To all those who hate pumpkin beer...

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Weezy

Weezy

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Never advertise about you brewing any sort of spiced beer. Period.

Bashing pumpkin beer is like a hobby to many of us. Although, how many posts do we see about coffee beers, cocoa, peanut butter, nuts, etc. Give me a freaking break! It's all adjunct based ice beers.

(so says the guy who has bashed pumpkin beer but is currently into his second bomber of Elysian pumpkin stout)
 
I'm roasting a pumpkin right now, for a pumpkin ale to be brewed on saturday.

Boo on the haters. :mug:
 
TasunkaWitko said:
Try sugar pumpkins, rather than the jack-o-lantern-type pumpkins....
Click to expand...

I cheated it with a cane sugar solution rub before it went in the oven. I got this pumpkin at a local organic farm. It's medium sized but I think it's a not a sugar pumpkin.
 
Weezy said:
Never advertise about you brewing any sort of spiced beer. Period.

Bashing pumpkin beer is like a hobby to many of us. Although, how many posts do we see about coffee beers, cocoa, peanut butter, nuts, etc. Give me a freaking break! It's all adjunct based ice beers.

(so says the guy who has bashed pumpkin beer but is currently into his second bomber of Elysian pumpkin stout)
Click to expand...

Now I feel bad that I said I don't like pumpkin beer. Didn't want to offend any who do. Just my own personal preference.

I find your post unclear. Are you a pumpkin beer basher or enthusiast? You say, "Bashing... is like a hobby to us." Happy to say it is not MY hobby.

What does pumpkin beer have to do with other spiced beers? (Do I dare mention that I don't like most of them either. No offense!)

Why must you punish yourself with pumpkin stouts?
 
For me it's a lot like the Easter Bunny. In July, nobody wants to hear about or even think about some rabbit pooping out chocolate eggs. But come march-april it is totally fair game & my family buys into the season of Easter whole heartily.

Pumpkin beer posts in October....seems fitting to the season to me.
 
Beerbeque said:
I've never tasted a pumpkin beer and I never want to. Sounds disgusting.
Click to expand...

Try this one if you can.

tree-jumpin-jack-pumpkin_base.jpg
 
If a pumpkin farts in a beer in the woods, is it really a pumpkin beer if nobody is around to smell it? Sorry. Had to contribute absolutely nothing to the thread. Okay, I will contribute something constructive. Some pumpkin beers are horrible, and some of em are good. I am a pumking fanboy but this year's batch sucks for me. just straight sweet butterscotch and hop bitterness. Last year was more balanced. I like my own recipe more.
 
I like pumpkin pie almost as much as sweet potato pie, and I like sugar pumpkins cut in half and oven-baked with butter and a little bit of cinnamon. On the other hand I've tasted maybe half a dozen pumpkin beers, and hated them all.

But that's OK. I don't demand of the world that everyone in it should love or hate what I love or hate...
 
This hobby is all about making what you like. If others happen to dig it then that's cool too. If not, then that's just more for you. Not everyone likes the same things which is why we have so many different kinds of beer; and that's a wonderful thing.
 
I don't understand the "I've never tried it and never want to" school. Isn't that the similar to guys who won't try craft beer? I've tried plenty of styles that I don't like: hot pepper beer, sours, etc. But I didn't know that until I tried them. And I would try them again, because they are not all the same. I don't like all pumpkin beers by any stretch. Many are too strong on the spice. But I brewed a nice one last month, I'm looking forward to drinking and sharing it.
 
I have seen a lot of pumpkin ale recipes that call for spices. I didn't want that so I did mine with 8 pounds of roasted pumpkin meat (5 gallon batch) It gave just a hint of pumpkin flavor which was what I was after.

I want just a little more so this years batch will have 10 pounds cooked a little longer for some caramelized flavor.

I really liked mine. Have not tried many commercial ones.
 
