The season is upon us, pumpkin spice everything. It always stirs up contention in the brewing world, and probably the rest of the world as well. You can read a bit more on the history and the debate on pumpkin beer here. Every year I brew up a batch or two of pumpkin beer, tinkering with the pumpkin (or squash), the spices and the base style. With the huge range of pumpkin spice bombs already available, I have moved away from those pumpkin spice lattes, sugary sweet and overloaded with spices.
Here is a malty rye beer with a bit of sweetness coming from the crystal malts. Make sure you use the smaller, sugar pie pumpkins, usually about the size of a grapefruit. Those massive jack-o-lantern pumpkins just come out tasting vegetal. The rye malt will provide a mild spiciness, but if you want you can add any of the usual suspects, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, all spice, ginger etc.
Rye Pumpkin Ale
1.048 5.5% ABV 21 IBU
20L 60 min boil
2.75 kg Vienna Malt 63%
0.67 kg Rye Malt 15%
0.15 kg Special W 3.5%
0.15 kg Crystal 120 3.5%
0.33 kg Rice Hulls 7.7%
2 kg Sugar Pie Pumpkins
0.3 kg Brown Sugar
10 g Magnum pellets, 14% AA – 60 min
10 g Hallertau pellets, 4.5% AA – 30 min
5 g Irish Moss – 15 min
20 g Hallertau pellets, 4.5% AA – 0 min
Safale US-05
Cut the pumpkins in half, remove seeds, place face up on a cooking sheet and sprinkle with brown sugar. Bake the pie pumpkins at 300F for 1 hr. When cooked, scooped the insides out and mash them. Heat strike water to 73C. Add the malt, alternating additions of grain, pumpkin and rice hulls. Mash for 1 hour at 65C. Mash out at 75C. Collect wort in kettle and bring to a boil. Follow hop additions, when complete cool as quickly as possible and pitch rehydrated yeast.
This recipe will give you a great malt forward pumpkin beer, with spiciness coming from the rye malt and a clean bitterness. Brew this one up quickly and try it amongst the other commercial pumpkin brews and let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Kerry Dyson
Vice President
CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch
Leave a Reply