Red Amber Ale converted to Pumpkin Ale

Hello,

I've been reading, on this forum, that a pumpkin ale should ferment in the primary for 3-4 weeks. I am confused by this because I thought you should bottle the beer after the fermentation has subsided? Does a pumpkin ale really take three to four weeks to ferment, or is there another reason why it takes so long? Unfortunately, I don't have a secondary.

Just for information purposes:

-Steeped 60 oz canned pumpkin (not cooked, oops?) and 2lbs red caramel grains in a steep bag for 30 minutes.
-1oz Cascade Hops @ 5% AA for 60 min boil
-6lbs Red Caramel Extract - Half at 60 min, other half at 30min
-3 Tsp of pumpkin spice @ 5 min remaining
-SAL05 yeast at 68 degree

Hopefully this doesn't turn out horribly wrong, but this is the first beer I "experimented" with. I felt like tweaking the would be amber ale kit! It's been in the primary for almost 48 hours now.

As always, thanks for the help.

P.S. Please feel free to critique anything I may have done wrong. I have a lot of learning to do.

Not only Pumkin ales but all brews are recommended by many to sit in the primary for 3-4 weeks before transferring or bottling. This allows the yeast to complete fermentation then go behind themselves and clean up off flavors they have produced during the initial fermentation. Of course you want to hydrometer reading to be sure fermentation is complete, unusually start on the end of the third week and take a reading once every other day for 3 total readings. Also allowing your brew to age a bit, not a bad idea with most ales, although I hear some brews are meant to drink young.

After I've researched and read countless threads here, I learned to pretty much ignore the directions that come with kits, besides the hop schedule.

Your recipe sounds good. Dont assume its lame within the first month, i had my first pumpkin just ok,but after 8 months i loved it. It may not happen with yours but make shure you hang on to some to compare it too.
Pumpkins are kind of treated like how people brew stouts or stronger beers, you want to give them another week or two.3-4 weeks is probably good but with that i would do 4 but even then i think it needs a few months in the bottle, you never know but if you like them early then have at. Mine ive done,within a few months im like yep- im giving these some more time, they almost always get better.
Now im starting to want to pull out a bottle of one of my pumpkins i did that should have been ready on Holloween. With only 4-5 weeks bottled i tried one then and knew it still wasnt ready. From now on im brewing one up 3-4 months earlier.

Thanks for the good info. I will "patiently" wait another 3 weeks.