Drunken Pumpkin

Back before I took a hardline stand against pumpkin beers, I made a couple. The best of those recipes is presented here for posterity, though I don’t think I would make it again. One of my recipes called for adding the pumpkin to a secondary fermenter, but what I found was that this resulted in a lot of pumpkin floaters in the bottles. I suppose you could filter these out, but it would be a lot easier to just add it to the boil and deal with the floaters there. That’s what this recipe does.

Goals

• 5.5 gallons
• Starting specific gravity: 1.055 - 1.060
• Finishing specific gravity: 1.010 - 1.015
• ABV: 5% - 6%
• Bitterness: 20 - 30 IBU
• Color: 8 - 10 SRM

Extract recipe

Ingredients

• 5.66 lb. light malt extract (liquid)
• 0.4 lb. 40 L crystal malt (crushed)
• 0.66 lb. wheat malt (crushed)
• 0.66 lb. Munich malt (crushed)
• 0.33 lb. biscuit malt (crushed)
• 32 oz. canned pumpkin, no preservatives
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1.5 teaspoons allspice
• 3/4 teaspoon cardamom
• 1/4 teaspoon clove
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 oz. Centennial (60 minutes)
• 1 oz. Cascade (5 minutes)
• Wyeast #1056 (American Ale)

Procedure

• Place crushed grains in two muslin bags and add to 1.5 gallons of water.
• Heat water to 150-170° F and hold for 30 minutes.
• Remove grains and discard.
• Add malt extracts and pumpkin. Bring to boil.
• Add 1 oz. Centennial hops. Boil 60 minutes.
• With 10 minutes remaining, add spices.
• With 5 minutes remaining, add 1 oz. Cascade hops.
• Cool with wort chiller to ~ 75° F and add (without straining) to 3.5 gallons of water in carboy. Top up to 5.5 gallons.
• Pitch yeast.
• When fermentation has slowed, rack into secondary. There should be a large amount of pumpkin debris in the primary.
• Bottle or keg when fermentation is complete.
• Age approximately three weeks.