Thursday, October 7, 2010

Pumpkin Ale! (a picture story - kinda)

It took me a few days to get around to it, but not for lack of trying. I decided to make a pumpkin ale for Halloween.

So here it goes (Recipe is for an extract brewer with very little equipment):

6-10 lb Pumpkin
1 lb Vienna Malt
0.5 lb Crystal Malt 40L
0.5 lb Malted Wheat
6 lb Light Dried Malt Extract
1 cup Brown Sugar
0.5 cup Molasses
1 oz Mt. Hood Hops (boiling)
0.8 oz Hallertauer Hops (finishing)
1 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spices
0.25 tsp Ginger
American Ale Yeast



Cut up 6 to 10 pounds of pumpkins (like the ones for pie)



Roast the pumpkin in an oven at 350 degrees for about an hour (or until soft)

Add grains and roasted pumpkin to pot or mash-tun or kettle or whatever. Let this stew for an hour at about 150 degrees.



Bring Wort to a boil and add brown sugar, molasses, and dried malt extract. Don't let it boil over!



Add Mt. Hood Hops. This is when to start a timer. These hops will be in the boil for a total of 60 minutes. There isn't anything else to do for 45 minutes, so it is a great time to clean up what you can and have a beer... or two.

Today I used this time to siphon off two big bottles worth of the Imperial Stout that I made some time ago.



The rest of the Imperial Stout won't be ready until xmas time after it is aged in an oak barrel that I have yet to even order.

Consider it good luck when making a Halloween beer to have a black cat trotting about in the brewspace (kitchen in my case).



After 45 minutes of boiling, add the Hallertauer Hops. These will boil for the last 15 minutes.

Turn off the burner. Make sure everything is well-stirred. Add the pumpkin pie spice and ginger.



Stir in the spices, and cool down the wort as quickly as possible. For me, this means filling the bathtub with cold water and putting the pot into it.



After the wort is cooled to about 80 degrees, transfer it to a fermenter. Since it is an extract recipe add cold water to get to about 5 gallons (or to get the target sugar levels and specific gravity and potential alcohol and such, but lets not stress ourselves right now.



Add yeast. Make a pretty label.



After cleaning up the sticky mess strewn about the kitchen by the insane amount of pumpkin and whatnots so your girlfriend doesn't freak out about having sticky feet every time she goes through the kitchen; Have a beer and a hookah... you deserve it.

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