Another Pumpkin Question

So I recently Purchased the AHS Pumpkin Ale kit. My question is this: How much Pumpkin would lead to a strong pumpkin flavor?

Canned pumpkin has hit the shelves here and I would like to get my hands on some for the brew in a few weeks. The only issue is that I am moving to France for work for the next year. So I am limited on weight. The Kit weighs about 6 or 7 pounds, not including the pumpkin. I have maybe 8-10 pounds of room to play with in my luggage. I also intend on making a pumpkin pie or two while there, so I already need to bring 2 cans of the pumpkin pie stuff (is spiced and has sugar syrup in it). There is not really any way to get pumpkin in France, so I have to bring it all at once. My other question would be is it ok to use the pie stuff instead of pure pumpkin (the store is running out of pure pumpkin pretty fast)? I know that the sugar in the can won't be super great for beer as the yeast may not like the maltose, but would a can or two in a 5 gal batch really make a difference (I don't care too much about head retention)? I've seen some people boil the pumpkin at the beginning, others add to primary, and others add to both primary and secondary. I'm wondering which will give the strongest pumpkin flavor, as I don't actually want the "preferred" hint of pumpkin, I want it noticeably pumpkin?

I'm thinking that adding 15oz roasted pumpkin (pure) at primary and another 15oz plus spices in secondary will give the most pumpkin flavor. Am I off base or should the pumpkin really be boiled to extract some sugars and maybe flavor? Is secondary really better than just throwing 30oz pure pumpkin in at flameout and dumping it all into primary? I know it's a lot of questions, but it is my first brew, and even though I'm really knowledgeable, I'm just trying to balance my weight options and how to "get the most bang for the buck" on the pumpkin flavor.

Thanks for any help in advance.

I added 4 15oz. cans to my AHS Pumpkin Ale kit. Just bottled it today, but from the aroma I'd have to say the pumpkin flavor is going to be there..Guess I will know for sure in afew weeks

This thread has plenty of info. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/pu...icks-good-practices-131786/?highlight=pumpkin

I brewed my Pumpkin beer last week and listened to Basic Brewing who did a blind taste taste one beer that had real pumpkin and one that just had pumpkin spices and honestly they weren't able to tell the difference.

That being said i put a 29oz can of pumpkin in mine just so i could say it was true pumpkin beer but i think the actual pumpkin flavor is more driven by the pumpkin spices. So i think if you looking for a really pumpkiny beer i would maybe add some extra pumpkin pie spices to the brew.

Thank you all for the info.