Pumpkin Spice Ale

Brewed a pumpkin Spice Ale (partial Mash) using Vienna, Crytal specialty malts and pumpkin. The trick to this brew is the pumpkin. I followed a receipe off of the internet. There are several out there. This one called for 6-10 lbs of pumpkin. The pumpkin(s) I used were the small pumpkins, not the big ones; I read this somewhere. I cleaned and cut the pumpkins. I then cut the pumkins up into 'manageable pieces'. I did 2" by 2" chunks. Baked the pumpkin, skin and all, at 325 for 1 hour. This is followed by a 1 hour rest at 160F of the pumpkin and grains in about 7 gallons of water. The picutre above is of the cooked pumpkin. I won't go into the receipe, as you can google a dozen. I did use cinammon, nutmeg, vanilla, molasses and brown sugar. I sampled the wort.......just like pumpkin pie. yum.

On a side note, Gear talk: I fired up my pump for the first time and its fantastic. I really like it. I was frustrated at how my counter flow chiller, under gravity, took along time. With the pump, it is much faster. i'll time it some time and we can quantitatively compare the immersion to the CFC. I was able to dial in the wort temp to 74 degrees right into the carboy.