Hello,
Newbie brewer first time made a batch of pumpkin ale and followed the directions to a tea. I sampled the pumpkin ale going into the 2nd fermenting jar and it has no pumpkin flavor or spice flavor. Maybe I am expecting too much at this point. It has a real good beer flavor and a nice hit of bitterness but the spicy pumpkin flavor is missing. This is my first batch and a decent beer may be all I should hope for but was hoping to hive that nice pumpkin brew ready for Halloween. Thanks to all that replied to me before really helps having an active forum.
Thanks again and good cheers :cheers:
If it’s still in secondary you can just add pumpkin pie spice to it now. Start tasting it every day or so after a few days. Once the spice hits the level you want bottle or keg it.
Pumpkin really adds no flavor to a beer. What we perceive as a pumpkin beer is becasue of the spices. If you don’t get spice, just add more…carefully!
All the different kits I’ve seen out there have comments of not enough pumpkin ale. After reading some reviews I used about 60oz of pumpking and 1 1/2 TBsp of pumpkin pie spice. We’ll see how it turns out. i’ve read that some people put vanilla beans or extract in secondary. I’m going to try to do this.
^ This. It is VERY easy to add too much and you can’t take it out.
There are generally two kinds of pumpkin beers on the market: “squashy” ones and “pumpkin pie spice” ones, and there are also hybrids of the two obviously. You can add a lot of squashy flavor with more pumpkin “meat” (I add it in the mash), but yes, a lot of people prefer the “pumpkin pie spice” aspect so adding spice might be the easiest route. Good luck!
I just made a “pumpkin ale” with no pumpkin. I threw three sweet potatoes and an acorn squash mashed up in the last 10 minutes of the boil. Tasted the sample that i took out for my og reading and it’s squashy. Planning to add spices just before kegging.
From Brewing Classic Styles (I brewed this last year and it was great)
Pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp Ground Dry Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ground Dry Ginger
1/8 tsp Ground Dry Nutmeg
1/8 tsp Ground Dry Allspice
I just bottled a Maple Pumpkin ale yesterday.
Used 40oz of organic canned pumpkin for the whole mash. Roasted it for an hour in the oven the night before. Also added 2tsp of pumpkin pie spice and 30oz of dark maple syrup at flameout.
The beer is cloudy at bottling, are expected.
Has a great pumpkin flavor, subtle, but there. The spices bring it together and there’s a hint of maple on the finish.
Very excited for it to carb up.
I like to make a 200ml Vodka with all the spices and let it sit for a few weeks and then add that to the beer. This gives me a very consistent pumpkin flavor. I used 3tsp cinnamon, 1.5tsp nutmeg, 1.5tsp allspice, 1.5tsp ginger, 1tsp clove. Decant the spiced vodka a few weeks later and add 90ml per 5 gallons beer. (more or less to suit your taste)
I’ll second Greg’s (Mullerbrau) vodka spice method, I used it at his recommendation last year with great results. Will probably do so again this year.
Question for Greg though. I’m pretty sure the recipe you gave me last year was for a 750ml bottle of vodka, now you’re saying 200ml, but the amounts of spices was the same. Which do you prefer? The 750ml method worked fine, I just needed to add quite a bit of spiced vodka to the finished beer. Still couldn’t taste any booziness from the vodka in the finished beer, so it was fine.
[quote=“Nate42”]I’ll second Greg’s (Mullerbrau) vodka spice method, I used it at his recommendation last year with great results. Will probably do so again this year.
Question for Greg though. I’m pretty sure the recipe you gave me last year was for a 750ml bottle of vodka, now you’re saying 200ml, but the amounts of spices was the same. Which do you prefer? The 750ml method worked fine, I just needed to add quite a bit of spiced vodka to the finished beer. Still couldn’t taste any booziness from the vodka in the finished beer, so it was fine.[/quote]
I made 15 gallons last year so I had to use more vodka. I figure some of it gets lost in the spice mess. Either way, I use the same amount of spices. I add 90-100ml to each keg.
[quote=“MullerBrau”][quote=“Nate42”]I’ll second Greg’s (Mullerbrau) vodka spice method, I used it at his recommendation last year with great results. Will probably do so again this year.
Question for Greg though. I’m pretty sure the recipe you gave me last year was for a 750ml bottle of vodka, now you’re saying 200ml, but the amounts of spices was the same. Which do you prefer? The 750ml method worked fine, I just needed to add quite a bit of spiced vodka to the finished beer. Still couldn’t taste any booziness from the vodka in the finished beer, so it was fine.[/quote]
I made 15 gallons last year so I had to use more vodka. I figure some of it gets lost in the spice mess. Either way, I use the same amount of spices. I add 90-100ml to each keg.[/quote]
Sounds good, thanks!
