Second Pumpkin Pie Coffee Spice Tasting

Since this beer has changed a lot in just a few months I felt it worth doing a retasting and showing what it has become.

Aroma - Very small layer of head which quickly fades.  Light amber decent clarity and a light orange hue.

Smell - Big spice nose of cinnamon with a little nutmeg and a bit of sweet maltiness underneath.  Pretty good really.

Taste - Sweet up front followed by a big middle of spice and a bit of bitterness on the back end.

Mouthfeel - Fairly thin and high in carbonation but overall nicely rounded and very fitting for the taste.

Drinkability and notes - This is really a nice beer.  Originally this beer had an off-putting bitterness but that has rounded out quite nicely after 6 months.  The spice is still quite high but seems to have gone down a notch and while still a bit high, it is pretty tasty none the less.  Overall I'm quite content with where this beer has gone and hope that it ages as well for another 6 months.

Coffee Pumpkin Spice Tasting

Having just opened my Saison and having it erupt on me (guess it needs another week or two to finish carbonating) this seems as good a time as any to review my Coffee Pumpkin Spice Ale.  The pumpkin ales were made with traditional coffee spice flavors, but this half of the batch had cold brewed coffee added at boiling time for an extra kick.

Appearance-  The beer pours a hazy orange brown with a thin but lasting head.  Looks about what I expected, but seems to have a high carbonation already with lots of little bubblings showing through

Smell- Whoo is the coffee there. It overpowers almost everything else with only traces of the pumpkin pie spice and a little hint of sweetness peaking through.

Taste- While that smell is a kicker, and not overly enjoyable.  The taste is actually an agreeable balance of spice and coffee with only a moderate amount of bitterness.

Mouthfeel- The best part of this beer appears to be the medium body and high carbonation which make this one bite at the mouth a bit but also seem to dance around after and fill every taste bud.

Drinkability- Pretty low really.  Its become the beer I go to if I just want one more or am trying to give someone else the better homebrews to sample.  While this is definitely drinkable, I would not buy it or try to make it again with all the spice and coffee being WAY too strong and affronting.

Overall- Not sure why I made this one.  I do love pumpkin pie and have tasted a few in the style I enjoyed, and I think the main reason I made a pumpkin ale was to show up another homebrewer who a friend had raved about (and seemed to enjoy my version better) but honestly that was not a good reason.  All of that being said the coffee version came out of experimentation and curiosity and I don't hate the fact that I tried it the way I did.  The pumpkin spice one actually came out much better without the coffee and I'll review that soon.  Hopefully these will lose some of the coffee and spice strengths with a little age and will be more enjoyable in a years time.  In the end at most there isn't a big loss as the real cost of this was probably near $20.

Pumpkin Spice Brewday

So I finally picked up the ingredients and decided to have my brewday (or should I say brew night as it went from around 10 pm - 2 am) yesterday with the pumpkin pie spice beer (I ended up not using any canned pumpkin).  In order to steep the grains I bought a cheese cloth and frying thermometer which both seemed to work great.

Steeped the 1/2 lb caravienne for 30 minutes between 170-150 f.

6 lbs. amber lme, 1 oz. mt hood hops (5.2 AA, 60 minutes), 1 lb wheat dme and used .5 tsp irish moss

.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice, .5 tsp cinnamon, .25 tsp nutmeg and .25 tsp vanilla extract (not pictured)

Me stirring in the LME, I added half at initial boil with the 1 lb of DME then added the rest at the 15 minute mark.

Bubbling away this morning, looks like the right color hopefully the irish moss gives good clarity. Might have let too much of the hops and other unfermentables come out of the brew pot but hopefully this doesn't cause any problems.  May have gone a little under the 5 gallon line but that shouldn't be a huge problem.

Plan on bottling February 18th, with half of the batch having cold steeped pumpkin spice coffee added  in order to give more complexity and have the Coffee Pumpkin Ale.  I may also add a spice tea to the full batch if the flavor seems to fall short of expectations when it finishes fermentation.

Upcoming Beers

So I told myself over and over I would not post a recipe to this blog until it was 100% set and I had either brewed it or was just about to. Well this seems close enough so here it goes.
I recently ordered the ingredients for two batches of beer I plan on making and will brew one this weekend (or during the week depending on when it shows up) and the other sometime in the next month:

1. Saison Nouvelle: This is intended to be an amber colored Saison style beer with light orange flavor from orange peel additions, lemony and tropical fruit flavor from citra hops and spicy character  from the hops.
2. Pumpkin Beer: Like the saison this recipe also uses 6 lbs of amber lme, 1.5 lbs wheat dme and .5 lbs caravienne but will utilize much lower amount of hops (1 oz. Mt. Hood for 60 minutes) and a fairly neutral yeast character (Nottingham). The main flavors here come from the 2 lbs of roasted canned pumpkin and pumpkin spices (1 tsp pumpkin pie spice + .5 tsp cinnamon + 1 tsp nutmeg).  Half of the batch will have cold brewed pumpkin spice coffee added at bottling time to make a Coffee Pumpkin Ale which, as far as I can tell from my web searches, has not been done before? Doesn't seem possible with the wildly imaginative brewers out there but maybe theres a good reason for it, we shall see.

I'm not sure what order these will be brewed in...the Saison Nouvelle will likely require greater time in carboy (~1 month) and higher temps (>70) which would seemingly make it more fit to be done second.  It however is a recipe I REALLY want to do so we'll see on brewday which I decide to go with.