Spiced Pumpkin recipe (Any hints, tips or tricks?)

Do yourself a favor and try Southern Tier Brewing Co.s' Pumpking. I have typically not really dug pumpkin beers (witness Dogfish Heads garbage), but this one is really great. Not overly spiced, but the Pumpkin comes through great. The challenge is I think they use a partial lactic fermentation, which you can probably find some more info on via Google.

I used irish moss in a pumkin ale that I just brewed with pumkin in it. It doesnt seem to be overly cloudy. Not sure if the irish moss helped or if I just got lucky. But maybe this will help.

I personally like adding canned organic pumpkin, it does make the final product kind of hazy, but it also gives it a nice orange color, and I can definitely taste it in the final product. I might to a little darker on your crystal malts, maybe 60, but your spices look pretty spot on (for my tastes at least, except maybe less nutmeg).

Also, I disagree with the "don't bother adding pumpkin" notion. Some brewers skip the pumpkin, but they're also the same guys that are looking at profit margins before quality. All of the great craft brewers I've talked to add pumpkin. In fact, they like to talk about how "real" their pumpkin is (ie. not pumpkin flavoring or heavily processed/spiced pumpkin).

Im kind of new to home brewing and I really want to brew this pumpkin beer. Can you give me the exact directions on the boils and when to add the ingredients and what temp should I try to ferment this beer at? Should I do a secondary fermentation?

I haven't brewed one of these yet, but all the research I've done seems to indicate that the pumpkin is not necessary (I plan to do a side-by-side brew of the same recipe with and without actual pumpkin to see for sure). Heck, the canned pumpkin you buy in the stores often isn't even pumpkin, but squash! One point of advice is that canned pumpkin can lead to a crazy stuck mash - doesn't apply as much to your situation, but useful to note.

Anyway, let us know how it turns out. I would use a modest amount of spices at flameout, and taste the beer prior to kegging. Often, spice flavors can get "scrubbed" out during an active fermentation. If you find it needs more of a spice note, add some to the fermented beer prior to bottling or kegging. Also, if the spices seem too harsh (cinnamon can do that to ya), let it cold bulk condition for a while before packaging. The flavors should mellow in time.

One other thing - in your recipe, you are adding spices directly to the secondary. I would make a tincture - meaning, soak the spices in some cheap vodka for a few days, then strain the spices out and add the vodka to the beer. This is a great way to add spices to beer without compromising sanitation and having to settle out a bunch of crap in your beer before bottling.

My tip is to not use any pumpkin. Simply focus on upping the midrange crystal malt (like 60L) to give it more sweetness. Then spice the beer with pumpkin pie spices like your recipe already has.

People think of pumpkin as being sweet (which it isn't, so adding pumpkin doesn't help) and they want spice. So the added crystal give sweetness, and ups the residual body a little too. That really.

I know of a couple commercial examples of "pumpkin" ale that doesn't use any pumpkin at all, its all spicing like a pumpkin pie would be.

Besides you don't really want to add pumpkin puree to an extract beer. Its most starch and that will create haze and its unfermentable by most brewing yeasts.

I'd also suggest a fruitier yeast that WLP005, try WLP002.