Pumpkin Ale

After reading all of the pumpkin ale recipes on the board I decided to try one of my own. This first started out as Samuel Smiths Winter Welcome clone(was looking to do a winter\christmas ale) but I decided to modify it to a pumpkin ale.

3/4 lbs. Crystal 60L
1/2 lbs. Crystal 20L
4 oz. Choc Malt

10 lbs. Pale LME
6 lbs. Pumpkin(mash)
14 oz. BrewVint Alch Boost(corn sugar)

1 1/2 oz. Kent Goldings(6.0 AA)(60 min)
1/2 oz. Kent Goldings(6.0 AA)(15 min)
1/2 oz. Fuggle(4.2 AA)(15 min)
1 oz. Kent Goldings(6.0 AA)(5 min)

2 Cinnamon Sticks(50 min)
1.5 tsp. nutmeg(10 min)
1.5 tsp. allspice(10 min)
2 tsp. cinnamon(10 min)
1 oz. fresh ginger(10 min)

Yeast White Labs Irish Ale

Baked pumpkin(sprinkled with Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Giner and AllSpice) for 50 min at 350 degrees. Steeped grains at 155-160 deg for 30 min. Sparged with 1/2 gallon water at 160 degrees. Brought to boil. Added pumpkin, malt and corn sugar.

I topped of to almost 6 gallons in the primary. When racking to the secondary I only got about 4 1/4 gallons. It was a ton of trub. I was worried because when I boiled it I did not really smell anything resembling pumpkin pie(which alot of people have said they did), but after tasteing some I captured racking to the secondary it was quite good and had a distinct pumpkin taste.

Seems a little big. What was your OG?

I'm doing a pumpkin monday but its an AG. I don't have the IBU as high as you but I might increase it a little. Do the hops hide the pumpkin too much?

I dont bother taking the gravity anymore. It never seemed to be what it should when I used to take the starting gravity and I worried to much about it, so eventually I just stopped all together.

The pumpkin(or at least the spices) was coming through good when I tasted it after 11 days, when I transferred it to the secondary.

Was this a 5 or a 10 gallon batch? It seems really heavy for a 5 gallon batch, but it looks like it might work nicely for 10 gallons.

EDIT: Nevermind, I just read the rest of the post. But my opinion for 10 gallons stands

He said it was 6 gallons that yeilded 4.5 gallons. Higher alcohol content than normal though.

That is very similar to what I did (I had light DME, Munich, Chrystal, chocolate). When I racked mine to the secondary, Mine was very spicy tasting, the cinimon was very pronouched. I had less IBU's that you do, and a lower OG, I really didn't notice very much pumpkin flavor. (I used 7lbs of pumpkin, baked at 350* for 1hour).

Mine should be quite good, if the spices mellow out a bit as it ages a bit. The real test will in a couple of months, after it gets some age in it.

I just racked into a keg and took a taste. It is really good and the pumpkin flavor is coming through well. I probably only got about 4 gallons in all, since there was another 2-3 inches of trub on the bottom of the secondary.