Maple Pumpkin Ale

I'm a noob on this forum and I posted this recipe elswhere but I modded it a bit while brewing here is the recipe that I used.

Maple Pumpkin Ale

Ingredients

6.6 lbs. Munton’s Pale Extract
2 lbs. Munton’s American Style Pale 2 Row Malt
1 lb. Munton’s Crystal Malt
1 oz. Saaz hops
1 oz. Tattenanger hops
2 cans pumpkin
1.5 tsp. nutmeg
1.5 tsp. allspice
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 oz. fresh ginger
1 tps. gypsum (if needed for pH)
11 oz. maple syrup
5 gal. water
1 tsp. Irish moss
White Labs California Ale V Yeast WLP051

Brew Process

Brewed on 10/16/2005

Mash grain in 1 gal. water at 150-155 degrees for 1 hour
Sparge with 1.5 gal. 170 degree water
Add wort to brew pot
Add cans of pumpkin, malt extract, and syrup
After first 25 minutes add Saaz hops
After next 30 minutes add spices and Tattenanger hops
Ginger grated in at 10 minutes to go.
After brewing pour cooled wort into fermenter containing 2 gallons cold bottled water, top of with cold water to 5 gal. Aerate wort while pouring.
Pitch the yeast at 76 degrees.

OG is 1.061

The kitchen smelled great and the wort smell like pumpkin pie which is what I was going for hopefully the taste will be close to the aroma. This is my second batch of brew any suggestions to the above recipe? I always value imput.

hey man, I just took your recipe for this and brewed it up, except I used cinnamon sticks and 13 oz of maple syrup - congrats on a good recipe, it smelled So f*cking amazing. I'm very pumped about bustin some of these out in the next few months.

Yeah mine is going to the secondary on Sunday it was the first one I tried with a mash and I'm glad I actually got it to the fermenter

I racked off to the secondary today and there are 2 warnings.

One: the yeast I used had high to medium floculance coupled with the canned pumpkin pie there was mucho sediment.

Two: there was some gunk floatin' around on the top I thoght that maybe I had lost the batch to some mold or somthin'. So I did what anyone in there right mind would do. I sterilized a spoon skimmed some of the top smelled it then tasted a bit of it. There were bits of what were like paper in it but stringy turns out it was the pumpkin fiber and some grain husk that didn't quite get strained out. In the secondary it's just nice and dark amber no gunk on top and my hyro sample tasted quite quite good.

The O.G. on this one was 1.061 it's down to 1.016 after one week of fermentation. MMM MMMM GOOD.

I just racked my pumpkin to 2ndary today, and I WAS SHOCKED at the amount of trub.

I had strained it when I put it in the primary, and I thought I got most of the pumpkin out.

Still, there wwas about 2" of trub in the bottom. I had to add a gallon of water to compensate for the amount lost in the primary. This batch is tasty, but is going to be low-alcohol after the amount of trub I lost in the straining and the racking. I'm half-tempted to dump more DME in the 2ndary just to give the yeast something to munch on.

I'm trying an experiment with it. I bottled a 22ozer and added about a tsp of DME to the bottle to see how it tastes vs. after time in the secondary followed by priming. So far, it's yummy-yummy.

Mine is already at like 6.9 percent based on the OG and the gravity now so I'm not too concerned all in all I think I only have like 4.5 gallons in the secondary I don't think I'm gonna add any water to it is that a bad thing it's a 6.5 gallon carboy so there is a lot or air in there?

voodoochild7 said:

Mine is already at like 6.9 percent based on the OG and the gravity now so I'm not too concerned all in all I think I only have like 4.5 gallons in the secondary I don't think I'm gonna add any water to it is that a bad thing it's a 6.5 gallon carboy so there is a lot or air in there?

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I'm off of measuring gravity. It's something to obsess over and risk contaminating my beer checking. I didn't measure gravity on my last couple of batches, and it was a lot easier to ignore them while they fermented.

I'm off O.G,S.G., and F.G. No need to care about them. 3-4 weeks in a carboy should take care of everything.

I meant should I worry about the lack of volume or adding water because of all that air in the bottle.

voodoochild7 said:

...all that air in the bottle.

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Better to let Walker or Pistol Petey answer this one.

I timed this one right just in time for thanksgiving. Sampled this one a few days ago not quite 2 weeks in the bottles and it was already great. I brewed this one because my lil Bro had a pumpkin' ale last year from a local brewery and this year it didn't taste the same. He tried about 8 other too and was dissapointed with each so I told him I'd give it a go. He tried the sample and loved it said it was like the one he remembered from last year. Not bad for my second brew and first partial mash. Gonna crack one right now as today is week 2 in the bottles. Thanksgiving is gonna be great this year!!! Home cookin' and home brewin'!!!

one thing i would change about this recipe is that it sounds like you use canned pumpkin. as a cook/foodie type i would not use canned pumpkin for anything, ecspeacially not beer, but thats just me. I made a pumpkin ale this fall that is still conditioning but tasted amazing at bottling time. I used one fresh organic pumpkin, the small sweet kind,for 2.5 gallons. I cut it into 1inch cubes and put them in the kettle with 10 minutes left. then i left them in the primary but ditched them when transferring to the 2ndary. The pumpkin taste is perfect, subtle and not overpowering, and the aroma...oh my god...the spices, especially cinamon come through good, along with some pumpkin sweetness and a little bit of fruitiness cause i used belgian ale yeast. everyon seems to have their own method for using pumpkin, which was the hardest part about creating the recipe , but i thought i'd throw that out there for you. and oh yeah, the rest of my recipe was very similar to yours, but with hallertau hops in place of the saaz, and no ginger.

Yeah I just didn't feel like cutting up all that pumpkin but I did use the canned pumpkin with no preservatives no spices etc.

I am thinking of brewing a stout now and conditioning until the fall, perhaps even entering it in my local homebrew club competition. I've been thinking of a pumpkin stout (vs. pumpkin ale), in fact, an oatmeal pumpkin stout.

Basically, I would take the spices and fruit from voodoochild's recipe and add them to a clone recipe for Ipswich Oatmeal Stout, plus perhaps up the roasted flaked oats a bit from 4 to 6 oz. Any thoughts on this? Specifically, do folks think this would taste good?

The recipe also calls for steeping 15 oz. roasted barley, 9 oz US chocolate malt, 8 oz. 55L Crystal malt and 2 oz black malt (plus 8 lbs light DME and 6 oz malto dextrin). I would want to limit the charcoal flavor typical of, for example, a Guiness, as this is not my preference, so I was going to reduce the chocolate and black malts. Again, what do you think? (That is, if you wanted to reduce the charcoal taste, what would you do?)

Thanks, all.

I just brewed this a week ago, it made the kitchen smell incredible!! Instead of using canned pumpkin, we used a sugar pumpkin and sweet potatoes. I roasted them in the oven for about an hour to caramelize them and just added them to the wort.

We tried a little bit before transferring to the secondary and I'm super excited when it's all set and done. Has anyone tried using dissolved maple syrup instead of corn sugar/cane sugar for bottling?