Gluten Free Pumpkin Spice Ale

Ingredients:
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3 lbs Sorghum Syrup (60 min)
1 lb Sorghum, roasted (20 SRM)
1 oz East Kent Goldings, pellet 4.5% (60 min)
.5 tsp Irish Moss (10 min)
.5 tsp McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice (10 min)
4 oz Malto-Dextrine (5 min)
8 oz Honey (flameout)
1 pkg Nottingham

Roast sorghum at 350 for 30 minutes to an hour. Let waft in a paper bag for 1 week.

Carbed with 2.5 oz of corn sugar. Be sure to age this for at least 3 weeks. If you taste before it will have an extreme bite from the spices, but around 21 days it really mellows out, the sorghum isn't detectable and it has a slight sweetness to it.




For those of you who want to use pumpkin, I also tried that out, the reason the batch size is 2.5

Everything above is the same, just add:

14.5 oz Pumpkin Puree (30 min)
14.5 oz Pumpkin Pie Filling (30 min)

I roasted the 29 oz of pumpkin at 350 for an hour to carmelize the sugars. Caution- if you pour/rack over a funnel with a filter it will clog up after about 5 seconds. Either put it all into the carboy and lose a bit to the trub OR be super patient.

Here's a picture in the glass, it's cloudier.



-I'll probably make one of these on an annual basis for October/November

The pics look good. A question though.

Everything above is the same, just add:

14.5 oz Pumpkin Puree (30 min)
14.5 oz Pumpkin Pie Filling (30 min)

Click to expand...

I am a bit confused on this part. Both, for a total of 29 ounces? thanks!

You got it!

EDIT: I updated the OP to reflect that.

About that time again, I'm planning to brew a 5.5 gallon version of the Pumpkin Ale this weekend. Hopefully I'll have pictures.

How do you think this might come out out using buckwheat or millet instead of the sorghum. I can find sorghum grain where I'm at.

To be honest, the grain doesn't really come through- I'm using it to get some color right off the bat. I think buckwheat would add slight nuttiness but I'm not sure what millet would add. I don't think the grain component is as crucial to this beer as the spice and pumpkin are.

So which I'll prolly roast up some buckwheat and do a steep. Do be honest I can stand sorghum and I really need to get rid of the 2 tubs I got. So this weekend I'll brew up one of these and prolly another one of yours. So are the purees the way to go? And would you cut th sorghum with rice syrup solids

Pumpkin puree is more efficient than using regular pumpkin itself- but to each his own. And lately I have been trying to use rice syrup solids or BRS in place of sorghum syrup but thats still in the experimental stage.

Ok well see what happens this weekend thou. Did you like the flavor more from the batch just using pumpkin spice or with the carmelized pumpkin

I liked them both but I think i'll keep using the pumpkin puree in the future.

I recently re-brewed this as a 5.5 gallon full boil batch, here is that recipe:

6 lbs Sorghum Syrup (60 min)
1 lb 3 oz. Sorghum, roasted (20 SRM)
2.1 oz East Kent Goldings, pellet 4.5% (60 min)
32 oz Pumpkin Puree (30 min)
32 oz Pumpkin Pie Filling (30 min)
1 tsp Irish Moss (10 min)
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient (10 min)
1.25 tsp McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice (10 min)
8 oz Malto-Dextrine (5 min)
1 lb 8 oz Honey (flameout)
1 pkg Nottingham

Beginning boil volume 6.5 gallons to yield 5.5 gallons in the fermenter.
OG- 1.054

Steeping cracked grains


Here is the color I got from the grains (30 minutes 150-F steep)


After adding the sorghum syrup, waiting to come to a boil before I add the hops


Roasted pumpkin before adding to the boil


Got some really nice color from the pumpkin


I'll try and post a picture of it in the primary when I have a chance. It smelled awesome going in :rockin:

I bottled this over the weekend, FG was 1010 and puts the alcohol at 5.7%

I used Notty and had about a 60 hours lag time between pitching and active fermentation. I noticed a recent thread about a Notty recall and suspect I had their "problem" batch. Im guessing any off flavors will be covered by the pumpkin and the spice.

I left this in primary for 3 weeks, and if memory seves me correct, the spice bitterness should drop after about 3 weeks in the bottle. So, I'll test this around the first weekend in November!

my 2 batches are due to be bottled anytime now. unfortunately, i dont have enough bottles... my bad. im going to hold out for some kegs... 1 week in primary and 2 weeks in secondary so far.

