Chestnut Beer - Gastro Obscura
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Chestnut Beer

The ultimate in nutty brews.

Outside Italy, you can get chestnut beer from the French island of Corsica. Here, the Corsican brand known as Pietra.
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While Italy heavily regulates its wine industry, its brewers have a greater degree of freedom for experimentation. As such, Italian beers contain a wide variety of interesting local ingredients, including spelt, grapes, and chestnuts. The latter, a sweet specialty of the Tuscany and Piedmont regions, makes for nutty, earthy ales and lagers.

In a style known as birra alle castagne (“chestnut beer”), brewers use chestnuts in various forms: smoked, roasted, dried, and even as honey from the chestnut tree. The resulting beers are silky and slightly thick, with subtle roasted, smoky flavors.

Chestnut beers tend to appear in the autumn. As such, they pair particularly well with cool-weather cuisine such as hearty stews.

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