The Brew SiteTasting the pumpkin ale
I opened a bottle of my recent pumpkin ale (bottled about two and a half weeks ago) to try it out, and it’s not bad. (I had actually had a small taster of it with some friends on Saturday, but tonight was the full bottle.)
I’ll spare the full review treatment I’ve been giving all the beers lately—at least, for now. It could use a little more time maturing in the bottle, I think. The spices are coming across a little strong for me, but I imagine they will mellow.
Overall, it’s pretty good. It’s certainly not the 8% alcohol that my initial gravity reading gave me, I think what happened was the amount of pumpkin particulates in the first reading skewed my results by quite a bit.
More as I let it age a bit.
I had a similar experience with the pumpkin ale that I brewed 11/04. After maturing for over a year, the spices were still overpowering the beer, mostly the nutmeg. Going back over my notes I realized that I had a) inaverdently increased the nutmeg from 1/2t to 2t and b) used freashly grated nutmeg rather than store ground. Some people like it, but I’m not fond of it because the nutmeg outweighs everything else. I’ll try another batch this fall. Let us know how the brew improves over time.