It’s pumpkin beer season again. If you’re going to brew one, it might as well be a good one, no? The author shares better than fifteen years of experience with what makes a great pumpkin ale in the linked article.
web page is not available, although i sure wish it worked! thanks!
Durr, typo in the url. Thanks for the heads up, I fixed it!
I don’t disagree with any of the points made but there are plenty of well-regarded pumpkin beers on the market that follow some or all of the processes the post eschews.
“Great pumpkin ale” is an oxymoron…
Okay, Denny - I address that in the intro. 
It’s all about personal tastes, huh? Just because I’ve never found one I like dosen’t mean that other people shouldn’t like them.
[quote]It’s all about personal tastes, huh?
[/quote]
Stop the presses! Homebrewing is about making beer that I enjoy, instead of what other people tell me I should enjoy?
Seriously, I could not agree more. I can’t stand RIS, even though we all know that it’s the only beer that can possibly compete with a DIPA containing enough hops to melt your tooth enamel. To me, RIS tastes like licking a burned tree stump. But people love them, so more power to them.
I have yet to brew a pumpkin ale of my own, though I have enjoyed some commercial ones (and hated some commercial ones, and been completely ambivalent about some commercial ones). But the author of this post has been doing pumpkin ales for fifteen plus years, and I have yet to see anyone say anything negative about his advice. I have seen a lot of “your techniques took my beer from good to great” and “this recipe was the best pumpkin ale I’ve ever had” type comments, so I figured it was worth an actual article.
Sounds like you’re drinking crappy RIS! ;D
But in all suriousness, RIS is a very wide category. Some are, unfortunately, like burned stumps. 
Others, however, are a marvel of complex intermingling of dark chocolate, roast, hop flavor and bitterness, etc. Those are the ones I like! 8)
But back to the topic at hand - pumpkin spice beers are definitely not my thing. Eww.
[quote]Sounds like you’re drinking crappy RIS!
[/quote]
I wondered that, myself - I’ve made it a point to try some of the higher rated examples on BeerAdvocate (which, I allow, can be a bit of a circlejerk). Have yet to find one I really enjoy.
I only drink RIS out of burnt tree stumps.
Glassware matters.
lol. And pumpkin ale must be drank from hollowed out pumpkins?
I happen to have a couple cans of pie pumpkin in my cupboards, this makes me want to brew one. I definitely like pumpkin beers, but it’s tough to get the right spice character. It’s the kind of style that takes a lot of experimentation to get what you like, I think. I may do a German amber lager and do this up. I have some WLP838 to use for it, should be a good fit.
I love that picture of the beer with the little pumpkin and the leaves, man, I can’t wait for fall! I love it!
Thanks for the link. I brew one once a year for my wife and dialed it in with more subtle spicing. This year I plan to added the oven roasted pumpkin to the fermenter as noted in #6.
Heh. I didn’t have a picture of the process, since I’m not the author, so I did a Google search for a pumpkin homebrew.
Or you could just look up my article in the SEP/OCT 2013 edition of Zymurgy
So, have you done a triangle tasting with the beer brewed with and without pumpkin?
This needs to be done if it hasn’t yet. I am drinking uinta’s punk’n right now and I feel that pumpkin is detectable in flavor and mouthfeel.
I am not sure if anyone brews a pumpkin beer without spices but it would be nice to see a comparison to see if there is any difference in an unspiced beer.
Couldn’t resist
+1