Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

Not sure if anyone will see this, but :

I prefer Post Road and Buffalo Bills over any other commercial 'pumpkin' beer I have tried.  I have not consumed Weyerbacher or Southern Tier, but I think I've tried the rest mentioned.

As for pumpkin ale brewing :

If you want pumpkin pie flavor, get a cookbook.  Better yet, get several cookbooks, Mom's recipes and grandma's recipes and search the internet -- the recipes will reveal what combinations of spices work.  As for the amounts of spices to add to the brew, look at other people's pumpkin / spice ale recipes, and work from there.  If the ingredients / yeast predict a strongly flavored brew, use a little more spice.  I don't measure anything, but I learned on the first try not to use lots of strong spices (e.g. cloves...).  A 5 gallon batch of beer hides a lot less spice than a 5 gallon batch of stew!  If it is too spicy initially, let it sit a month and try it again, repeat as needed.

Pumpkin -- Pumpkin actually refers to squash.  In fact, the jack-o-lanterns we carve at Halloween are not ideal for eating, and not surprisingly, are not good for brewing.  Restaurateurs have explained to me that 'pumpkin' soup/pie/pasta/etc rarely, if ever, contain the familiar orange, approximately spherical jack-o-lantern.  Instead, they use a variety of other squashes.  Similar to the spice advice, get as many squash or "pumpkin" -centric recipes as you can find and re-imagine them as a beer (I have flavor profile charts of malts and hops lying around for reference).  My 'pumpkin' beer is based on a dessert recipe that does not produce a pie.  Finally, if all grain brewing or mini mashing, mash the 'pumpkin' after first roasting the pumpkin.  People love to claim that 'pumpkin' replaces grain in historic recipes and *none of them mash it*!  By pound, squash is mostly water, so the sugar concentration isn't that great, and a significant portion of the sugars are in the form of carbohydrates -- mashing will turn that into fermentable sugar.  Liquefying the roast squash with a blender or food processor may be a good idea, but I've never tried it. (this year...)  Also, various squash are available most of year, so 'pumpkin' beer can give that Thanksgiving reverie practically all year.


The best article on 'pumpkin' beer I have found is :

http://www.absbrew.com/index.php?act=viewDoc&docId=15


Finally, whenever this year's version of my SaazSquash (har har) is brewed and properly aged, I'll share some of it (provided that it lives up to the hype -- people in other states ask me if I brought any along when I go visit.)

Hoptical Allusions, thanks for the post.  One thing I did not put in there on pumpkin brewing (on the ABS site) was the fact that I take out the bag of mashed pumpkin temporarily between sparging and ramp up for boil and then add back after DME has been added, calcium salts, etc, and boil the hell out of the pumpkin for the remainder of the boil, and then take it out at flame out.  I also add 2 cinnamon sticks and mixed spices near flame out.  I have this years pumpkin lager at 35 deg F now.  Should be ready to keg by mid December, hope to have on tap by Christmas.  I repeated everything with a 14 pound Cushaw and wound up with the same gravity, got about 15 gravity units from the 2-row/pumpkin mash.  I had a taste after the diacetyl rest and it was beautiful.  You are welcome drop by and taste once it is ready. I have also tried it with canned pumpkin, and it is equally awesome, but for that one I added purified amylase enzyme to the canned pumpkin with some water prior to going into the mash.  Worked out well.

Thanks for sharing everyone.  Pumpkin beer is a real treat around here, and if I am not on it fast enough after it is kegged, my wife will literally drink it all, just like she is putting down my backyard hop harvest pale ale right now (The best pale ale I have ever had by the way, highly recommend home-grown hops). Nothing beats your backyard in a glass.

Cheers!

-Mark.

hey Doc,

are you part of the old ABS?  I ask because I gave a bottle of my version of pumpkin ale to one of the ABS guys about 2 years ago when he dropped off an order.  I never heard back about that bottle because this hadn't formed at that point.

You wouldn't happen to know anything about it?