Pumpkin English Old Ale Progress

I took a specific gravity reading today. It seems to be doing just fine at 1.020. I imagine the final gravity will fall a bit more. How does it taste and smell? Alcohol notes in the nose. Very malty with very very faint spices. The yeast is still in suspension so that gets in the way a bit. I'm still looking for the pumpkin taste and smell. (still can't smell and taste things that well even though my cold is gone) Maybe I'll find it when the beer clears or maybe it just wasn't enough to overcome the malt and the alcohol. We'll see! Overall I do like it and I think it will turn out just fine. I'm not going to add more spice at this point. I think I like the understated hints of spice.

The fermentation seems to be slowing down. The air lock is blurping about once a minute or so. I think I'll transfer it into the secondary soon. Since I'm using a keg as the secondary I'm not too worried about getting it done right away. When using carboys the transfer to the secondary is done while there is still some fermentation activity going on in the primary. This allows the fermenting beer to produce a protective blanket of CO2 in the secondary. This CO2 protects the beer from oxidation. My theory is that I don't have to worry about oxidation since I'll fill the headspace of the keg with CO2. The only other thing to consider is off tastes produced by autolysis of yeast cells. From what I can tell that isn't a huge concern in the short term.

Cheers!