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My Pumpkin Ale Recipe

Well, it's getting to that time of the year again and I thought I'd avoid the Halloween rush and offer the best Pumpkin Ale recipe I've ever tasted. I've been making it going on 5 years now and it always comes out great. I've never used canned pumpkin for this, but I'd avoid it because it can tend to be less sweet than the real thing. The end result is a hoppy beer with just a hint of pumpkin spice. Perfect for the cold days coming up.

Pumpkin Ale

7 lbs. light malt extract 1/2 lb crystal malt 40 L 1/2 lb Munich malt 1/4 lb toasted malt

1 oz Galena hops (at first boil)

1/2 oz Mt. Hood (w/ 25 min left) 1 oz Tettnang (w/ 5 min left)

1 pkg Witbread ale yeast

1.5 tsp Nutmeg 1.5 tsp Allspice .5 tsp Cinnamon 1 whole clove

5 lbs "sugar/cooking" pumpkin (cut into fourths, scoop out seed & stuff, bake on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes at 450 to soften, peel, and chunk)

After 60 min boil (standard beer process) remove kettle from heat and add cooked pumpkin. Let steep with cover on for 20 minutes. Strain pumpkin from kettle and sparge in fermenter with 4 gallons of cold water. Ferment 7-10 days. Bottle and condition 7-10 days.

Good luck and drink well....

-Kevin

Reply to
Toonartist
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I don't see anything wrong with this recipe. If you think about it the real flavors from a pumpkin beer come from the spices anyway. If you bake the pumkin, you kill any chance of infection. As for haze, I personally think it's part of the pumpkin beer character. In this recipe you can kind of think of the pumpkin like a "hop addition." You aren't boiling it. You're kind of using it for flavor and aroma. You have all the fermentables you need with your extract. Just my humble opinion. Chuck

Reply to
Chuck

Baking will kill the bacteria on the pumpkin itself, but my worry is about putting unconverted starch into the beer, which could be a source of infection.

------------>Denny

Reply to
Denny Conn

I too just finished a batch of pumpkin beer - mine was a pumpkin wheat beer though (substitute pumpkin for orange peel and cinnamon for coriander). In my batch I boiled the pumpkin first then added the malt extract to it; the spices were added at the 30 minute mark. The airlock is putting off a nice "perfume" as my wife puts it. So we'll see in another week when we go to the secondary.

Marc

Reply to
Marc W Wachter

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