Midwest Brewing Pumpkin Ale Kit Question

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HopHead73

HopHead73

Brewmaster at Jbyrd Brewing, Hophead
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So I'm doing my first Pumpkin ale for Thanksgiving and after reading many reviews I decided to go with the Midwest Brewing Pumpkin Ale kit.
I just have a few questions if anyone can help me with.

I plan on using canned pumpkin (3 cans - 90oz.). Any suggestion of using just plain canned pumpkin or using Libby's spiced canned pumpkin?
I've read some people say you should bake the pumpkin at 400 degrees to caramelize the sugars, is this necessary for canned pumpkin?
I was also going to use muslin bags to put the pumpkin in when I steep it to help deal with the trub.

The Kit says to add the Pumpkin with 5mins left of the boil.
I plan however on steeping the pumpkin with my grains for 60mins @155degrees instead. Should I still add some more pumpkin at the end of the boil or is steeping it fine?

The kit also comes with 1/2tbsp of Nutmeg and 1/2tbsp of Cinnamon to add at the last 5mins of the boil. I plan on doubling the amount of each 1tbsp each and adding 1 tbsp of cloves.
Is this still the best time to add the spices?
I've also read some people say to add more spices right before bottling by boiling it in water, letting it cool and then adding to the bottling bucket with the priming sugar. Anyone have any suggestions on this? If it is a good idea how much more would you use?

Any other suggestions to really make this a great pumpkin ale?

Thanks guys!
HopHead73 is online now Report Post
 
Honestly haven't done a pumpkin brew. As far as baking it for awhile to break down the sugars, it makes sense if they sweeten it with regular sugar. Look on the contents of the can and see if they use Corn Syrup or just sugar. If it's corn sugar, I wouldn't bake as it breaks down more easily than regular sugar.

In regards to the question of 60 minutes in the boil or not, I don't know that pumpkin can give off anything that's going to give off flavor to the beer or not.

If you're thinking of using spiced or unspiced libby's, I'd probably go with the unspiced as you don't know if it will be overwhelming in spice as you're using a Pumpkin Ale kit that's most likely spiced already.

That's all I can suggest science wise other than that I'm clueless as I've not done it sorry.

I'm thinking of brewing one though so let me know how the spice vs. unspiced goes. I'll do the opposite of you and if you have the recipe sheet, I'll clone it and see if it's overwhelming for next time. I'm all for screwing up a batch and learning from my mistakes if there's not opinion on the matter either way.
 
HopHead73 said:
So I'm doing my first Pumpkin ale for Thanksgiving and after reading many reviews I decided to go with the Midwest Brewing Pumpkin Ale kit.
I just have a few questions if anyone can help me with.

I plan on using canned pumpkin (3 cans - 90oz.). Any suggestion of using just plain canned pumpkin or using Libby's spiced canned pumpkin?
I've read some people say you should bake the pumpkin at 400 degrees to caramelize the sugars, is this necessary for canned pumpkin?
I was also going to use muslin bags to put the pumpkin in when I steep it to help deal with the trub.

The Kit says to add the Pumpkin with 5mins left of the boil.
I plan however on steeping the pumpkin with my grains for 60mins @155degrees instead. Should I still add some more pumpkin at the end of the boil or is steeping it fine?

The kit also comes with 1/2tbsp of Nutmeg and 1/2tbsp of Cinnamon to add at the last 5mins of the boil. I plan on doubling the amount of each 1tbsp each and adding 1 tbsp of cloves.
Is this still the best time to add the spices?
I've also read some people say to add more spices right before bottling by boiling it in water, letting it cool and then adding to the bottling bucket with the priming sugar. Anyone have any suggestions on this? If it is a good idea how much more would you use?

Any other suggestions to really make this a great pumpkin ale?

Thanks guys!
HopHead73 is online now Report Post
Click to expand...

I brewed the midwest pumpkin kit on saturday and also used Libby's pumpkin pie mix. I bought 3 30oz cans and chickened out last minute and just added 2. The trub is ridiculous from just 2 cans i'm interested to see how 3 will turn out. I did not bake the pumpkin and did not use a muslim bag for steeping. I added the pumpkin directly to the boil with 5 minutes left. Looking back I wish i would have baked it and used it for steeping (attempting to be proactive for the amount of trub). I ended up straining the wort during the transfer into the primary and even after that I was still nervous by the amount of pumpkin/trub floating around. I have been reassured that it will eventually settle, but if I were you i'd be as proactive as possible for the trub when using libby's mix.
Also, I doubled the nutmeg and quadrupled the cinnamon adding both at 5 mins left in the boil and then added vanilla directly to the primary after cooling. Good luck!
 
I did the Midwest last year and used fresh pumpkin ( but I used canned this year with a different recipe) with the extract mw I added some pumpkin to the boil and the other half directly to the fermentor ( 4 pounds of pumpkin total) I had a ton of trub but after a week I racked to secondary. Everything worked out well except I added more spices and the only one that was too much was the cloves so I suggest not adding extra cloves imo
 
I just brewed a Midwest Irish Stout kit (Extract) and modified it to be a pumpkin irish stout IPA. Mods include about .75lb of leftover 60L Muntons Crushed Crystal, 1oz of millenium hops at 60 mins, then the included 1oz of nugget at 30mins and 1oz of included Willamette at about 10 mins. With 15+ minutes to go in the boil, I then added one half of a large can, 15oz, of the Libby's Pumpkin Pie Easy mix.. spiced and sugared already. I also added about 5 or 6oz of Libby's pure pumpkin, plus about a a liberal sprinkling of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg.

I'm trying to add the additional pumpkin ingredients to my BeerSmith app but it doesn't have any pumpkin additives. I was hoping someone could provide some of the chemical makeup, sugar, SRM, etc, that would help BeerSmith calulate things correctly.

In any case, it smelled damn good, like a hoppy stout with a nice hint of Pumpkin pie.. just what I'm going for. Hopefully it'll be ready for Thanksgiving! I'll post when it's ready.
 
Just bottled this kit a few weeks ago.

What I did was 2 30oz of pumpkin purée and 1 30oz pumpkin pie mix. Did 30oz during steep. Then added the ret with 5min left but I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

I did primary for 2 weeks and secondary for 2 then bottled.

Do the secondary for at least a month. I have sediment in my bottles.

If you are curious I made a thread on it step by step. Im a little drunk right now and may have left some things out.
 

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