumpkin ale smells just like pumpkin pie…

So here’s what I learned during this brew session…

First off, pumpkin itself isn’t very flavorful… it’s rather bland and I chose it over canned for a couple reasons…

Second, most of the flavor in pumpkin beers usually come from the spices anyways (pumpkin pie spice, ground allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, cinnamon,

etc.)…

Third, I wanted to try the ‘sweet pie’ pumpkin breed…

Canned versions like Libby’s uses Dickinson pumpkins… and some canned versions will have salt, sugar or spices…

I’ve heard that canned pumpkin is much better than using actual pumpkin, but that’s what this test is all about…

So here’s more or less what I did with this beer…

My Pumpkin Ale recipe:

9 lbs American 2-Row Barley

1.25 lbs Munich (20 L)

.5 lbs American Wheat

.25 lbs Crystal (40 L)

2 Sweet Pie Pumpkins (roughly 24 oz of pulp)

1 oz Cascade 5.5% AA (60 min)

.5 oz Cascade 5.5% AA (30 min)

1 tsp Cinnamon (5 min)

1 tsp Nutmeg (5 min)

1 tsp Ground Allspice (5 min)

1 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (5 min)

WLP001 California Ale Yeast (1 L starter)

RO Water

105 ppm Ca

132 ppm Cl

76 ppm SO[4]

For one, I added a bit of wheat malt to increase the body of the beer since I brewed a lighter beer… I used 1.73 chloride to sulfate ratio to help bring

out the maltyness and hopefully the flavor of the pumpkin out…

I started out with a protein rest at 134 F mostly for the wheat and then mashed at 156 F to get a slighty malty beer and give it a touch of creamyness…

I boiled for 90 minutes to bring out the flavor of the malts and the pumpkin since I added the pumpkin to the boil.

I added minimum amount of hops (around 26 IBUs) to avoid fighting the flavor and aroma of the pumpkin…

Overall, I am happy with the recipe and process and I think it will be a good way to test whether adding pumpkin to the mash or the boil is better… Once I

find that out, I may experiment with different pumpkin breeds, including canned… or I may try to incorporate darker malts…

I haven’t found much ‘good’ information on brewing with pumpkin so maybe we’ll come up with something good here… this is my first pumpkin brew so I welcome

comments, suggestions, and critiques…

Remember this is an experiment which I talked about on this past newsletter:

Brewing Pumpkin Beers

Here are the results I’ve found, plus what I’m doing to improve my pumpkin beer

Cheers!

How To Brew Beer