Last night I finally got around to making the pumpkin ale that I talked about way back in November (the pumpkin was frozen, so I was still able to use it). I followed my recipe here, with a couple of variations: I used American 2-row malt for the partial mash instead of Vienna, used 20°L Crystal instead of 40, and I’m going to wait until bottling to add the vanilla and spices.

The session went well, although my hydrometer reading gave me a whopping original gravity of 1.080! That seems very high to me, so either I underestimated the amount of partial mashing I did—perhaps inadvertantly brewing an Imperial Pumpkin—or my hydrometer’s off. I won’t know until I take a final gravity.

And this morning, less than 12 hours after I pitched the yeast (using the new giant smack packs from Wyeast), there was a nice bubbly activity in the fermenter. Looking good!

More on it as it progresses.