Light Pumpkin Ale kit tweaks...

[ncornilsen]

Hi,

I'm a bit new to brewing, and my first attempt will be a light Pumpkin ale.

Before I had much of a chance to research this, I bought an extract kit called "Shades of Gourd" light pumpkin ale. (Can I mention where? I don't want to violate forum sponsorship rules.) It seems that it's just a light ale, with 5lbs of "pale LME" and 1 lb of Honey malt specialty grains, a little bit of bittering hops, and a 15gram spice pack. OG 1.042 FG 1.009

I'm concerned this isn't going to have much of a pumpkin taste, and will rely on the spices to trick you into thinking it's pumpkin, and be kind of a letdown.

What I wanted to do was perhaps steep some pumpkin with the specialty grains (in a bag) for 30 mins before the boil, using 3lbs of pumpkin that was pre-baked for 30 mins at 350 before hand. I'd add 8oz of brown sugar with the LME.

Then, see how the kit spices are. If they smell good, I'd add about half of them during the boil. Before bottling, I was thinking I could make a paste with Vodka with the rest of the spices and add to taste. If the spices aren't the best, I could come up with a spice mix somehow.

My questions are:
Is the steeped pumpkin going to overpower a light ale? should I use more or less pumpkin?
Is adding spices with Vodka before bottling a good idea? Should I do it another time, like between primary and secondary fermentation?

should I just brew per instructions and chance a disappointing beer, given that this is my first one? I promised a pumpkin ale to my significant other to gain her support for this home brewing thing... I'd hate to chance that on a weak recipe!

Thanks,
-Nick

 

[Pappers_]

If it were me, I'd follow the recipe see what happens before I tweaked things. Honestly, pumpkin doesn't impart much flavor - its the spices that we associate with pumpkin pie that make us think we're drinking pumpkin beer.

The process you're talking about with the vodka is called making a tincture. You steep whatever flavoring agent (spices in this case) in vodka for a few weeks, then use the flavored vodka or tincture to flavor your beer at bottling or kegging, adding as much you want for your taste. If you'd like to read more about it, Randy Mosher writes about it in his Radical Brewing book.

 

[m00ps]

I would definitely advise against brewing something like a pumpkin ale for your first batch. It will give you no benchmark to how your process stacks up because you will have no idea where things went wrong. And trust me, you will want to be able to troubleshoot your process because no one's first beer is a winner

 

[ncornilsen]

Ok. Thank you for the input. I'll tackle a less challenging one first!

-Nick