I was getting ready to brew my first pumpkin ale. I searched for an established recipe but that seemed a lot like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack. Basically take any of the billions of beer recipes out there . . . and add pumpkin... somewhere... cooked, baked, canned, fried, boiled... add it to the mash, or boil, or primary, or secondary, or in the bottle... or just fill a pumpkin with beer, stick a straw in it and suck.
In my research I read where some "pumpkin" beers don't actually have any "pumpkin" in them. Surfing around further I ran across this article which I found interesting.
I originally started this post because I was trying to put a recipe together in BeerSmith II and couldn't find a decent "pumpkin" addition for the ingredients that actually had any numbers to show how it might affect the beer. The pumpkin recipes I found that actually listed pumpkin in the ingredients usually had it listed under Misc as a flavor, so it had no affect whatsoever on any other aspect of the beer, (i.e. bitterness, color, OG, FG, abv, body, ...)
As it turns out, "pumpkin" is not even the "flavor" one is shooting for when brewing a "pumpkin" beer anyway. The objective is the pumpkin pie spice flavor.
So now that I've researched it, (to the extent that I have), I guess it really doesn't matter how much "pumpkin" one adds, or when they add it, or how they add it... As long as there's the right amount of allspice, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, how much pumpkin, (or squash) you throw in is seemingly insignificant . . . at least where flavor is concerned.
I always had a mental block about pumpkin beer so I never even considered brewing one. I guess the idea of beer that tastes like pumpkin pie just sounded gross to me. This year I decided to put aside my unsubstantiated speculations and give it a try. And after doing a minimal amount of research to see what the best course of action should be . . . I believe my next beer will be a stout or a pale ale - something that doesn't taste like pumpkin pie.
If I really get desperate and decide I just have to have the flavor of pumpkin pie . . . I'll eat a piece of pumpkin pie.
Cheers
In my research I read where some "pumpkin" beers don't actually have any "pumpkin" in them. Surfing around further I ran across this article which I found interesting.
I originally started this post because I was trying to put a recipe together in BeerSmith II and couldn't find a decent "pumpkin" addition for the ingredients that actually had any numbers to show how it might affect the beer. The pumpkin recipes I found that actually listed pumpkin in the ingredients usually had it listed under Misc as a flavor, so it had no affect whatsoever on any other aspect of the beer, (i.e. bitterness, color, OG, FG, abv, body, ...)
As it turns out, "pumpkin" is not even the "flavor" one is shooting for when brewing a "pumpkin" beer anyway. The objective is the pumpkin pie spice flavor.
So now that I've researched it, (to the extent that I have), I guess it really doesn't matter how much "pumpkin" one adds, or when they add it, or how they add it... As long as there's the right amount of allspice, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, how much pumpkin, (or squash) you throw in is seemingly insignificant . . . at least where flavor is concerned.
I always had a mental block about pumpkin beer so I never even considered brewing one. I guess the idea of beer that tastes like pumpkin pie just sounded gross to me. This year I decided to put aside my unsubstantiated speculations and give it a try. And after doing a minimal amount of research to see what the best course of action should be . . . I believe my next beer will be a stout or a pale ale - something that doesn't taste like pumpkin pie.
If I really get desperate and decide I just have to have the flavor of pumpkin pie . . . I'll eat a piece of pumpkin pie. Cheers
