Anyone have further info or experiences with chestnuts?
If you can find it, try Kuri Kuro (Dark Chestnut Ale) from Japan. Excellent!!
We have a local chestnut farmer who provided some chestnuts to our club members, to encourage us to brew with this unusual ingredient. Obviously hoping to develop at least a small market for his product. None of the resulting brews were anywhere near the quality of Kuri Kuro.
Maybe reach out to the guys at Urban Chestnut in St. Louis.
My friend James Neumeister, who runs Groundbreaker Brewing in PDX, uses chestnuts in pretty much all of his beers AFAIK. It’s a gluten free brewery.
I have a chestnut tree on my property, but I never get to the fallen nuts before my furry friends…maybe I should be more diligent this fall. Sounds like a fun beer to try to make.
I’ve brewed a (UK) brown ale with them, after seeing them in the Brooklyn Brew Shop book. They gave a subtle caramel flavour that worked really well in it, although you would probably get the something very similar from the commercial Ragus invert sugar. I plan to do a side by side this year using a split wort to see the difference.
Edit: I had no issues with head retention due to the low fat content but you may need to be careful about nut allergies.