On the spur of the moment, I thought of brewing a pumpkin beer today.
Don't have any fresh pumpkin, but I do have canned; however, there is
nothing on the label to indicate whether it has any preservatives, so
I'm thinking that it probably _doesn't_ ... but I don't want to take a
chance; besides, my brewing book says not to use 'canned' pumpkin with
preservatives. So I thought of making a cherry beer instead using
cherry pie filling. Besides the ingredients which I know are alright,
it lists citric and ascorbic acids (I think they are okay) and 'sodium
citrate' and 'red 40 color' (I presume dye won't be a problem either).
I did a google for sodium citrate and read enough to see that it is
sometimes used as a preservative. I don't know what the concentration
is in the can, but we're talking about a 21 oz. can in a 5 gallon batch,
so it will become very diluted. I'm tempted to just give it a try, but
thought I'd at least see what sort of replies I might get while my water
is heating up.

Thanks for any advice anyone can provide.
--
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