Pumpkin Spice Tasting

This pumpkin spice beer was brewed over two months ago, and today I am finally getting around to reviewing it.  The beer is much better than the coffee version of the batch and deserved a separate tasting.

Appearance:  Inch of just off white head of tiny bubbles sitting on top of an amber orange body with yellow highlights.  Tons of little bubbles continuously flow up through the beer and the head never seems to fade.  This beer looks exactly how I had hoped, brown but with a bit of orange like a pumpkin and just great overall.

Smell: Lots of spice: cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla with just a bit of maltiness shining through.  Theres a bit of peppery spiciness in the back end, all spice maybe?

Taste:  Similar to the nose but more varied.  First comes the strong spices, reminiscent of pumpkin pie and the holiday season, followed by a nice munich and caramel malt sweetness which fades in the finish to a slightly bitter spiciness.  All around theres a lot of good flavors, the spice could be turned down (this one went to 11, would've liked to have seen it in the 8-9 range).

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied with a high carbonation, this one flows past the mouth without overstaying its welcome.  Maybe a touch more carbonation than I was going for but pretty good overall.

Drinkability: Really easy to drink with refreshing flavors and the high carbonation.  I wish the spice was turned back just a touch so that it would be more balanced and less strongly pumpkin spice.

Overall this is a beer I could easily have a few of in a sitting, but would probably not buy it over other beers because of the balance. It's a fun drink in a fun style that was cheap to make but there isn't much complexity beyond the nose and a complete lack of balance toward the spices.

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.