Make A Pumpkin Pie Brew Like A Boss

Pumpkins are now at stores, which means one thing, its Pumpkin Ale Time!  I love my pumpkin ales.  You can litterally do what ever you wish with a Pumpkin Ale.  This recipe is one that I enjoy making, it really taste like a pumpkin pie in your mouth.

At the end of the recipe I have an analysis of why I chose to do it this way.

Ingredients:

Primary Fermentation

6.6 lbs golden light malt extract

.5 lbs 2 row – which will turn into toasted malt (makes sure it is bagged by its lonesome, away from all other specialty grains)

.5 lbs Vienna Malt

.25 lbs 60L Crystal Malt

.5 cup of Brown Sugar

1 oz Northern Brewer Hops (60min Boil)

1 Large Pumpkin

Safale 05 or WLP 001 California Ale Yeast

Secondary Fermenation Ingredients

2 vanilla beans

1.0 tsp pumpkin spice

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Directions

You might want to read over the directions first before starting.  I’ve laid them out in a way so you can do as much as you can with your time so this doesn’t take half of your day.  WARNING: YOU WILL BE MULTITASKING 

Take your brew pot, fill with 2.5 gallons of water, put on the stove and turn on heat. At the same time turn on the oven to 350. Your going to have to keep an eye on your water and turn off the heat when water reaches 150 degrees.  In the mean time you can work on a few things.

Take 2 row that is crushed and spread on backing pan and put in oven for 15-20min (until slightly brown) once the oven has reached 350.

2 row before its toasted

While the 2 row is toasting, and water is heating up, take your pumpkin and start carving.  To carve your pumpkin, cut the top off and take a spoon and scoop out the, “guts” of the pumpkin.  Keep the seeds!  At the end we’ll be using those.

Below are pictures of pumpkin carving

What it looks like inside

Around this point in time, your water should be close to being heated up to 150 and your grains should start smelling like grape nuts.  If it’s been 15 min of toasting, take the 2 row out of the oven. The 2 row should be a bit darker.

Keep the oven on at 350, we’ll be using it again in just a bit.

Below is what the 2-Row should look like. 

Now take all of your grains including the toasted 2 row, put in steeping bag and steep at 150 for 30 min.

Steeping grains:

While the grains are steeping, cut your pumpkin up in cubes and place on a baking pan.

They should look like something on the lines of what is below.

After you have your pumpkin cut up into cubes, put onto baking pans and set them in the oven for an hour. The objective is to make sure that pumpkin is cooked all the way until it is mushy. Don’t cover the pumpkin with tin foil.

The grains should steep for 30min and when the steeping is complete, take grains out, add malt extracts, bring to a boil.  At the beginning of the boil add in 1 oz of Northern Brewer hops.  If you want it to be a little less hoppy I would suggest that you do .5 oz of northern brewer hops. Regardless of how much you are boiling, boil hops for 1 hour.

Your pumpkin slices that you’ve put into the oven will be done before the boil is.  When the pumpkin have been fully cooked, take them out of the oven and put into a steeping bag (nylon bags work the best for this)

 Cooked pumpkins should look something on the lines of below.

You should be nearing the end of the boil by now.  At the end of the boil take your pumpkin that you put into a nylon bag and put in wort.  Turn off heat, and put on the lid.  You’ll let the pumpkin steep in the wort for 1 hour.

Steeping pumpkins

You’ve got an hour to kill so that’s why we kept the pumpkin seeds.  Take the pumpkin seeds that you kept, put salt on them or onion salt (a little goes a long way) and put in the oven at 350 for about 20 min or until brown.

They should end up looking some what on the lines of this.