A few Pumkin Ale Qs

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c0sm0nautt

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Hey All

Starting my 6th brew now. I decided to do the Pumpkin Ale thing for the Thanksgiving season.

I have a few questions...

I plan on adding real pumpkin to my beer. I did a search and read a few threads on this, and the consensus seems to be that adding pumpkin does add substantial results to the beer.
How small of pieces should I cut my pumpkin up into? How long do I bake it for?

I was thinking about sprinkling some dark DME onto the pumpkin to get a unique roasted flavor. A friend of mine had some success sprinkling cinnamon on his pumpkin. Any other suggestions? Brown sugar might be good too.

Is a grain bag necessary? Can I just throw the pumpkin into my kettle and then my fermenter, and worry about the solids when I rack to the secondary?

Any other tips for a first time pumpkin brewer greatly appreciated!
 
I plan on adding real pumpkin to my beer. I did a search and read a few threads on this, and the consensus seems to be that adding pumpkin does add substantial results to the beer.
How small of pieces should I cut my pumpkin up into? How long do I bake it for?

I was thinking about sprinkling some dark DME onto the pumpkin to get a unique roasted flavor. A friend of mine had some success sprinkling cinnamon on his pumpkin. Any other suggestions? Brown sugar might be good too.

Is a grain bag necessary? Can I just throw the pumpkin into my kettle and then my fermenter, and worry about the solids when I rack to the secondary?

Any other tips for a first time pumpkin brewer greatly appreciated!

Have you listened to the Basic Brewing Radio experiment on using pumpkin verses just spices. It's worth a listen before you decide to use pumpkin in the mash:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr11-26-09pumpkinexp.mp3

Not sure if you came across RenoEnvy's Recipe in your search on this forum, but there is a lot of good pumpkin-y advice in there:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/punkin-ale-145060/
 
I just finished my pumpkin brew which was a porter and I skipped the pumpkin all together. If you want it to taste like pumpkin then pumpkin is probably the way to go. Most people associate the taste of pumpkin to pumpkin pie. If thats what you are looking for add pumpkin pie spice 5 min before end of boil and you will be able to achieve that. Good Luck, Happy Brewing

BBS
 
Why don't you just make a pumpkin pie spice extract... using pumpkin pie spice in vodka over a couple of days, then try adding it drop by drop to your favorite amber ale and seeing how you like that, and then compare that to a commercial version of pumpkin ale that uses actual pumpkin.

as for myself, when I taste pumpkin beers I don't taste pumpkin, i taste spices. a lot of people want to do it the harder way for various reasons, though, so to each their own.
 
Hey All

Starting my 6th brew now. I decided to do the Pumpkin Ale thing for the Thanksgiving season.

I have a few questions...

I plan on adding real pumpkin to my beer. I did a search and read a few threads on this, and the consensus seems to be that adding pumpkin does add substantial results to the beer.
How small of pieces should I cut my pumpkin up into? How long do I bake it for?

I was thinking about sprinkling some dark DME onto the pumpkin to get a unique roasted flavor. A friend of mine had some success sprinkling cinnamon on his pumpkin. Any other suggestions? Brown sugar might be good too.

Is a grain bag necessary? Can I just throw the pumpkin into my kettle and then my fermenter, and worry about the solids when I rack to the secondary?

Any other tips for a first time pumpkin brewer greatly appreciated!

I threw 4 lbs of canned pumpkin into the boil, 1 tbsp nutmeg and 1 tbsp cinnamon, as well as 1 lbs of the canned pumpkin pie mix in the boil for 5 minutes at the end. Straight out of the can. The pumpkin flavor was there but not overpowering, and the extra spices in the pumpkin pie mix and the cinnamon/nutmeg mix really brought out nice "pumpkin-like" flavors.

It was by far the best beer I've done. I highly reccommend the use of a combination of real pumpkin as well as pumpkin pie mix.
 

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