Pumpkin Ale 2.0 – Pumpkin Brown

After tasting the last pumpkin brew, I immediately enjoyed it and immediately had ideas on what I would do differently. Up front it had a little too much spice (specifically too much clove and allspice) and I decided I wanted it to have a bit more of a malt backbone. I had a problem, though – I had a full 5 gallon keg of freshly brewed pumpkin ale. So I came up with (bought) a solution. I bought this wonderful 2.6 gallon mini keg (the listing now only shows the 1.6 gallon version).

Now that there was space to store and serve the beer, it was time to tweak the recipe. It has a lot of similarities with the last batch with some small but clear differences:

Ingredients

Grain Bill

• 4 lb 2 row
• 0.5 lb 120L caramel/crystal malt
• 0.5 lb munich malt
• 0.25 lb chocolate malt
• 0.25 lb brown malt

Hops

• 1 oz northern brewer
• 0.5 oz cascade

Yeast

• Omega Voss Kveik yeast

Other

• 3 (1lb) cans canned pumpkin
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp pumpkin spice
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tps irish moss
• 1/4 pound lactose

Directions

1. Bring 3 gallons water to 155° F (I found I lose less heat when mashing in than expected)
2. Mash in all malt
3. Add 2 lbs pumpkin
4. Hold at 150° F for 60 minutes
5. Drain grain and increase temp to boil
6. Sparge enough water to bring total back to 3 gallons
7. Bring to a boil and add northern brewer hops
8. Boil for 30 minutes
9. Add remaining 1 lbs pumpkin and boil for 30 minutes or until volume is just above 2.5 gallons
10. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, pumpkin spice, cloves, irish moss, boil 10 minutes
11. Add cascade hops, start circulating wort in chiller
12. Chill to 80° F
13. Pitch yeast
14. Let sit 5 days or until fermentation is complete
15. Keg and chill overnight
16. Carbonate and drink!

The Numbers

• OG = 1.075
• FG = 1.023
• ABV = 6.825

Thoughts/Results

I made a couple other brewing process tweaks that made for a much more pleasant brew day. Last time around I lost a lot of wort to muck at the bottom of the grainfather, which ended up being a lot of pumpkin pulp. To combat that, I put all pumpkin additions into muslin bags (both in the mash and boil). This created a lot less muck resulting in a higher volume of beer in the fermenter and a much easier cleanup. I added spices directly to the keg again, but I altered the recipe a bit – instead of adding the full spice mixture again, I only added vanilla, pumpkin spice, and cinnamon (a full charge of vanilla, half of pumpkin spice and cinnamon). This was a lot closer to the spice mixture I was looking for and let the spices be more of a compliment to the beer than the main flavor.

The addition of the chocolate and brown malts gave the beer more color and the maltier backbone I was looking for. The lactose added some body and that extra bit of sweetness that turned it into the liquid-pumpkin-pie-in-your-mouth beer that I truly desired. All in all, I’m very happy with how the beer tuned out and will absolutely brew it again. When I do, I may make one more tweak to add some flaked wheat – that extra bit of body and mouthfeel should round the beer out to be the (near) final version.