I'm repeating the seasonal brews from last year, and for this batch, I'm making the Pumpkin Ale. There are some differences from last year's brew, but for the most part, it's the same. The main differences are that I used a real pumpkin instead of canned, and I omitted the brown sugar. The brown sugar didn't make it in because I just read the ingredients list from last years batch, which wasn't listed. But if I had read the whole article, I would have seen that I used a 1/2 cup. As for the Pumpkin, last year, I brewed in August, which is too early for pumpkins, at least here in New England. Brewing in October allowed me to easily find pumpkins near my home.

So, here's the ingredients list:

6.5 lb.	Pumpkin
6 lbs.	Light LME
1 lb.	Crystal 20L
1 oz.	Willamette Hops
1/2 tsp.	Irish Moss
3 tsp.	McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 Packet	Safale 04 Yeast

I started yesterday by cleaning and halving the pumpkin, baking for one hour, and then dicing it. While cleaning out the seeds, my wife decided to see if we could roast them. She found quite a few recipes, and she's now talking about buying more pumpkins to try all of them. I guess we'll also be having a lot of pumpkin pie this year too. Or maybe another batch of Pumpkin Ale...

I followed my normal procedures when brewing this batch; I steeped the grains at 154ºF for 20 minutes, then added the LME and pumpkin, and then brought to a boil. I recommend adding the LME first, since adding the cubes of pumpkin to the water makes it difficult to stir in the LME, I know from experience. All the little dice sized pieces floated at the top, while the LME wanted to sink.

After it started to boil, I added the Willamette hops and set the timer for 45 minutes. I then added the Irish Moss, and set the timer for another 10 minutes. My final addition, with five more minutes to boil, was the Pumpkin Pie Spice.

I then cooled as usuall in an ice bath, strained out the pumpkin pieces, and poured into the carboy. Last years batch had a lot of sediment on the bottom of each bottle, which is probably due to the fact that I used canned pumpkin. This year's batch should be much better. The SG of 1.042 was much lower than last year's because I didn't add any brown sugar. I'll be sure to do that next time.

It's getting late, so watch for the updates on the gravity as it progresses along.

Enjoy

Update - 10.20.08: Gravity stands at 1.010 after racking to secondary, which gives it a respectable 4.2% ABV so far.

Update - 11.3.08: I kegged this batch tonight, and the FG is 1.010.