Best way to make a pumpkin ale

I feel like I struck gold, and I know some of you here have done it this way already. But, it's a new discovery for me. I decided to buy a pumpkin yesterday instead of using canned, since we needed a jack-o-lantern anyway. $2.99, definintely cheaper than buying canned.

I gutted the pumpkin, then carved maybe 1/3 of it's inside flesh without disturbing the outside. I cut that into chunks and placed on a baking sheet. I cooked at 325 for maybe 30 minutes or so, til it smelled toasted, but didn't look burnt.

I threw those chunks into my mash for the full 60 minutes. I now have about 6 gallons (I had to drain almost a gallon of beer to make it fit in my fermenter ) of some really tasty wort that has a full on pumpkin flavor and aroma. I mean it's stronger then using 4lbs of canned pumpkin. And, the best part? NO TRUB! Absolutely no trub, I mean, maybe a 1/2 inch. I have less trub than when I don't use pumpkin.

Anyway, thought I'd share

EDIT: I used to boil canned pumpkin and get about 1 to 1.5 gals of trub

That sounds like it's gonna come out awesome. They started selling pumpkins here about a week after I did mine with canned pumpkin

Professor Frink said:

That sounds like it's gonna come out awesome. They started selling pumpkins here about a week after I did mine with canned pumpkin

Click to expand...

Canned pumpkin makes a great beer, I've used it. I was just so happy to find a way to avoid the trub that it caused me last time!

For comparison, I just did Dogfish Head's Pumpkin Porter from the Extreme Brewing book. It called for two pounds of fresh pumpkin, skinned and cut into one-inch cubes. You boil the cubes for half an hour and then puree, adding the results to a partial mash.

I will let you know how it turns out, but with half of a pumpkin left I am wondering what else to do with the leftovers...

FYI,
the pumpkins grown for carving aren't the same as whats used for eating and baking pies. You might have to hit up a farmers market for those. I'm not sure all the diffrences but guessing it's on the sweetness. Most pumpkins not used for carving end up as animal feed.

What is said above is true. I have actually heard blue pumpkins are best for flavor. That said, my pumpkin ale does not even use pumpkins. Truth be told, the actual pumpkin lends very little flavor to the end product, and it is not worth the hassle to me.

I did a similar thing as Seefresh, except I used canned pumpkin in the mash. The combination of mashing the pumpkin, plus using a hop bag for hops and the spices resulted in a virtually trub-less beer for me also.

I didn't bake the pumpkin, which I'm hoping won't be a huge problem. I just bottled it, and it tastes amazing though.

I think the pumpkin in the mash improved the efficiency of my sparge too. My fly sparge ran a LOT slower than usual, but I ended up hitting a slightly higher OG than beersmith predicted. I'm sure thats also partly because the pumpkin imparted some fermentables that I wasn't able to account for in beersmith.

davefleck said:

FYI,
the pumpkins grown for carving aren't the same as whats used for eating and baking pies. You might have to hit up a farmers market for those. I'm not sure all the diffrences but guessing it's on the sweetness. Most pumpkins not used for carving end up as animal feed.

Click to expand...

That may be, but my beer has a huge pumpkin aroma floating through the airlock.

Somehow I think this will help explain my post a bit: I live in North Dakota.

Getting a hold of a pumpkin here is no big deal. But. I've noticed that in many cases, pumpkin here is substituted with sweet potatoes/yams. For example, sweet potato pie is a big thing here. Which gets me to thinking...

Pumpkin beer has been done before, but why not try sweet potato beer? In my experience, sweet potatoes are very similar to the earthy taste a pumpkin has but it has more sweetness to it. I mean, hey, a pumpkin is a squashy, why not use a potato? However, I wonder if it would be better to make a pumpkin-sweet potato beer combo or do just exclusively sweet potato beer?

Either way, great thread.

EinGutesBier said:

Somehow I think this will help explain my post a bit: I live in North Dakota.

Getting a hold of a pumpkin here is no big deal. But. I've noticed that in many cases, pumpkin here is substituted with sweet potatoes/yams. For example, sweet potato pie is a big thing here. Which gets me to thinking...

Pumpkin beer has been done before, but why not try sweet potato beer? In my experience, sweet potatoes are very similar to the earthy taste a pumpkin has but it has more sweetness to it. I mean, hey, a pumpkin is a squashy, why not use a potato? However, I wonder if it would be better to make a pumpkin-sweet potato beer combo or do just exclusively sweet potato beer?

Either way, great thread.

Click to expand...

Actually, I believe quite a few people on this board have made sweet potato beer. It actually sounds quite delicious to me, not to mention you can get quite a bit of fermentable sugars from potatoes.. look at vodka. I'm not sure how you get those though, I guess through normal mash temps?

I wonder if the pumpkin added a lot to my OG? Didn't even consider that.

Some people on this board have actually recommended some sort of squash in place of pumpkin, can't remember which kind though.

Yeah, I just made a sweet potato beer in lieu of pumpkin. Just cause I could. And growing up in one of the northern states (Carolina, as opposed to Dakota) we, too, always had sweet potato pie rather than pumpkin.

I picked up ~ 3 1/2 lbs of sweet potatos, baked them, pureed them in the blender, and added to the mash. I also added some spices to the mix. The sample when I racked ~ a week ago tasted yummy, so I'm hopeful for this batch. If anything, I would add more sweet potato. It looked a little cloudy, but I don't get too bent about the looks of my beer.

It ended up being about as big a PITA sparging as my pumpkin beer was last year. It didn't get stuck, but was slow. Probably wouldn't have noticed the difference if I did fly rather than batch.

Oh yeah, I've also heard folks using winter squash instead of pumpkin. I'd bet butternut would make a tasty brew.

Just a tip for anyone cutting up squashes of all types. Bake the squash before cutting, it will save you a lot of time and sweat.

Ó Flannagáin said:

Some people on this board have actually recommended some sort of squash in place of pumpkin, can't remember which kind though.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what others suggested, but butternut squash would probably work well as a substitute. Butternut squash has a similar flavor to pumpkin, but it is much sweeter when cooked.

TappedOut said:

Oh yeah, I've also heard folks using winter squash instead of pumpkin. I'd bet butternut would make a tasty brew.

Click to expand...

Ha! I didn't see this - someone already agrees