Pumpkin!

Based off of highly rated pumpkin beer recipe here: http://www.brewunited.com/index.php?blogid=154

Honestly, this is the almost more cooking than brewing, but the outcome is by far the most pumpkin-tasting pumpkin beer I've had.

Along with a hop of choice (purely used as minor bittering addition) & grist, you'll need 1 PIE pumpkin, brown sugar, maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.

I start with the pie pumpkin, cut it in half (first half will be used at beginning of the boil and second will be at dry hop) and remove seeds/guts. Then cut the first half into 1 inch sections with skin off. I also then cut the second half into .5 inch sections with skin off. This should yield up to 1.5 lbs combined.

You also need a spice mix, which you only need .6 TEAspoons of in total. You can either use .36 tsp cinnamon, .12 tsp ground ginger, and .12 tsp nutmeg, or scale to 3, 1, and 1 respectively to simplify and only use .6 tsp of the mix.

With pumpkin cut and spice mix prepared, cook all pumpkin pieces at 375F for 1 hour, tossing every 15 mins. After, Toss the 1 inch cut half with brown sugar and water (eyeball it) and a dash of the spice mix and cook at 375F another 10 mins. Take the .5 inch cut half and place in a pan on stove on high with maple syrup (again, eyeballing it) to 'candy' it on low heat for about 30 mins (you can do this in a few weeks, but I find easier to do all in one go). Once complete, let cool and place in sealed plastic bag in the freezer until ready for secondary.

Now the brewing begins. Mash as normal, and then add hops AND the 1 inch cooked half pumpkin at boil.

At flame-out, add the rest of the .6 tsp spice mix and then ferment!

After about a week primary fermentation, I let the second pumpkin half warm out of the freezer and placed directly into the primary. Bottled 1 week later.

Lots of work but its worth it! Also note that this ended up coming in around 6% for me vs. 5.21% due to the added brown sugar and maple syrup.