Beer Forum

So I put together a partial mash/extract recipe for a pumpkin ale and would like a little sanity check before I pull the trigger.

4 lbs canned 100% pumpkin
1 lb Marris Otter Pale malt
1 lb Wheat malt
.5 lb Crystal 40 malt
6.6 lbs Amber LME
1 lb light DME
1 oz Cluster Hops (60 min)
Safale US-05

Estimated OG 1.046
Estimated FG 1.013
Estimated ABV 5.4%

Mash the Pale malt, wheat malt, crystal 40 and Pumpkin in 2 gallons of water at 152° F for 60 min. Strain off liquid off and add to boil kettle.
Add water to bring boil volume to 3 gallons.
Bring to a boil adding 3.3 lbs of amber LME and light DME
Add cluster hops
Add the last of the Amber LME at 15 min left in the boil
Cool to pitching temp and pitch yeast.

Any constructive feed back would be much appreciated.

Conan

Oh yeah, forgot to bring total volume up to 5 Gallons in the fermenter before pitching yeast.

I have not quite decided on the spices yet.

Conan

Call Grandma

I don't like pumpkin beer or even pumpkin pie, but if I were to do one, I wouldn't stray too far from a custom blend based off from McCormick's. Less nutmeg would be the biggest change.

Ozwald wrote: ......I don't like pumpkin beer or even pumpkin pie.......

Wow, I can't imagine not liking pumpkin pie!

First, I'd raise the amount of malt grains and lower the extract so that you have enough diastatic power to convert the pumpkin.
I'd go with 2 lbs MO and 2 lbs wheat malt there.

I always recommend that once you start building your own extract recipes, you should not use Amber or Dark extract. This is because you are then tied to that manufacturer's proprietary mix. You will never be able to replicate it with either a different manufacturer's extract or your own AG recipe (should you ever go that way). You also can never really tweak the crystal mix they use and you are kind of stuck with their ratios. Steeping your own crystal and using Pale extract makes it easy to tweak and convert in the future.

A reasonably close sub for 6.6 lbs Amber LME is 1/2 lb C60 and 6 lbs Pale DME. However, you already have some C40 in this recipe. I'd actually keep the existing C40 and instead of adding C60 here, I'd add C80 to add a little more of that bittersweet caramel to go with the pumpkin spices.

Cluster hops can be catty. I'd go with Willamette or Fuggles in a pumpkin beer and try to hit around {edit]30-35[/edit] IBUs.

So:

4 lbs canned 100% pumpkin
2 lb Marris Otter Pale malt
2 lb Wheat malt
1/2 lb Crystal 40 malt
1/2 lb Crystal 80 malt
6 lbs light DME
1.5 oz Willamette Hops 6%AA (60 min) - aim for 30-35 IBUs [edit= on second thought, this is a pretty big beer, you probably want 30-35 IBUs to balance all the malt in this recipe]

US-05

Crush the grains and do the mini-mash of the pumpkin and crushed malts
at 152F for about 45 mins or until the iodine test shows negative starch.
The moderately high mash temp will give you a medium bodied mouthfeel.

Ferment cool around 65F for a cleaner profile to let the spices shine through
Prime with 3/4 cup corn sugar to hit around 2.4 volumes of C02.

Feel free to add half the extract in the last 15 mins of the boil .

As far as topping up in the fermenter, make sure you preboil and treat your water to remove
chlorine/chloramine before topping up. (Campden tablets work well for this).
You will avoid nasty chlorophenolic off flavors (Band-Aid/medicinal), a common flaw when
topping up with straight tap water.

My .02-