Autumn Seasonal Beer Scary Balz Pumpkin Ale

[CrookedTail]

Recipe Type

Partial Mash

Yeast

US-05

Batch Size (Gallons)

5

Original Gravity

1.061

Final Gravity

1.013

Boiling Time (Minutes)

60

IBU

23

Color

16

Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)

3 weeks

Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)

1 week

Tasting Notes

I\'ve tried many pumpkins ales. This one tops them all.

This is one of the most popular brews amongst friends and family of mine. All I hear from them is "When are you brewing your pumpkin ale again?" The brew day for this (even with just a mini-mash) is fairly long, mainly because of the extra work prepping the pumpkins. I haven't tried using canned pumpkin as of yet, only fresh ones. The extra time is worth the reactions this beer receives.

The beer comes out a beautiful dark amber color. The flavor is malty, with the spices at just the right amounts. One thing I noticed is that the spices are a bit more evident when I bottle this than when I keg it.

If any of you have tried Saranac's Pumpkin ale, it is similar to this.

Anyway, here it is:

Scary Balz Pumpkin Ale

Fermentables
6lbs Amber LME
1lb Caramel 60L
1lb Dark Munich Malt
8oz Flaked Barley
1 cup Brown Sugar

Hops
1.5oz Mt Hood (6AAU) @ 60 min
.5oz Mt Hood @ 5 min

Adjuncts/Spices
6-8 lbs of pumpkins
1 tbsp Cinnamon
1 tbsp Nutmeg
2 tsp Ginger
1 tsp Allspice
.5 tsp Cloves
1 tsp Vanilla

Yeast
US-05

Gut the pumpkins and cut them in half. Place them in a baking dish rind side up and add a little water to the dish. Roast in 350 degree oven 1.5-2 hours. Pumpkins should carmelize a bit.

Scoop the pumpkin from the rinds and mush them up. Add to grains and mash at 155 degrees for an hour. Strain and sparge mash/pumpkin mixture, then proceed with boil.

Add the spices at flameout and let them steep for 15 minutes. Cool and transfer to fermenter. Pitch yeast and ferment for 3 weeks.

Add vanilla to secondary fermenter and rack beer over the vanilla. After a week or two, keg or bottle.

The beer tastes great on its own, but my wife and her friends love to coat the rim of their pint glasses with a cinnamon/sugar mixture the same way margaritas are served with salt. It does make the flavor jump out a bit more.

 

[hopsalot]

sounds great, very cool how you cook the pumpkins. What software do you use to produce that label?

 

[CrookedTail]

sounds great, very cool how you cook the pumpkins. What software do you use to produce that label?

Adobe Illustrator

 

[BasementBrewmistress]

I brewed this on the 6th. First time mashing anything. I'm a country girl at heart, so used 6# of sweet potato instead of pumpkin.

Just took a hydro sample and this stuff is delicious!! Right now, the flavors are well-balanced, not overly sweet, spiced, or hoppy. I think it's done, but will try to be good and hold it in the fermenter for another week. I am NOT sure that I'll keep my promise to save this for Thanksgiving.

Thinking about brewing a hybrid pumpkin/sweet potato version of this next week.

Thanks for sharing this recipe!

 

[CrookedTail]

I brewed this on the 6th. First time mashing anything. I'm a country girl at heart, so used 6# of sweet potato instead of pumpkin.

Just took a hydro sample and this stuff is delicious!! Right now, the flavors are well-balanced, not overly sweet, spiced, or hoppy. I think it's done, but will try to be good and hold it in the fermenter for another week. I am NOT sure that I'll keep my promise to save this for Thanksgiving.

Thinking about brewing a hybrid pumpkin/sweet potato version of this next week.

Thanks for sharing this recipe!

I've been wondering how it would come out with sweet potatoes. Keep me updated!

 

[CrookedTail]

I have this recipe on Hopville. Here's a comment from someone who brewed it:

This came out great. Thank you for your help. I drank 4 other pumpkin beers in preparation for this one and this one definitely stands out as being one of the best. Southern Tier and Dogfish were two of the other four! Great work here!

 

[BasementBrewmistress]

Hoping to keg this and then brew a second batch (with pumpkin/sweet potato) tomorrow. We're planning to let it carb naturally instead of force carbing.

