Belgian Pumpkin Strong Ale

[TheHairyHop]

Hey all,

Time for some experimentation

I'm going to try taking a Belgian Dark Strong Ale recipe and tweak it to become a high abv Pumpkin beer. Right now, I'm looking at this recipe to fiddle with

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f71/belgian-dark-strong-ale-hbt-contest-winner-18e-141311/

Should I go for the Trappist? I'm looking for something accentuate the pumpkin, create some spice, and really give the beer a malty kick. If not the Trappist yeast, any other suggestions? Wyeast 1388 is also on the board.

Thanks!

 

[TheHairyHop]

Any thoughts? I'm going to go for this regardless, but it'd be nice to have some opinions thrown around. I really don't work with Belgian beers too much, never mind one with pumpkin in it.

 

[kingwood-kid]

I made a Belgian pumpkin ale last year that turned out great. I used WLP530 and a bunch of Saaz to create my spiciness. I didn't use any spices, although I did add a ton of canned pumpkin, which left some subtle fruity notes. What you might do is try a Belgian Christmas beer, which is essentially a spiced quad. Switch the Christmas spices for pumpkin spices (there's a lot of overlap) and choose the Belgian yeast that sounds best to you.

 

[TheHairyHop]

Thanks for the input. At the moment, I think I'm going to stick with my plan but I'll look into Belgian Christmas beers. I've never used German hops before, but Saaz sounds like fun. I'm going to spice along the lines of

• 1-tbsp Cinnamon and ½-tbsp Nutmeg at 90-minutes

• 1-tbsp Cinnamon and 1/1-tbsp Nutmeg at 20-minute

• 1-tbsp Cinnamon, 1-tbsp Nutmeg and 1tbsp crushed Coriander at 2-minute

Taken from this recipe

http://www.audioholics.com/editorials/pumpkin-ale-home-brew-recipe-and-commercial-microbrew-recipe

I'd like to keep the spice flavor down a bit, so I might cut some amounts. I'm thinking of Avery's Rumpkin when dreaming of this recipe.

 

[TheHairyHop]

I finally got around to brewing this today. I followed the recipe I provided but took out any of the sugars leaving me with about 7 abv. Two big cans of pumpkin, 0.75 oz of Hallertau and almost a tbsp of pumpkin spice added at 5 min left. The color is great. I'm really looking forward to this. Gonna shoot for Thanksgiving. I'll let you all know how it comes out.

 

[TheHairyHop]

Taste is awesome. Lots of tropical fruit from the yeast makes it fitting for a pumpkin beer. I'm going to add 1tbsp more of pumpkin pie spice steeped in vodka because it could use more. I could have used more spice from the yeast however and should have gone heavier on the hallertau. Also, I undershot the gravity by a decent amount because of bad crush. It actually was the final straw and I ordered a monster mill that day.