GF Brewing with Chestnuts

[Androshen]

"Heat 5 gallons of water to about 160-170 degrees and add bag with chips to pot. Add pectinase and amylase per manufacture’s directions. Chestnuts are really a fruit and the pectinase will create a much clearer end product by dissolving suspended pectins. Add water needed to fill brewing pot. Allow to soak 12-24 hours [24 is better]"


My big question is this .... does the temp need to maintained at 160-170 for that whole time?

 

[Gonoles10]

Nope. I've had great success heating them to 150 the night before brew day and cranking it back up to 150 the next day. I wrap the mash tun in a thermal blanket for the night and the mash usually falls to about 120 for me.

 

[Leeinwa]

"Heat 5 gallons of water to about 160-170 degrees and add bag with chips to pot. Add pectinase and amylase per manufacture’s directions. Chestnuts are really a fruit and the pectinase will create a much clearer end product by dissolving suspended pectins. Add water needed to fill brewing pot. Allow to soak 12-24 hours [24 is better]"


My big question is this .... does the temp need to maintained at 160-170 for that whole time?

No. The enzyme activity will keep the pot warm enough. Like Gonoles says it will still be warm the next day.

leeinwa

 

[celiacsurvivor]

OK, I got my hands on some chestnuts and I'm going to try and give it a go this weekend.

I have a couple of questions before I start.

The chestnuts have been taken out of the green outer shell but are still in the brown casing does this have to be removed before roasting? should I crush/chip them before or after roasting?

The amylase that you are using, is it just alpha amylase or is it a mix of alpha beta and gluco?

Should I boil the chestnuts and water then reduce temp and add enzymes or just heat to the correct temp and then add them?

Thanks for your help

Colm

 

[Leeinwa]

OK, I got my hands on some chestnuts and I'm going to try and give it a go this weekend.

I have a couple of questions before I start.

The chestnuts have been taken out of the green outer shell but are still in the brown casing does this have to be removed before roasting? should I crush/chip them before or after roasting?

The amylase that you are using, is it just alpha amylase or is it a mix of alpha beta and gluco?

Should I boil the chestnuts and water then reduce temp and add enzymes or just heat to the correct temp and then add them?

Thanks for your help

Colm

Getting the fresh chestnuts is the easy part. I make beer out of chestnuts that are airdried in the shell for about a year. They are then ran through a shelling machine. To chip them, they have to be 12 -14 % moisture. They will be rock hard. I run them through and pre-crusher roller mill I made, to get them to a size that will feed through a stone burr mile that is set to give uniform chips. After chipping they are sieved to remove most of the fines. I then roast them in a special continuous stirring roaster I built that is propane heated. Light, medium or dark roast, Take your pick. THEN the are ready to use in beer. Tala!

Hope this helps

Skol

Leeinwa

Leeinwa

 

[opm]

G'day all.
I'm brand new to homebrewtalk.com and pretty much brand new to home brew as well (two brews a coopers pale ale and a coopers dark ale.)
my uncle owns a hobby farm with a couple hundred chestnut trees on it, so i've suddenly become the owner of about 9.5kg (20ish pounds) of fresh chestnuts.
after reading through this tread i thought giving chestnut beer a go would be a better option than throwing them out.
since they're fresh they're still fairly soft, so my plan was to use a food processor to chip/pulp them and then to oven roast them at a pretty low temp. (say 100C/210F) to help dry them out then take it up to 180-250C(350-480F) till they're browned up.
then following one of the recipes posted already.
any advise or comments??

 

[opm]

G'day again
bit of an up date.
i decided to do a small test batch.
-started with 1kg(2.2pounds) of fresh, off the tree, chest nuts.
-used a food processor to chip them to a pretty consistent size of 2-5mm
-layed them out on oven trays and dried for 30mins at 120C/250F and roasted them a 180C/360F for another 30mins (pulling them out every 10-15mins and mixing them)
-after removing as much of the chestnut shell as i could re-weighed at 0.375kg/0.83pounds
-put them in 3Lts/0.8Gal(US) of water at 150F
they've been soaking about 15hrs now. I'm bring the temp back up to 150F and i'll leave them at least another day. Took a hydro reading at 15hrs of about 1.012 adjusted for the temp its more like 1.017 it's currently a quite light brown (maybe a bit darker than a pale ale, but i expect it will clear a bit) and tastes surprisingly sweet.

