I have read a lot about pumpkin beers, listened to an episode on The BN and it seems that a lot of people don't think the extra effort of roasting the pumpkin and so forth makes a big difference. On Basic Brewing radio they even had a podcast where through a double blind experiment the tasters showed no discernible difference in which recipe actually used pumpkin vs. just using the spices in secondary... With that said, my brew buddy made the smashing pumpkin recipe through roasting the pumpkin and then putting it into the mash and it didn't really show any taste difference. I made the smashing pumpkin recipe and used purée to soak in my wort (after mash) while I sparged for about 15 minutes and then let it drip dry into the kettle before starting the boil. I feel like I got some of the carotene color (which was a plus) and maybe some sugars but not much taste. The batch actually fermented down to 1.008, way too dry, so I added .35 LB. Of brown sugar to a small amount of boiled water for a simple sugar, added it cold to the keg after transferring from secondary and it turned out fantastic. IMHO, it's not worth the time but it's a lot of fun regardless to utilize the pumpkin if you have the time and extra cash to spend. Best of luck, let us know how it turns out!
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