I did a spiced pumpkin mead this year and learned a LOT about pumpkin and how it works fermented. I have tweeked my recipe from what I have learned to improve the flavor profile for the next time I try it. I have also worked with bragotts and learned a lot there. I don't think it would be difficult or unwise to add the bragott type flavors/techniques to my pumpkin mead recipe. Take this with a grain of salt but here is my recipe/methods for my pumpkin mead with the bragott twist added.
Spiced Pumpkin Bragott variant
1 gallon recipe
2 lb honey
1 lb Bries Sparkling amber LME
15oz pumpkin puree or 1 ¾ cups of fresh shredded pumpkin from pie pumpkins
7/8 cup of cooked and mashed sweet potato (Just half as much pumpkin)
3 tea bags of stash premium Chai spiced tea
½ oz of cascade hops
½ tsp of ginger
½ tsp allspice
1 clove
½ cinnamon stick
1tsp of yeast nutrients
Yeast (Nottingham)
Take 1 gallon of water and bring to a boil. Add in LME and ¼ oz of hops. The hops should be in nylon bags. Boil this for 45 min. Add in 1 cup of hot water, last of the hops, Tea bags and spices. Do not add spices to bags, let them roam free. Boil that for 15 minutes. Pour liquid over Pumpkin, sweet potato & honey in carboy but only half way. Make sure to remove tea bags and bags of hops but leave the spices. Shake the carboy a lot because boiling water removes oxygen and the yeast will need that. Add yeast nutrients and top off the carboy, mix well again and then let it rest until at room temp. Rehydrate and pitch yeast.
When the time comes for more brewing I may do two batches one of them as the bragott above and the other as the normal mead recipe to compair the two. Hope you have fun with your endevors.
