alll grain pumpkin ale

I am going to try my first pumpkin beer. I have a couple of questions. Should I use fresh pumpkin or will canned work just as well? When should the pumpkin be added--during mash or boil( and how long) Thanks

I hate to say it but there are TONS of threads about this already. Search! lol...

The general theme is to bake the pumpkin and canned is better than fresh. I changed up (ever so slightly) the Samhain Pumpkin ale (use search!) another popular recipe is the the Thunder struck.

There really is no right or wrong way to do this but I can say that you will require rice hulls if putting it into the mash.

GL!

the best way I found to using fresh sugar pumpkins was as follows:
Seed and stem pumpkin (skin on is fine)
Slice very thin
dump into stock pot with 1" of boiling water on the bottom
Cover and let it cook (stir it every few min)
Once it is soft (15-30 min depending how thin you cut them) mash it down and run it though a screen trying to get all the juice out
Use this juice for mash water, and first sparge water (if not all).

This is much quicker that baking it, and can give you something to do during mash rests. It adds a little sugar to the beer, but this really varies from pumpkin to pumpkin. From what I've read there really is almost no starch in them, so there is no point adding meat to the mash (unless you really like a stuck sparge).

Also, if you use fresh, use the pumpkins meant for baking (tasty) instead of those meant for a jackolantern (not that tasty).

I was just on another thread where we were discussing whether to mash the pumpkin or just add it to the boil. We came to the conclusion that adding canned pumpkin to the mash along with a pound of rice hulls works very well. If you add the pumpkin to the boil, you get a heck of a lot of trub.