I’m interested in pretending that I’m Italian and doing a chestnut beer, but good, solid information on how they brew the beers is scarce.
Does anyone have some good sources on how these beers are brewed in Corsica? As far as I can tell, there’s a mix of how it’s done, but possibly roasting, grinding them into a flour, and adding to the mash may be the best way.
So far I have these links:
http://lagerheads.blogspot.com/2006/11/chestnuts-in-beer.html
Not exactly what you were asking for, but the May/June issue of Zymurgy had an article on brewing Gluten Free beer with chestnuts. The article did cover how to prepare the chestnuts for brewing. If you are an AHA member, you can find the article on eZymurgy.
While traveling in Italy in 2011 we visited the Busalla Brewery outside of Genoa (Liguria). They make a chestnut beer called Castagnasca. The brewer there is Gabriel (in the orange shirt), an Argentinian who went to school in Germany and now brews in Italy. He was very open about everything they did. He uses chestnut flour (there are tax advantages to using it, as the government is seeking to help the chestnut industry). He does a full cereal mash with it, as what he has requires gelatinization. I purchased some chestnut flour through Amazon, and used it at 20% in a CAP. It’s a really pleasant beer. I would not describe the flavor as “nutty”, but you know something is subtly different there.
thanks for the info!
Is chestnut flour just raw chestnuts ground up? I would assume so if it requires gelatinization… I would think that roasting would gelatinize the sugars. Any ideas about what percentage of his mash is chestnut flour?
Roasting won’t gelatinize the starch. Temperature is just one part of gelatinization, you need water too. If the nuts are dry it won’t gelatinize anything when you roast them.
Here’s the stuff we use (my wife also uses it in her homemade pasta - I really like it there): http://www.amazon.com/Rogers-Funfresh-Foods-Italian-Chestnut/dp/B0038MVQHI/ref=sr_1_1?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1358860926&sr=1-1&keywords=chestnut+flour. I assume it’s just ground nuts. Roasting will not gelatinize, but I would think you’d get some different flavors out of it. Busalla uses it at 17%. I used 20%.