Pumpkin Ale 2015

Pumpkin beers are perhaps one of the most divisive styles I know, and for good reason. Too many take the "just add spice" approach, and are basically a light lager with an overdose of cinnamon and nutmeg. However, I know that there are good pumpkin beers out there, as evidenced by some reasonable success on last year's pumpkin ale. Following a string of successes with recipes from Gordon Strong's Modern Homebrew Recipes, I opted to give his pumpkin ale recipe a try (in very slightly modified form to adjust for ingredient availability). His recipe is intriguing for its sheer amount of pumpkin--9 pounds--as well as for its complex grain bill that I think will make the background beer more interesting in its own right.

Pumpkin Ale 2015

• 5 lbs. Golden Promise malt
• 3 lbs. Vienna malt
• 2 lbs. Munich II ("Dark Munich") malt
• 0.5 lbs. brown malt
• 1 lbs. flaked oats
• 1 lbs. flaked wheat
• 1 lb. Belgian Caramel Vienne malt (17 SRM)
• 0.25 lb. pale chocolate malt (225 SRM)
• 9 lbs. Libby's pumpkin puree (5 large cans, added at vorlauf and transferred to boil kettle in bag)
• 3 oz. Grandma’s Original Molasses
• 0.5 lb. Turbinado sugar
• 1.65 oz. Hallertau hops pellets (4.3% alpha, 5.6% beta), 20 minute boil
• 1 tbs. 5.2 pH stabilizer (in mash)
• 1 Whirlfloc tablet (10 minute boil)
• 1 vial English Ale yeast (WLP002), in 1.5 L starter
• Spice blend including:
• 6 large sticks cinnamon, broken up and crushed
• 1.5 tbs. crystallized ginger, chopped up
• 1 whole nutmeg, coarsely ground
• 10 whole allspice, coarsely ground
• 2 vanilla beans, split, scraped, and chopped
• 4 black cardamom pods, peeled from husks and crushed
• 0.25 tsp. ground mace

Procedure

• Prior to brewing, I put the pumpkin puree into a few baking dishes, so that it formed a layer 1-2" thick in each. I roasted the pumpkin in a 400° oven for 1.5 hours, stirring it up every 15 to 20 minutes. By the end of this, a lot of the excess moisture had been driven off and the pumpkin had darkened up a bit too. After it all cooled, I placed it in a big mesh grain bag and set it aside for the mash
• I mashed in the grains with 5.1 gallons of water at 168°. The mash stabilized at around 156°, and was down to 154° after 40 minutes. After 60 minutes, I added the pumpkin and 1 gallon of water at 180°. I vorlaufed after 15 minutes, drained the mash tun, and added 4.1 gallons of water at 185°. I let this sit for 10 minutes, vorlaufed, and drained the rest of the wort. I transferred the pumpkin over to the boil kettle, and let it steep while the wort came to a boil.
• In total, I collected 7.5 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.050, which equates to 68% efficiency.
• I brought the wort to a boil, and at this point removed the pumpkin. I saved the pumpkin to recycle for a pumpkin soup. The wort boiled for 60 minutes total. I added the hops during the last 20 minutes, a Whirlfloc tablet during the last 10 minutes, and the spices at flameout. I let the spices sit in the hot wort for 10 minutes, before removing them and chilling the wort as usual.
• Once I had cooled the wort down around 80°, I transferred it to the fermenter and pitched the yeast. (The yeast had been cold-crashed, so I decanted most of the spent starter).
• Starting gravity was 1.064, a touch higher than initially predicted (1.060). The cinnamon is pretty prominent--I am a little worried that it might be too much so (I suspect the recipe's 6 cinnamon sticks were smaller than the one's I used!), but maybe that worry will be unfounded. I started fermentation on October 3. The beer was happily krausened when I checked on it ~12 hours later, and had a robust fermentation. I will leave it in primary for at least 2 weeks.