A barrel Aged Rum Pumpkin Ale - sounds fantastic!
I was dreaming of a nice malty Amber ale, dosed with roasted pumpkin flesh and some dark brown sugar.... I would ferment the beer then age it in oak rum barrels, giving a nice oak, boozy and vanilla character with additional subtle sweetness from the rum.
Sounds perfect. But then I thought, this may be too ambitious for a Thursday afternoon at 230PM! Reality set in so instead I made the short and shoddy Rum Pumpkin Amber Ale
I got home early from work and I had a kit I purchased for a tropical stout sitting on a shelf in the house. I really didn't want to brew the tropical stout so I decided to modify the recipe to make an Amber ale. The grains included Pale malt, Munich, White Wheat (all Mecca Grade malts) then some caramel malt, black patent and roasted barley. So I decided to lose the roasted barley and patent malt. I also added just a few ounces of caramel malt for color then I used some cascade hops I had in the freezer for bittering. This ended up looking like a decent recipe for an Amber ale (see link above)
Now, for the roasted pumpkin... Most recipes call for slicing the pumpkin into pieces then adding a bit of brown sugar on top then into a 350F oven. Only problem is I didn't have any pumpkin.... So I decided to use 1/4 tsp of Pumpkin Spices added to the fermenting keg for a 2.5g batch.
Finally, I needed some oak rum barrels..... Nein! Since I already broke the Reinheisgebot Code with the Pumpkin spice, I thought I might as well just add some rum and hope no one from the Old World notices this post. So I decided to add 2oz of Spiced Rum to the fermenting keg.
I did a short and shoddy 45 minute mash at 152F then a 30 minute boil. I added S-04 English Ale dry yeast and set the fridge to 68F. We'll see what happens....
More Coming....
9/26/22 : Update: The beer finished out as expected and overall I am very happy with the results...
Aroma is awesome, you can really smell vanilla, graham cracker, mild pumpkin spice. Maybe slightly boozy from the rum.
Taste is great, not overly sweet or spiced at all. Very mild or subtle pumpkin pie flavor, graham cracker is the dominant aroma and flavor. Clean, fresh malt flavors with the Mecca Grade Malts.
Really excellent but you may want to adjust the levels of pumpkin pie spice and rum ..
If you want a more pumpkin-pie spiced ale then add 1/8 tsp more of spice for 2.5 Gallons (I used 1/4 tsp initially)
As far as the rum, 2oz for the 2.5g batch was plenty. It came thru the final beer fairly strongly but not overwhelmingly so. In my opinion, bourbon might be a better option for added sweetness over rum and perhaps would add more oak flavor as well.
4/5 Stars
Comments