Homebrewing Pumpkin Spice Ale

What is there not to love about pumpkins? They are round and orange, they taste sweet and delicious, and they can be made into pumpkin pie. What, then, is there not to love about pumpkin beers? It’s like having pumpkin pie in a bottle. With a kick.

Some of you may remember my post on my first all grain homebrewing project, Brewing Perseverance. I had tried an anniversary beer from Alaskan Brewing Company that was so delicious I asked my friend, John to help me recreate the recipe and brew our own. I was very pleased with the result, which was every bit as delicious as the original, and my only regret is that we didn’t brew twice as much so it was still around! With the coming of autumn this year, and all the lovely pumpkin beers out there, I asked John to help me re-create the recipe for my favorite fall beverage, Elysian’s Night Owl Pumpkin Ale. With a little research and some very important pumpkin beer taste testing, he came up with a recipe and we planned another brew day.

The grain list which we purchased and ground at our local homebrew supply shop was as follows:

9 Lbs Oregon Pale Malt

12 oz. Caramel Malt 15%

12 oz. Special B.Malt

1.5 oz. Munich Malt

In addition we rounded up:

Brewing day started with two lovely sugar pie pumpkins, picked that week from our garden.

Half of the pumpkin meat was cubed and boiled, and half of the seeds were set aside raw.

The rest of the pumpkin was roasted so that it would caramelize.

The other half of the seeds were oven roasted, and then all the seeds, the rice hulls and 1/3 of the boiled and roasted pumpkin were blended in a food processor.

We then mixed this along with all the grains to13 quarts of water kept at 130 degrees in a large pot in the oven. After mixing, it dropped to 120 degrees where it held for 5 minutes. From this pot, we removed 3 gallons of mash, boiled it on the stove top for 10 minutes, and stirred it back in to the big pot where it held at 130 degrees for 15 minutes. This was repeated with 4 quarts of mash which was stirred back in and held at 140 degrees for 15 minutes. Then for the long haul, we removed and boiled 4 quarts of mash for 10 minutes, stirred it back in and held it in the oven at 151 degrees for 120 minutes until the iodine test showed the starches had converted to sugars.

Then it was time to wash the sugars off of the grains, and we sparged the mash with 6 gallons of water at 170 degrees,  wort into the stainless steel brew pot.

At this point we added another 1/3 of the pumpkin in a mesh bag and boiled the wort on a propane burner outside for 30 minutes, then adding the hops in another bag and boiling for an hour. At flame out we added in half of the spice mix.

The whole process was such fun, and the area around the boiling kettle so warm, that even Della Mae the cat wanted to help brew.

We chilled the wort with John’s counter-flow wort chiller, and pitched the brew onto the brown ale yeast from a homebrew he had just kegged. To this, we added the other half of the spice mixture and the remaining 1/3 of the pumpkin that had been boiled and sterilized. With the air lock secured in place, our pumpkin ale began fermenting away.

It should be ready to enjoy by Halloween, which is just the perfect time for such a treat