pumpkin pie

Why don't you just save yourself some time and just throw away the kit. It'll be a lot easier than uncapping 50 bottles and dumping them.

Seriously though, a pumpkin pie has a lot of stuff that you don't want to put in your beer. eggs, oil, butter, preservatives. Just spice up your kit with some pumpkin pie spice dude.

 

Pies need to be mashed. Since you've got an extract kit, get yourself some 6-row to do a minimash. And then throw your kit away because it will be easier than bottling and dumping.

 

A brewery (I think it might have been Right Brain Brewing) in Traverse City, Michigan has made a beer with a whole pie(s) as an ingredient a couple of times in the past, but I think it has been a cherry pie. I think it got good reviews; however, I don't know how they did it. So it is possible to be done. Good luck if you try it.

 

Brew the milk stout. At five mins left in the boil add one teaspoon of cinnamon, one teaspoon nutmeg, and one teaspoon of allspice. Also, throw in a large (I think they are around 32 oz.) can of Libby's 100% pumpkin at 5 min left. Chill and ferment. Any other questions message me! BTW I love your profile picture.

 

www.howtobrew.com

 

I recently mashed with pumpkin and graham crackers to get the taste.

 

a small amount of ground ginger will help give you a pie crust taste. Not much, just like 1/4 - 1/2 tsp along with the pie spices.

 

This seems highly ambitious and experimental for your first foray into brewing. However, I wish you the best and am interested to hear how it turns out.

Pumpkin pie spice, all-spice, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and ginger all tend to show up in pumpkin beers.

Good luck!

 

“ ..throw in a large (I think they are around 32 oz.) can of Libby's 100% pumpkin at 5 min left.”

Needless to say but there will be some fermentable sugars from the canned pumpkin. Other than that, what else do you think the canned pumpkin will ‘add’ to the Milk Stout?

Cheers!

 

It's actually a legit technique and a better way to get pumpkin flavor in the beer than mashing in my experience from tasting the brews that employ it. Makes for a murky looking milkshake of a beer, but one that actually has pumpkin flavor instead of just spice flavor.

 

Joe, I have never brewed a pumpkin ale so please bear with me. I have read in numerous places (articles, posts, etc.) that the addition of pumpkin does not produce a lot of flavor. Because of that some commercial breweries produce their pumpkin ales with zero pumpkin in them; they ‘define’ their pumpkin ales via the pumpkin pie spicing.

Given that this is the OPs first ever homebrew and that the homebrew is a Milk Stout (which will have a lot of malt flavors from the dark malts), do you really think that any pumpkin flavor will be noticed in this particular beer style? Maybe it would be ‘better’ to forget the canned pumpkin for this batch?

Cheers!

Jack

 

I think it would be more accurate to say the addition of pumpkin to the mash does not produce a lot of flavor and most commercial breweries are uncomfortable introducing starch post-mash, which is what this technique does.

Pumpkin is a very subtly flavored thing to begin with, but it does have a flavor. Unfortunately, it's mostly water, fiber, and a little starch so you have to introduce a lot of other stuff to your beer to capture that flavor, stuff that would be risky to include in a packaged beer because of stability and clarity issues.

The pumpkin spice beers are all well and good, but I do not think they should be labeled as "pumpkin ale."

 

Thanks for your reply!

“ …most commercial breweries are uncomfortable introducing starch post-mash, which is what this technique does.” I ‘missed’ that adding canned pumpkin to the kettle will add starch. Adding starch to a beer (homebrewed or commercial) is a bad thing since the presence of starch can lead to spoilage; any bacteria in the beer (and there is always some bacteria in homebrewed beer) will see that starch as food and the beer will eventually get off flavors from the infection (unless the beer is consumed quickly).

“Pumpkin is a very subtly flavored thing to begin with, but it does have a flavor.” Do you think you could discern pumpkin flavors in a beer like a Milk Stout?

“The pumpkin spice beers are all well and good, but I do not think they should be labeled as "pumpkin ale."” I have no ‘good’ comment to that. Part of me thinks that a pumpkin ale should contain actual pumpkin but the other part of me thinks that if the pumpkin does not add much from a flavor perspective, why bother with using pumpkin?

A bit of history (as I understand it from being in beer history presentations at the recent NHC): in Colonial America malt was very scarce and expensive since it had to be imported from Britain. The colonists would augment their beer making with indigenous ingredients. Pumpkin was a source of starch that could be mashed to create wort for brewing. It made a lot of sense for the colonists to use what was at their disposal and cheap. Today, malt is plentiful and cheap. Using actual pumpkin in brewing (homebrewing and commercially) is an ‘option’ now; brewing all malt pumpkin ales is probably easier and cheaper for modern day brewing.

Cheers!

 

That's what makes pumpkin beers the perfect festival beer, along with wet hop beers. This is something we do the right way here in the PNW.

I can certainly discern it in all kinds of beers.

 

If you could discern the flavors from a can of pumpkin in a beer like a Milk Stout you are a ‘better’ man than me.

Cheers to Joe!