Here is the newest one, still a little early to be drinking- the spices need to mellow a bit more. I'll try it again in two weeks and it should be golden.

Had one of these last night. Fantastic! Had a slightly sweet finish that I attribute to the spices, but I am glad this one is ready. Probably was ready for Thanksgiving, oh well.

I am going to be trying my hand at this recipe this weekend. My fiancee can't have wheat, but she loves pumpkin beer so this recipe is a real find. I do have a question about the spices though. When looking at other recipes for brews using pumpkin I've seen that the pumpkin itself does not add much flavor, but rather its the pumpkin spices. To me it doesn't seem like this recipe calls for very much of the pumpkin pie spices. She really enjoyed (back when she could have them) the pumpkin beers that had a stronger flavor to them, such as Schlafly's or Kinnebunkport's. Should I add more of the spices, or would this be overkill?

I feel like the spices can make it a little cloying and then it takes the beer longer to mellow out. I've only adjusted the spicing a little bit from the original but give it a shot if you want. Alternatively, you can omit the spices entirely until bottling and you can use a spice tea and adjust the strength to taste...

Thanks for the tip. Now that you mention the potential of the spices being a bit much I think I'll just stick to the original amount for this batch and see how she likes it. Thanks a bunch for the help.

I brewed this for my fiance and I just thought I'd give an update for those interested in how it turned out. After about 5 or 6 weeks from the initial brewing, we started trying these out. They were pretty good, to the point where I didn't even mind drinking one or two and I don't have any problems with gluten. I had a few other homebrewers try it out, and they all seemed to like it. One drank it without ever realizing or suspecting that it was a gluten free beer. Since then, several things have happened and other brews were enjoyed, pushing this one to the back of the beer fridge. At dinner tonight my fiance tried one, and wow, this stuff gets way better with age. I thought it had a bit of an aftertaste when it was young (as most gluten free beers do). But now that is gone and the pumpkin flavoring really stands out. Because of this, I'm really glad that I heeded the advice about too much spice causing a bad taste. It's been about 4 months or so since I brewed this, and I'm so glad that we let this sit around. Cheers!

I'm planning on brewing this the first weekend in September, with the hopes of being able to drink a few on Halloween and Thanksgiving this year, and putting a case away to drink around the same time next year. I'm considering a couple of substitutions and I'd like to hear what people think.

I'm pretty sure I can find the sorghum locally to roast this coming weekend. If I can't, what about roasting some quinoa or gluten-free oats instead? (I saw that someone suggested trying buckwheat, but I'm not sure if I could find that around here.) If I used the quinoa, should I soak it in water for 24-48 hours to sprout first, or just roast it raw?

Also, I don't have any East Kent Goldings on hand, but I could go grab some locally before brew day. I do have 2 ounces of Hallertau (4.4%AA) and 2 ounces of Fuggle (4.8%AA). Everything I've made with Hallertau so far, I've enjoyed.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I am doing this recipe soon too. I ordered the sorghum online and I plan on roasting it tonight and brewing next Friday. I am kegging it and I hope it will be ready in 6 weeks or so. This will be my 2nd time brewing (by myself) and the 1st partial grain batch. Should be interesting.

This might be a dumb question, but I'm trying to figure out how to add the sorghum. Did you just roast it, and then steep it, like 30 minutes at 160F, or something different?

I am interested in maybe trying to make this for my gf. Just got my first brewing kit and am yet to use it.
How necessary is the letting the sorghum waft for a week after roasting? I will admit I am impatient and would love to have this beer ready to go by Halloween for her so time is precious.

Well, if you roast it this Saturday (9/10), wait a week and then brew (9/17), ferment for 3 weeks (10/8), and wait the suggested 3 weeks (10/29), you still have a buffer of 2 days before 10/31. I am impatient too, but my wife will just have to wait.

Hello,
I recently started homebrewing and just put the 5.5 gallon recipe in to ferment; so far it is bubbling wonderfully. I just had a bottle explosion due to uneven carbonation in a previous batch, and want to make sure that doesn't happen again with this one. How much corn sugar did you use to carb the 5.5 gallon batch of this pumpkin ale? The 2.5 gallon recipe calls for 2.5 ozs, which would double to 5 ozs, but that seems like a lot. How much corn sugar is recommended?

