Pumpkin Beer

Going to get going on this tomorrow morning. I was able to finish getting the ingredients this afternoon. I found a recipe on Beer Utopia that seemed very promising. But not all of the ingredients are available locally, so have to make some adjustments to make it work.

Ingredients:

Grains:
2 lb 2-row
1 lb Vienna
1 lb Munich Malt
.5 lb Crystal 60L
.5 lb Cara-Munich

Liquid Malt Extract (LME):
4 lb extra pale

Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 lb Plain Light

1 oz Sterling hops(6.0% alpha acid), .5 oz @ 60 minutes, .5 oz @ 45 minutes
3-4 lb pumpkin
Spices: 1 tsp cinnamon, 3/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp mace, 7 g sweet orange peel
Wyeast London Ale 1028 (or White Labs British Ale 005 or Windsor Ale dry yeast)

Following the directions from the website, the pumpkin can be added during the mash (first), to the boil, or to the primary or secondary fermenter if it has been pasteurized. I chose to add it to the mash. To extract the sugars from the grain (called mashing), soak the grain in 2.5 gallons of water at 155° for 45 minutes. Then turn off the heat and dunk the grain bag in and out of the water a few times like a giant tea bag. Place the grain in a strainer over the kettle, heat the mash to 170°, and evenly pour 1.75 quarts (1 quart for every 2 lbs of grain) over the grain. Allow the grain to drain then bring the mash to a boil.

Once the mash starts to boil, remove it from heat and stir in the LME until it is completely dissolved. Return to a boil and add .5 oz of hops for bittering. After 45 minutes, add .5 oz of hops for flavor. After 55 minutes, add the spices. After 60 minutes, remove from heat and cool to less than 80° as quickly as possible.

Pour the wort into a carboy and add enough water to bring the volume to about 5.25 gallons. When the temperature is around 75°, aerate and mix the wort by shaking vigorously and take an original gravity reading. The target for this beer is 1.055.

I'm not sure that I've correctly adjusted for the differences between what I have and what the original recipe called for. One of my concerns is that I couldn't find appropriately bitter hops, the original recipe calls for a 6.9% alpha acid hope and the best I could find locally was a 6.0%. Also, the original recipe calls for 1 pound of Munich liquid malt extract and I couldn't find any, so substituting 1 pound of Munich grain and 1 pound of dry malt extract. The Munich grain should provide a lot of the mouth feel for this recipe.

I'll let you know as we go forward. Wish me luck. I'm off to work now.