Pumpkin Beer

** 6 pounds pumpkin is an estimate including 4-5 pounds of pumpkin for the boil and 2-3 pounds for the secondary.

USING FRESH PUMPKIN
You need to prepare the pumpkin a few days in advance of the brew day. Using a large knife, halve the pumpkin, remove the seeds, and cut the halves into pieces about 6 inches (15 cm) long. Cover some cookie sheets with aluminum foil, arrange the pumpkin pieces on the cookie sheets, and sprinkle them liberally with brown sugar. Roast in the oven at 375°F (190°C) until soft. This usually takes two to three hours. During roasting, the brown sugar will melt and caramelize onto the pumpkin, providing extra flavor. Remove the pumpkin from the oven and let cool. Then peel off the pumpkin skin, dice the flesh into large cubes (being sure to save the juice for its color and flavor), and store in a covered bowl in the fridge. On brew day, let the pumpkin warm to room temperature and put it in the kettle for the duration of the boil. (As an aside, for those who are into sustainable brewing, the boiled pumpkin flesh makes excellent pies.) To avoid a mess in the kettle and clogged valves or siphons, put the pumpkin into either a large fine-mesh bag designed for fruit or a hop spider equipped with a paint-straining bag.

USING CANNED PUMPKIN
I prepare my pumpkin for the boil by cubing it (again, roughly in one inch sections) and baking it until it is well browned. Usually this takes about an hour at 375° F, tossing the pan every fifteen minutes or so for even caramelization. After it's browned, I toss it with a mix of brown sugar, a little bit of water, and some spices, and put it back into the oven for about ten minutes. It's almost like you're making caramel corn. After that, I toss the pumpkin into the kettle at the start of the boil and let it go for the full hour. Some people insist that this is a bad idea because it will give you cloudy beer -- and you should only use pumpkin in the mash to get the starches converted -- but I've never found this to be true.


Mash all loose grains for 60 min. Strike temp 165, mash 155, sparge 170.

• Mash 4.5 gal. Heat to 165. Add grains. Mash at 155 F for 60 minutes.
  
• Sparge 2.5 gal. Heat sparge water to 170 F. Remove grains from mash and add to sparge for 10 minutes. Add this water to mash water.
  
  Mash and sparge water should amount to about 6 gal for the boil
  
  
  90 min boil
  
  bring wort to boil. should be approximately 5-6 gallons
  
  once boiling add pumpkin and rice hulls in a muslin bag boil 90 min
  
  add liquid malt extract 60 min
  add 1 lb DME at 60 min
  add first hops at 60 min
  
  add 1 lb DME at 20 min
  add second hops at 20 min
  
  add spices at 5 min
  
  remove pumpkin bag from boil
  
  cool wort
  
  REHYDRATE YEAST
  
  
  pitch yeast
  
  After Krausen has fallen (a few days after primary fermentation begins) add 16oz of brown sugar through a sanitized funnel.
  
  After primary fermentation, I secondary my pumpkin ale for one week with a fair amount (I do 2.5 pounds) of roasted, caramelized pumpkin. I feel this is the step that really puts the 'true' pumpkin flavor into my beer; along with discovering biscuit malt in 1995, I credit it as turning a good pumpkin ale into a great one. This is also where you use the molass4 es and maple syrup mentioned in the ingredients; toss them into a hot pan with your roasted pumpkin to candy. You can skip the secondary (or split off a gallon or two to try it on a smaller scale) if you find it unconvincing.
  
  Added 1.5 tsp cinamon and some nutmeg in spice tea before bottling
  
  
  TASTING NOTES
  Tasted before bottling - probably needs to mellow, but very good. Creamy and rich. Underspiced, but I tasted before adding spice tea. Possibly undercarbed - total volume was 4.75 gallons, but there was actually very little trub on the bottom from the pumpkin and the pumpkin did not seem to absorb much liquid. So I actually bottled 49 beers. So this may be undercarbed? I'm not sure. Usually I have more trub and less total beers. I used 4.2 oz of corn sugar dissolved in 16 oz of water for the priming solution.
  
  
  TASTING NOTES
  This beer is GREAT! Frickin awesome.
  My concerns about being under-spiced and under-carbed were wrong. It is a well-spiced pumpkin beer with good head. It is not over-spiced, for me, but some may not enjoy the well-spiced beer here. But I do. The vanilla is not very apparent, so maybe add an additional 1/2 teaspoon or maybe even a whole teaspoon next year?
  
  Carbonation is spot on. There's a slight off taste the first sip, I can't tell what it is, but it was in my first pumpkin beer too. Possibly try using less pumpkin next time or not caramelizing it as much. The off taste quickly fades so I'm guessing it gases off.
  
  Overall a fantastic beer. I actually picked up a six pack of Road Mary's Baby (pumpkin beer from Two Roads), and my beer is without a doubt better.
  
  My OG was a bit lower at 1.068, and my final gravity got to about the right point so this came in at about 6.9-7.0% ABV.