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Devin wanted a pumpkin ale for his groomsmen. There were several interesting sources of recipes. I settled on a Pumking clone recipe since that was one of Devin's favorites. The recipe can be found here. http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/16367/southern-tier-pumking-clone. I've made a few adjustments based on other research and Devin's preferences. To start I used pumpkins that I grew this summer using the process described below. Other changes include dropping the crystal from 80 to 60, introducing a small amount of munich and vienna malt, adding some carapils and malto dextrin to bump up the mouth feel. I also added five pounds of LME. This was necessary to achieve the volume, ABV, etc. with my current mash tun size. I also dropped the mash temp 5F to get a better efficiency since the carapils and malto dextrin will address the mouthfeel. For spicing in the boil I settled on using predominately ceylon cinnamon with just one stick of Cassia. Aside from that I stuck pretty close to the recipe. For the secondary spicing I produced two vodka extracts two weeks in advance. The first is four organic vanilla beans. The second is one of the same vanilla beans with my blend of pumpkin pie spices - ceylon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cloves. I did this to help with the final product clarity and also to make spicing decisions. There will be enough volume of spice extract to experiment on a series of two ounce pours and then calculate the desired volume to add to the full batch. I swapped out the yeast for the SanDiego Super Yeast strain. A few reasons - First, it is nearly identical in the characteristics it imparts on the final product. Second, I have found that you can easily cut a day off of the fermentation process. And finally, it is highly floculent as compared to the medium floculation of the WLP001 or the recommended Wyeast equivalent. This is pretty important to achieve any level of clarity in the short time frame. Fresh to mashed carmalized pumpkin process ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - clean, peel and cube three medium size pumpkins. - roast at 350F for 1 hour with one cup of water - mash the pumpkin - add to the mashed pumpkin --- 8 oz maple syrup --- 8 oz honey --- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice - mix well and roast at 350F for 90 to 120 minutes to carmelize I will also roast one cans of Libbys canned pure pumpkin (no spices added) and mix this in with the fresh. This is really just some insurance since I really don't know exactly what flavor is going to come from my home grown pumpkins. This will all be added to the mash. Add to Boil - 5 Minutes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 tsp Fresh ground ginger 3 Ceylon cinnamon sticks 1 Cassia cinnamon stick 1 tsp Whole cloves 1 tsp Nutmeg 1 tsp Allspice Add to Secondary ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - Vanilla Bean vodka solution (four vanilla beans) - Spice vodka solution --- 1 vanilla bean --- 1 tsp Fresh Ginger --- 1 tsp Powdered Ginger --- 2 Ceylon Cinnamon Sticks --- 0.5 tsp Whole Cloves --- 1 tsp Nutmeg --- 1 tsp Allspice Brew Day Issues ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I expected that pumpkin in the mash might be a problem, but since this was my first pumpkin beer I decided to see how it went. I was able to successfully recirculate about 1.5 gallons, but then got a stuck mash after collecting about 0.5 gallons. Simple blow back didn't help, so I added a pound of rice hulls, mixed everything up, set the grain bed again and it ran smooth. The next time I will start with rice hulls in the mash from the start.