Pumpkin Spice Ale

It took me about a week of researching, but I finally came up with my own beer recipe. I had originally hoped to have this brew ready for Halloween, but it wasn't ready yet, so it ended up getting pushed back a little. Actually a lot.

I made a recipe for a Pumpkin Spice Ale for our December batch. I know. I could have made a more fitting recipe for the month, but Sonya really likes Pumpkin beer and it seemed very challenging. Since I love a good challenge, once again, I figured "why not?"

Every time we brew, Ryan and I seem to get better at it. It goes much smoother, it's less hectic, and we figure out a solution to some problem we had before.

We had been a little nervous about this one since it was my own recipe, but we were confident and figured it couldn't be too bad as long as we didn't stray from that recipe. Except we did. Several times.

Eh, I'm still confident.

We didn't have the muslin bags we needed, so we just mashed the grains and pumpkin right in the water, then strained it all out. We'll catch the rest when it settles in either the primary or secondary fermenting.

Then we, and by we I mean I, accidentally swapped the bittering hops with the flavoring hops. It really won't matter, but I was pretty disappointed when Ryan pointed that out to me. Oh well.

The final thing that I was a little disappointed with was the fact that I accidentally used some tap water in the batch. Since it's so little, it shouldn't cause a problem, but I really like to use only spring water in the beer.

Even though we now have a wort chiller, we decided to use a natural chiller this time. Snow. It's cheaper than city water and it adds an element of ridiculousness.


I'll have to report back in about a month on the turn out.