The only two pumpkin brews that come close are Williamsburg's (assuming you let it sit for a few weeks first) and Vintage 50's.

Will let you know how it tastes.

 

[BasementBrewmistress]

Just racked the sweet potato. I think it's going to be pretty nice, but we went with 6# of sweet potatoes (thinking they would have more sugar than pumpkin) -- due to my low efficiency it would be reasonable to go up to 8# next time around. Hope I can leave it be long enough to age properly!

 

[CrookedTail]

Added a photo of the beer to the OP. The wife loves to coat the rim of her glass with cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar.

 

[BasementBrewmistress]

Just a followup.

Had this on Thanksgiving. It was nice, but not great. I was a little let down, and didn't draft more than a few pints.

Well, we finished it off with Christmas dinner and it was a HUGE hit. It was damn good and apparently just needed more time to mature. I'd definitely recommend this recipe and plan to re-brew it a month earlier next year. Next time I'd like to try local sweet potatoes and fresh ground Ceylon or Vietnamese cinnamon.

Thanks again for sharing this recipe!

 

[jro238]

This brew finally convinced me to create a user name on these forums (which I have been lurking on for quite a while now).

My wife seems to have caught a bit of the homebrew fever and wanted to brew a pumpkin ale (hey, pumpkin can be a spring beer). We 'borrowed' your recipe almost to the letter with one exception--there is no fresh pumpkin in Feb. so we substituted in two 15 oz. cans of pumpkin puree which we still tried to roast in the oven for an hour or two (it worked pretty well). One note to anyone else who wants to try this one: the fermentation (at least for us, ~70 degrees) only lasted for a few days and was never all that vigorous so don't worry too much if you think your yeast pooped out on you. As of today (5 days) we have hit 1.013 on the nose and it tastes pretty damn good (hops a bit sharp but that should mellow with a little time).

We're going to bottle and keg the batch so it'll be interesting to see how the spices differ between the two.

 

[CrookedTail]

Just a followup.

Had this on Thanksgiving. It was nice, but not great. I was a little let down, and didn't draft more than a few pints.

Well, we finished it off with Christmas dinner and it was a HUGE hit. It was damn good and apparently just needed more time to mature. I'd definitely recommend this recipe and plan to re-brew it a month earlier next year. Next time I'd like to try local sweet potatoes and fresh ground Ceylon or Vietnamese cinnamon.

Thanks again for sharing this recipe!

Glad to hear it!

 

[CrookedTail]

This brew finally convinced me to create a user name on these forums (which I have been lurking on for quite a while now).

My wife seems to have caught a bit of the homebrew fever and wanted to brew a pumpkin ale (hey, pumpkin can be a spring beer). We 'borrowed' your recipe almost to the letter with one exception--there is no fresh pumpkin in Feb. so we substituted in two 15 oz. cans of pumpkin puree which we still tried to roast in the oven for an hour or two (it worked pretty well). One note to anyone else who wants to try this one: the fermentation (at least for us, ~70 degrees) only lasted for a few days and was never all that vigorous so don't worry too much if you think your yeast pooped out on you. As of today (5 days) we have hit 1.013 on the nose and it tastes pretty damn good (hops a bit sharp but that should mellow with a little time).

We're going to bottle and keg the batch so it'll be interesting to see how the spices differ between the two.

In the past I've noticed the bottled version seems to retain more of the spice aromas.

As for canned pumpkins, they work fine. This past Fall I used canned pumpkin in place of fresh ones in one of my batches. The beer came out fine.

It's funny that this thread came up, and you mentioned pumpkin being a spring beer. After using canned pumpkins successfully, once Thanksgiving passed my local supermarket put whatever leftover canned pumpkin they had on sale. I bought enough of them up to brew a batch for the Spring.

I think it's time.

 

[jro238]

So the kegging setup isn't quite...well set up yet so we just bottled the batch (a month or so ago). It tastes great but unfortunately I overfileld the bottles and they are carbing *really* slowly. The spice level is nice and I love the medium hop flavor to give it some balance (SWMBO thinks it's a little too hoppy, but she isn't a big fan of hops in the first place so take it with a grain of salt). Overall I think it is saying something that the beer tastes great even though it's half flat .

Thanks again for the great recipe!

