Pumpkin Ale

[mike]

Hey y'all
We tried the Pumpkin Ale during last nights meeting at Humperdinks. I thought it was OK, but my wife really loved it. She has never shown this much interest in beer before so I need to make her a batch asap. Before I start an extensive internet search, I thought I would ask here first. Anybody have a pumpkin recipe that's a little on the sweet side like the one at Humperdinks? Extract preferred, but I can convert from an all grain.
Thanks
Mike

(btw, Mike is the idiot who drank a bee at the brew day last Saturday)

[Brewboy]

Mike, Not an idiot! Shite happens I'm sorry it happened to you and me that day.

Leroy brews a really good pumpkin ale...His recipe can be found Here.

If you want it sweeter, just brew it to a bit higher gravity, using the same yeast will yield a sweeter beer.

OH and you will need to roast the pumpkins in the oven till they get soft and carmelize just a bit.

You will need to do at least a partial mash to convert the starch in the pumpkin to sugars. If you don't have a mashtun, let me know. I can help you out.

[mike]

Yeah Scott, maybe everybody will call us "sting buddies"......WooHoo!
I checked the link. Looks just right. I never mashed before. I had assumed that the pumpkin went in the secondary somehow. Thanks for the help offer - I'll pm you after work.
Mike

[BrotherhoodBrew]

Leroy's recipe is a great place to start. The roasted pumpkins are pretty important from when we made it. It is some good stuff. Please remember to be easy on the spice you can always add them later but you cant ever get rid of them.

[Guerra]

Leroy's recipe is a great place to start. The roasted pumpkins are pretty important from when we made it.

Don't forget to "peel" the skins off the pumpkins after roasting, before placing into the mash. The pumpkin skin will really stick the mash.

[donniestyle]

Brock of St Arnold's said they used canned pumpkin for their Divine 9. The spices are evident in the beer. I forget whether they added it to the boil or mash.

I've made a couple Pumpkin Cream Ales, one of which took a third place in the Bluebonnet. They were all-grain and I baked, then liquefied (using a hand blender) and boiled the pumpkin and added it to a mash to raise the temp to 148F.

Yes the mash will stick a lot. I collected until the mash stuck, added hot water again to reach 168F, recirculated, and collected until the mash sticks again. It's an iterative process.

If I were to do it again, I would find a way to keep the goo out of the mash so it would not get stuck. One of my ideas was to mash the pumpkin separately the night before in a pot, using a couple pounds of grain and a bag of alpha amylase, then straining it through a cheese cloth. The resulting starchy/sugary wort could be used in the mash.

[iledford]

Not really familiar with the recipe Pumpkin Ale comes with but there are a lot of interesting and enticing ones I got from the internet. Most of them lean toward making something like a sweet beer but I guess that is what the pumpkin is actually known for, with its natural sweetness level actually going and rocketing up.

Would likely consider what is going to be included right in the mix.