Priming Pumpkin Ale with Brown Sugar

Good evening everyone, I have a few priming sugar questions.

I read that priming with DME makes tighter bubbles and better head retention. I was too hesitant to stray from the norm so when I tried it I did half DME and half priming sugar (corn sugar). The bubbles were still noticeably tighter than my other beers. I have a pumpkin ale brew session coming up and I found a recipe that intrigued me because it says to use:

1/2 cup brown sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spece (for priming)

What are your thoughts on this? Has anyone had any experience with something similar? I am worried about bottle bombs.

mmmm I dont have an answer for you but I totally just druled over that idea of priming it. haha.

I definitely wouldn't add spices when priming. Either add them to the fermentor after fermentation is done or steep the grains in vodka for a week or so, filter and add to taste at bottling.
Not sure where you heard it but as for priming with DME producing " tighter bubbles," that's not in any way true.

It's quite common to prime pumpkin ales with brown sugar. Several commercial ones do so, and they're excellant. Use the darlest you can find to have lingering flavor.

As to "spicing" the priming solution, I've done it a few times, mostly with ginger and dry hot peppers. You boil it with the priming solution, then strain it with a sanitized strainer.

I wouldn't recommend powdered spices at that point, as it is really hard to strain them. You want whole, maybe just crushed to release the oils.

Adding ginger to my priming solution in my ginger snap brown ale.





As you can see it has a nice straw color as opposed to the clear you are used to. It smelled amazingly like ginger.



I've also done it with dried chilli peppers for my chocolate mole porter. And done citrus peels with various beers such as using orange peels in my wits.

You could do it with any dry spice, such as cloves, coriander, star anise for a licorice beer, cinnamon and even a vanilla beer. You can do with this is to add some lactose to the boil as well, since it is unfermentable, it should sweeten the flavor somewhat.

An easier option is to get some pumpkin spiced tea bags and steep them in your priming sugar...you wouldn't really need to strain them then. Turn of the flame and dump a few tea bags in, and let them steep while you're sanitizing your bottles or getting your bottling gear together.