Dude said:
Very interesting recipe. Do you like it so far?
I just bottled it this evening and I can't make up my mind. I know it needs to age some more.
I did the 1/2 ounce of 4.0% Liberty on the 26th, and then racked again on 10-29 off the hops. I still didn't like the flavor, I dropped in three average sized sticks of cinamon.
I racked off the cinamon into the bottling bucket tonight (11-02-07) and the flavor is still moving around. I filled three half gallon growlers (for cooking purposes)without priming sugar and then bottled 3 gallons with 2.5ozs priming sugar.
I'll try one of the primed bottles around Christmas just to see where it is, but I am not feeling it. The whoel batch might end up getting poured straight out.
I think my next pumpkin beer is going to be just plain old american 6 row and plain old roasted pumpkin, no spices, no maple syrup, no rauchmalt, a good handful of bittering hops, a good handful of flavor hops, a good handful of aroma and get it in the bottle. Once that is bottle conditioned I'll see about moving toward something more complex.
If you are So-Cal I am happy to put some in your cellar. EDIT: I see you are east coast, nevermind.
EDIT II: At bottling time there is no maple left in the nose and I can't find it anywhere else either. The pumkin is there, briefly on the the tongue, but it gets slammed by the alcohol and then the smoke pushes everything aside for along strong finish. Who knows where it will end up.
FWIW my next brew is going to be EdWorts Haus pale, I am sticking with proven recipes for a while.