Brewing a pumpkin ale requires plenty of pumpkin
Actually, it doesn’t. A lot of the perfectly good pumpkin ales you’ll find in stores are brewed with 0 lbs of pumpkin. Much of the flavor comes from the spices, like a pumpkin pie. But in our case, we used 10 lbs of pumpkin for 10 gallons of beer. That’s almost 1 lb per gallon, if you do the math.
Check out the pumpkin (which Joel roasted beforehand to get it nice and soft) just simmering in the wort as we finish up the sparge:
That color is amazing. Here’s the first spice addition (of 4 total), including cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg:
We’re actually not quite sure how this beer will turn out. We took pretty crappy notes last year so “adjusting the amount of spices” was really more like “starting over.” But Jeff has informed me that he’s not afraid to brew another pumpkin beer this month if need be. Last but not least, a picture of 5 lbs of freshly-baked pumpkin sitting at the bottom of our fermenter, waiting to accept 10 gallons of 80-degree wort. Mmmmm.
Thanks to everyone who came last night! It was a fun time. If you didn’t make it, buy yourself some gas and come next time.
Jonathan, Joel & Jeff
September 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Wow, you guys are getting close to the edge of beermaking sanity. Next you’ll be tossing an oven-roasted golden turkey into the fermenter around Thanksgiving…or tossing some marshmallow peeps into the fermenter around Easter. Keep it up!
September 30th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I’d roast to get a bit of carmelization, I have heard of folks doing that with much success, but it looks like a great effort, I hope it turns out great!