Another Pumpkin Beer help thread haha

Yes i know its that time of year and everyones asking their pumpkin brewing questions, and i have one as well! however i have not yet seen any one come across this issue or a fix for it.

Basically I brewed a sort of pumpkin dark ale a bit ago, and its not quite got the pumpkin flavor i've been looking for. I later realized that i did not cook the pumpkin before "steeping" it due to some confusing verbage of a recipe i was going off of.

I was wondering if theres anything i can do in the secondary to give it a bit more pumpkin-ness. Even the actual spices seem to lack focus and the only real discernable flavor seems to be vanilla. Any ideas?

I'm not exactly a seasoned brewer, but why not just bake some pumpkin puree in the oven and add it to a secondary (or tertiary if it is already in secondary), along with a spice tea?

I imagine it will pick up some good flavors at least. Not sure what the fermentable sugar content is like in pumpkin however..

Most of the "pumpkin" flavor in pumpkin ales come from the spices used. The actual pumpkin doesn't impart too much flavor. If I were in your position, I'd take some extra spices, soak them in a little bit of bourbon and then pitch the mixture into secondary.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to cut up a pumpkin into small chunks, roast them, and put that in secondary as well, but I don't see that as having as much of an impact as the spices.

Thanks for the spice tip, and that's sort of what I had in mind. I out in a spice mix from a pumpkin brew kit at flame out and I put a tsp of pumpkin pie spice in te primary when fermentation slowed. What and how much so you reccomend?

I would use some roasted pumpkin AND some spices in the secondary.

Make a spice tea with about 1 cup of water and 2 tsp of spices (your choice, but I just use pumpkin pie spice).

I'd also roast maybe 30-40 oz of pumpkin and rack on top of it plus the spice tea.

I mashed with pumpkin then added spices three weeks into a 5 week totally primary... Just get some pumpkin spice... get a cup of water and boil it with a teaspoon + of the pumpkin spice then add to your brew... bottle when ready. Thats it. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on my punk'd brew this year

Dont mess with actual pumpkin post primary

ive heard about the same about no pumpkin after the boil. Was not cooking it what made it so subtle? not even sugar and too much starch?

I'll make a spice tea probably after giving it another taste shortly

I think in general you do not get a lot of flavor contribution from the actual pumpkin.. It's more mouth feel and its fun to tell everyone you used actual pumpkin...