On beersmith, it calculates that for 2.4 volumes of carbonation in a fridge for a 5.5 gallon batch, you should use 2.68oz of corn sugar. 5 oz might give you problems, but I can't say for sure.

2.5 oz of corn sugar at the same temperature as what I just calculated in a 2.5 gallon batch would give you 3.4 volumes of CO2. It's the same as kegging at 21 psi. Seems a little high, I believe most people prefer kegged pressures somewhere between 10 and 15 psi, but more in the 12-14 psi range.

Anyways, there are plenty of calculators and charts around that you can use to estimate what kind of carbonation different amounts of corn sugar will give you. I'm not sure what kind of pressure is required for a bottle bomb though.

gsector said:

On beersmith, it calculates that for 2.4 volumes of carbonation in a fridge for a 5.5 gallon batch, you should use 2.68oz of corn sugar. 5 oz might give you problems, but I can't say for sure.

2.5 oz of corn sugar at the same temperature as what I just calculated in a 2.5 gallon batch would give you 3.4 volumes of CO2. It's the same as kegging at 21 psi. Seems a little high, I believe most people prefer kegged pressures somewhere between 10 and 15 psi, but more in the 12-14 psi range.

Anyways, there are plenty of calculators and charts around that you can use to estimate what kind of carbonation different amounts of corn sugar will give you. I'm not sure what kind of pressure is required for a bottle bomb though.

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2 questions... 1 on this post and 1 on the recipe..

How do you figure out the desired VOlumes of CO2 for your beer? I've struggled with this in the past and I guess just gotten lucky...

Q2 - I brewed this pumpkin last week and noticed when racking into the primary that there are a lot of particles from the pie filling and puree that made the journey. Do you guys put anything in the carboys to kill off these particles so they don't make it into your bottles. I know you want some yeast in the bottles for bottle conditioning, but there has to be some way to filter the majority of these particles...

briansk said:

2 questions... 1 on this post and 1 on the recipe..

How do you figure out the desired VOlumes of CO2 for your beer? I've struggled with this in the past and I guess just gotten lucky...

Q2 - I brewed this pumpkin last week and noticed when racking into the primary that there are a lot of particles from the pie filling and puree that made the journey. Do you guys put anything in the carboys to kill off these particles so they don't make it into your bottles. I know you want some yeast in the bottles for bottle conditioning, but there has to be some way to filter the majority of these particles...

Click to expand...

Would the normal gelatin method be helpful at clearing out the pumpkin bits?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/beer-gelatin-69919/

Can this recipe be made using just a kettle and a strainer or does a more complex system (ie false bottom etc.) need to be used to boil the wort. I just started brewing and was wanting to make a gluten free pumpkin ale for my dad for this upcoming fall.

Thanks!

Where did you purchase the sorghum? Was it malted? I can not find sorghum grain anywhere other then in my neighborhood grocery store. Is this the same, hence why it is roasted?

Brewed this over the weekend. The roasted sorghum had a real nice aroma to the partial mash. I did try to strain this and like I was warned, wouldn't flow through even a large strainer. Consistency of a McDonald's milk shake. Sitting in primary waiting...

Fired up a batch of this one a couple weeks ago, just racked into secondary and ended up losing quite a bit to the thick trub on the bottom (I poured everything into the primary and let it all to settle out a bit). What do you guys do to minimize this loss?

Lan said:

Fired up a batch of this one a couple weeks ago, just racked into secondary and ended up losing quite a bit to the thick trub on the bottom (I poured everything into the primary and let it all to settle out a bit). What do you guys do to minimize this loss?

Click to expand...

I had same issue (I referred to the trub as a milkshake). I bottle 2 weekends ago and just tried one after 1 week in bottle. It was very light with a lot of residue at bottom of bottle. it had a fairly good pop when opening (used 4oz of prime sugar). The end result was a thin light beer with little pumpkin flavor. Not too bad but I wanted pumpkin. Not too sure what I did wrong. Gonna wait another week then try again

Yeah, from the samples I've had so far, the body may come out a little thin but a nice level of carbonation should broaden it out. A week isn't always long enough for the full carbonation to develop in my experience.

On the flavor so far, the pumpkin character itself is mild...sort of a slight sweet earthiness to it. The spices are still fairly assertive. Overall it does smell and taste like an Autumn brew...just wish I had more in the carboy to bottle!