My second attempt on a chestnut infused beer. The first try 2 years ago was somewhat disappointing, but you learn from mistakes! We have a small chestnut tree on our property, and this is the first year it was actually bearing fruit! Last year was nothing but empty husks, probably due to the ongoing drought situation. Usually, a chestnut tree needs cross pollination, I.e. Other chestnut trees around, to produce nuts. This tree is all by himself, and I'm really wondering where the pollen came from. Chestnuts are beautiful trees. The nuts are delicious and I guess I'll plant some more around here. The Romans used chestnuts to feed their armies while on the prowl across Europe. There are still swaths of mountain sides covered in chestnut trees in Northern Italy and on the island of Corsica. Until 150 years ago the East Coast of the US also had plenty of chestnut trees, however they all died from the chestnut blight. There are just a few left in California and Oregon, where they had been transplanted from East Coast settlers. The one on our property could be one of those, but I think based on how it looks it's probably the European type. They are kind of hard to tell apart. The nutty aroma of the chestnut should go well with a Dark Brown Ale style beer. So here it is, plenty of dark roasted barley malt, which is also directly from our property, paired with an infusion of roasted and ground chestnuts! I ran out of my hops harvest, so pellet hops from the store had to do on this one. Update: Actually, somehow the gravity came in really low, so I guess my malting process still needs optimization. For this batch I really stopped the germination once the sprouts were about 2/3 of the grain length, as described in the book, however yield was much lower compared to my first malting batch where the sprouting kind of ran away. Anyways, added some malt extract to compensate for that.
BREW DATE: 10/30/2016
BOTTLING DATE: 12/10/2016
GRAIN BILL: 12lbs total
-8lbs Jarvis Base Malt
-2.5lbs Jarvis Dark Malt (mix of roasted malts)
-1lb Jarvis roasted chestnuts, ground
-1lb Briess Golden Malt Extract (gravity came in low, so had to spike it a little)
MASH-IN: 1 hr at 160F, Fly sparked with 175F water.
HOP SCHEDULE:
-60min 1oz German Hersbrucker
-30min 1oz Czech Saaz
-10min 1oz Czech Saaz
OG: 9.2 brix for 14l wort, left it at that => alcohol content should come out at 4.8%.
YEAST: Wyeast Ringwood Ale 1087
TASTE NOTES: Yess, nailed this one quite right. Color is dark chestnut brown, smooth head. Very malty flavors with just a hint of the chestnuts I've used. No off 'hot' taste, as I had with my previous attempt. A true winter warmer!
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