 

[CrookedTail]

So the kegging setup isn't quite...well set up yet so we just bottled the batch (a month or so ago). It tastes great but unfortunately I overfileld the bottles and they are carbing *really* slowly. The spice level is nice and I love the medium hop flavor to give it some balance (SWMBO thinks it's a little too hoppy, but she isn't a big fan of hops in the first place so take it with a grain of salt). Overall I think it is saying something that the beer tastes great even though it's half flat .

Thanks again for the great recipe!

Strange I've never thought this to be overhopped (and I'm not a huge hophead either). If anything they will mellow out in a few weeks.

I'm glad you like the recipe. It's a PITA to brew, but the end result is always worth it! Cheers!

 

[jro238]

Strange I've never thought this to be overhopped (and I'm not a huge hophead either). If anything they will mellow out in a few weeks.

I'm glad you like the recipe. It's a PITA to brew, but the end result is always worth it! Cheers!

We were brewing it with some friends and I let them be in charge of the hop addition; it is all together possible that a bit extra got added heh

 

[BasementBrewmistress]

BTW, we discovered a growler of this about 6 weeks ago. It had lost some of it's flavor, but not as much one would expect - it was still quite drinkable.

 

[CrookedTail]

BTW, we discovered a growler of this about 6 weeks ago. It had lost some of it's flavor, but not as much one would expect - it was still quite drinkable.

I still have two bottles from a batch I brewed almost two years ago. I had a third but drank it last Fall (when it was a year old), and it held up pretty well to aging. The spices seemed more pronounced IMO.

I'm curious to see what it will taste like at two years old.

 

[joepsu0985]

Is the sugar added at the same time as the extract?

 

[CrookedTail]

Is the sugar added at the same time as the extract?

I usually add it late in the boil.

 

[Madscientist737]

What temperature did you ferment your primary and secondary at? Do you know if there is any difference in taste/quality/carb if you ferment slow/cold as opposed to fast/warm? Thanks!

 

[CrookedTail]

As long as you ferment under 70 degrees you should be fine.

 

[Benedetto]

I'm gonna make this. At what point do you add the brown sugar?

Thanks

 

[CrookedTail]

I add it late in the boil, usually in the final 2-5 minutes.

 

[VipertheIV]

What is your OG and FG?

 

[CrookedTail]

What is your OG and FG?

The OG should fall in the 1.059-1.061 range. Final gravity is often 1.012-1.013.

 

[TheBiGZ]

There doesn't seem to be any base malt in your partial mash. Just the dark munich? What's going to convert the starches in the pumpkin to fermentable sugars? Or is baking it sufficient? Does pumpkin have any diastatic power?

Or is this basically just a steep and no conversion is taking place?

I love pumpkin ales but I've never made one...

 

[CrookedTail]

There doesn't seem to be any base malt in your partial mash. Just the dark munich? What's going to convert the starches in the pumpkin to fermentable sugars? Or is baking it sufficient? Does pumpkin have any diastatic power?

Or is this basically just a steep and no conversion is taking place?

I love pumpkin ales but I've never made one...

The pumpkins are caramelized and meant to be more of a flavoring agent than a source of fermentables. You really could get away with using considerably less pumpkin (especially if you're using canned pumpkin).

I once heard a podcast on pumpkin beers, where two brewers brewed essentially the same recipe, except one used pumpkins, while the other one didn't. The resulting beers were then used in a blind taste test. It turns out there wasn't much of a difference in flavor between the two beers, except the version with pumpkins was found to be slightly drier than the one without. The sugars extracted from pumpkins are simple sugars, so extracting and converting them is similar to adding corn or cane sugar to your beer. That said,pumpkins in general are a poor source of fermentable sugars.

The key is to caramelize the pumpkins to get some flavor out of them. Otherwise they add little to your beer.

 

[halcyondays]

So with the spices, you say you "steeped" them at flame out. Did you add them directly into the wort or put them in some type of tea bag or something? I don't want to get too nitpicky here, but I've never done a beer like this and I want it to turn out well!

 

[Jaehnig]

So with the spices, you say you "steeped" them at flame out. Did you add them directly into the wort or put them in some type of tea bag or something? I don't want to get too nitpicky here, but I've never done a beer like this and I want it to turn out well!

For my pumpkin ale I boiled the spices in the lady few minutes of my boil. I also boiled a cup of water with more spices and then added them to the secondary to boost flavors.

Hope this helps.

V/R,
BrewTech