Beer Forum

Hello all- I'm looking for everyone's favorite tested recipes for

Hard Apple Cider

Pumpkin Ale- I was thinking of an ale with real fresh roasted pumpkin, good roasty/toasted malt flavors, and a very spicy hop. I am thinking of adding a pumpkin pie spice mix and a touch of chipotle sauce

Also would like to brew a somewhat big fall or winter ale/porter or stout...

oh yeah, and a standard Oktoberfest recipe would be good too!

Any suggestions?

My hard cider recipe is pretty simple. First check the gravity of your apple juice. Compute how much brown sugar you will need to bring it up to 1.068 (or whatever OG you want) for 5 gallons of cider. I heat up the first gallon of cider on the stove (being careful not to boil it) and dissolve the sugar in it. I also add a pound of chopped raisins, 2 or 3 cinnamon sticks and 4 or 5 whole nutmegs, and a teaspoon of whole cloves. I let this all steep for 30 minutes or so and then dump the whole works into the fermenter and add the other 4 gallons of pasteurized apple juice. I generally use Wyeast 1007 or you can use regular cider yeast. Just don't use champagne yeast unless you want the FG to drop to 0.994 like the one time I tried it. I had to add malto-dextrine post ferment to get it drinkable.

My favorite winter warmer (next to the spiced cider above) is Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter. You can google for the recipe, it's everywhere. I have a bunch of that bottled right now. Soon I will be brewing up the same porter base, but instead of adding the Jim Beam and vanilla beans, I will be adding hazelnut syrup. It's the same stuff they put in those fancy latte coffees. I add 4 tsp per gallon.

I haven't made a pumpkin ale, but my observations from what I have read and the ones I drank is that the pumpkin really doesn't add much flavor at all. If you add spices as you propose, you won't be able to taste the pumkin at all. If you tell people it is a pumkin ale, they will be looking for a pumpkin pie flavor that they won't get from a straight unspiced pumpkin beer. Just leave the pumpkin out, but use the pumpkin pie spices and no one will know the difference. This will also eliminate a sticky sparge and massive starch haze in your finished beer.

Don't have an Octoberfest recipe, sorry.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

Brilliant!

Thanks for the recipe and tips Wayne.

I've read that if you roast the pumpkin the flavor will come through, though I too have heard just use the spice. I'm a foodie so I'm going to try a recipe using real roast pumpkin.. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I'm not too picky about chill haze, would be nice to avoid but eveyone who drinks my homebrew is used to it since I love wheat beers.

I may just use some whole spices instead of the ground pumpkin spice.

Thanks for the cider recipe. Question - why pasteurized? Have you had trouble with the unpasteurized?

TimL wrote:Brilliant!

Thanks for the recipe and tips Wayne.

Thanks for the cider recipe. Question - why pasteurized? Have you had trouble with the unpasteurized?

Just playing it safe in regards to wild yeasts and other nasties that might be in there. Never had any problem with it though.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

hey everybody, kinda new with making my own recipes but I am wanting to make a pumpkin brown ale. I have a 5 lb can on pre hopped brown ale malt I want to use up. I am thinking of adding pumpkin, 3 lbs of honey, 1 lb maple syrup some pumpkin pie spice(basically cinimon, nutmeg, pie spice) and was wondering about using canned pumpkin during the boil and finishing with a hops at 10 minutes to go and some prange peel in the fermenter. Probably use some irish moss as well in the boil- any ideas?
As a wise man told be at worst it will be beer!