I like the idea of pumpkin beer (pumpkin pie in a bottle? sign me up!), but I've never had one I've been crazy about. Either it doesn't really taste like much of anything (pale ale with a hint of... something), or it's way over-spiced and just tastes like an especially nasty spice ale. I've never had one that actually tastes like pumpkin-pie to me.
 
A lot of pumpkin beers don't even have any pumpkin in them!!! Its all about the spices, I have never enjoyed a beer with spices. But I'm open minded and I keep trying them.
I don't bash on the beer, just the people that go nuts for pumpkin beer
 
People are allowed to criticize whichever style of beer they want. Telling people not to post about X if they complain about Y is a ridiculous demand.
 
Beerbeque said:
I've never tasted a pumpkin beer and I never want to. Sounds disgusting.
Click to expand...

Nothing like an open mind eh? LMAO!

I thought I hated pumpkin beer, then I made one for a club contest a couple of years ago. Won a couple of medals with that batch and now the LHBS has my recipe in a kit for the public to buy. LOL...now I love pumpkin beer. But not all of them.

One suggestion, if it's going to stay on tap for very long, dedicate one length of beer line to all spiced beers. I could never get the cinnamon out of the line afterwards.

Also, under-spice at the outset. You can always add more, but not take spice out.

Sprinkle your spice mixture on a piece of toast with some light butter/margarine on it to dial in your spice mixture. If you don't like Allspice and nutmeg, dial it way back. This is no different then any other food preparation. If there's something you don't like about another recipe you can tweak it and make it the way you like it!

Unless they "hate" pumpkin pie, I think those who say they "hate" pumpkin beer just haven't had the right one yet.
 
My problem with pumpkin beers is this--it's too often a (bad) newbie brewing gateway. A newbie buys a crappy extract kit with too many spices and old extract, they inundate the forum with questions that are answered in stickies, and then often don't brew again because they started with a crummy kit that turns out poorly.

I've had pumpkin beers I could choke down, but generally they just give beer a bad name.
 
I recently sampled ten different commercial pumpkin ales. Two I really enjoyed and most of the rest were fair to mediocre at best, with the pumpkin porters generally better than the lighter ales. The one from Blue Moon was a complete waste of time.

The Good:

Stevens Point Whole Hog Pumpkin Ale (my favorite of all I sampled)

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/786/52279/?sort=recent&start=0

Southern Tier Pumking:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/3818/38394/?sort=recent&start=0

I hate the taste of nutmeg, especially in pumpkin pie, so I brewed my own 5 gallon batch of pumpkin ale using 45 oz of canned pumpkin in the mash and a 2:1:1 mixture of cinnamon, ginger and cloves in the boil, added during the last ten minutes, and then made a spice extract by adding four teaspoons of the spice mixture to 4 ounces of vodka and steeping it for two weeks. At bottling I added one pound of lactose to four cups of water along with the priming sugar, and adjusted the level of spice to my liking with the spice extract. It's conditioning now and should be ready in another nine days.
 
I'm not a huge pumkin beer fan. I'll drink them, but I don't love them.

I bought a couple of bottles of Southern Tier Warlock pumpkin stout last year. I really didn't care for them that much, so I tossed them in my basement.

I just opened one up last weekend and man it was good. Looks like a year of aging did the trick. I bought a few more to age for next year.
 
Weezy said:
Never advertise about you brewing any sort of spiced beer. Period.

Bashing pumpkin beer is like a hobby to many of us. Although, how many posts do we see about coffee beers, cocoa, peanut butter, nuts, etc. Give me a freaking break! It's all adjunct based ice beers.
Click to expand...

So if someone doesn't like the taste of the combination of spices typical in a pumpkin beer, it's then hypocritical of them if they brew a beer with spice (or any other atypical ingredient, apparently).

Makes perfect sense.
 
Best pumpkin beer I've ever had used no pumpkin at all. It was a home brewed pumpkin porter that used butternut squash. It was great.
 

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