Pumpkin Help

Ok, so if you have seen my thread in general discussion then you might have wondered, I am still haveing problems with my pumpkin ale. I recently secondaried it and tasted it. I began smooth with a cinnamon taste the you could taste nutmeg and ginger so the spices were fine but, it had a hint of apple cidder. I was wondering what has caused this attribute. I know i deviated from some reciepes I read. I added a 1/3 of pumpkin in the BOIL not the MASH because I wanted the most out of my grains. I also used a cali lager yeast at ale temp in an attempt to "steam" it.

further alterations i am thinking of making

upping the pumpkin and sprinkling brown sugar on it then roasting it and adding it to the MASH.

Chooseing maybe a english ale yeast or american ale (probably american because i want it to be regional)

Any suggestions?

Just let it condition. It's still green and you're probably just getting off-flavors that the yeast hasn't cleaned up yet. I'd say give it another month.

dr Jekyll said....
further alterations i am thinking of making

upping the pumpkin and sprinkling brown sugar on it then roasting it and adding it to the MASH.

Any suggestions?[/QUOTE]
We did this exact thing with our pumpkin beer we just made last week...
Supposedly, by cooking it in the oven with brown sugar helps to get more pumpkin flavor...which is hard to taste in beer.
Anyway, we are wondering now about adding the spices when we secondary....how to sterilize them first...? or do we even need to?...

i dont believe you would have to worry about the sterilization of spices, the beer contains alcohol at that point. If you were that worried about it you could just put the spices in a cup or two of water and heat it up then cool and add.

DrJekyll-HomeBrew said:

i dont believe you would have to worry about the sterilization of spices, the beer contains alcohol at that point. If you were that worried about it you could just put the spices in a cup or two of water and heat it up then cool and add.

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You need to worry about sanitizing ANYTHING that goes into your beer after it's cooled from the kettle. This includes anything that goes into secondary. The 3-10% alcohol that most beers have is not near enough to kill bacteria. In order to kill bacteria, you need an ABV% of around 50+ minimum.

When I use spices, I make them into a tea. I boil the tea and pour a little at a time into my beer. Taste it every day to see how it's coming along. If you want more flavor, add more tea.