Pumpkin Ale

October. It’s coming. Now we at Midnight Brewing Co don’t usually think so far into the future which is why our Christmas beer tastes best in March and our summer beers are best in the fall. However, from this point forward things will be different. As you can see from the title I am pondering our pumpkin ale.

Ideally it should be brewed so that it is ready for drinking enjoyment during the Halloween to Thanksgiving period. Last year was the first time we tried making a pumpkin beer and it actually turned out very well. However, we were restricted by the supply of fresh pumpkins which didn’t allow us to get our hands on pumpkin until early October.

So that means this time we are going to try something different. Most likely we will try pumpkin from a can and see how that goes. There is a bit of dissent within the staff of Midnight Brewing as to using anything but fresh, real pumpkin but we don’t really have much of a choice. To be safe though I would like to brew a second batch of the original recipe once we can get some fresh pumpkin.

One note on using actual pumpkin is that most recipes I have seen just require steaming/boiling of the pumpkin before using it in your brew. This will soften your pumpkin and make it easier to extract sugars and pumpkin flavors. However, what we did last year was to take our whole pumpkin, quarter it and then lightly roast it in the oven like when roasting red peppers. I don’t know whether or not roasting vs steaming/boiling makes a huge difference, but I think the caramelization from the roasting gives a richer flavor than merely steaming/boiling.

In any case, that’s what’s coming up so stay tuned and crack open a homebrew. Cheers!