 

[celiacsurvivor]

I managed to shell and roast about 4 1/4 lbs of chestnuts which I then soaked at in about 12L of water with 4mL of pullulanase, alpha amylase and beta glucanase at 70C for ~24hr, I kept it on the burner at low temp until I went to bed then I put it in the hot water cupboard on my beer warmer and wrapped in a blanket. Then the next day 4mL of amyloglucosidase was added.

I lautered and sparged it and ended up with 10.5L of wort at ~1.010.

I like experimenting so I decided to make 3 x 5L brews rather than one big one. I made a Lager, an IPA, and a brown ale. Sort of.

Here are the recipes.

IPA Recipe
3.5L of chestnut wort.
640g Dextrose
63g maltodextrin
12g fuggles (60min)
2g East Kent Goldings 4.8%(22min)
12g Cascades (22min)
¼ t irish moss (10min)
4g of fermentis safale S-04 ale yeast was rehydrated in ~1cup of water and added to the cooled wort.

The brown ale recipe was the same except I added 80g of Belgian candi sugar, and soaked 100g of dark roasted buckwheat malt in the wort prior to boiling.

Lgaer Recipe
3.5L of chestnut wort.
640g Dextrose
63g maltodextrin
9g Czech saaz 4.1% (60min)
9g saaz (20min)
5g saaz (10min)
5g saaz (end of boil
¼ t irish moss (10min)

5g of fermentis saflager S-23 lager yeast was rehydrated in ~1cup of water and added to the cooled wort. It’s now in the fridge at ~2C and bubbling nicely

I plan on racking to a secondary and dry hopping the lager with 5g of saaz.

The chestnut wort was nice and sweet, but the reading was a bit lower than I expected. I didn't grind the nuts very fine so I think that could be the problem. I have another 8kg of chestnuts to play with so the next batch will be ground finer.

 

[Gonoles10]

OPM,

Sounds promising! I've found that in order to get my gravity up there, I add honey. For a ten gallon batch (we knucklehead Americans are still using the imperial system, so don't ask me to convert it ), I have had good results using 20 pounds of chestnuts and 5 pounds of honey. That got me to around 1.045 starting gravity out of the boil kettle. It will finish a bit lower than you are used to, due to all the fermentables

 

[Gonoles10]

Survivorman,

Those recipes look good and tasty! It will be interesting to see the effect that a finer grind has on the sugar yield from the nuts and the starting gravity. It does seem low, but I am sure it will be good.

 

[Leeinwa]

Sounds like you fellow brewers are finding out how much work and it is to prepare chestnuts to use in beer. My average sugar extraction is 4.5% brix or about 1.013 sg. with my beer chips. You're finding out you do need some extra fermentables to get a good strong beer but the roasted chestnut flavor still comes through.

Good luck with you're variations in chestnut prep.

To you mates accross the Pacific I wish I could send you some samples to show you what I start with. To costly. I've worked with commercial start ups in NZ and AU but they get pretty closed mouth when it comes to results. I'd like the whole world to know about chestnut beer, so I share info.

Skol

Leeinwa

 

[Gonoles10]

Hey Lee, tried to call you last week...must have missed you. Any thoughts on larger quantity discounts (20 pounds at a time)?

 

[opm]

G'day
another up date.
left the 375g of chips in 3Lts for about 36hrs (no added enzymes) drained off about 1.75Ltrs topped up the chips with another 1.7Ltrs left for another 30mins and drained off 1.5Ltrs.

3.25Ltrs at about 1.020
added 350g of dextrose to bring up the OG (about 1.045)
60min boil
hop pellets Hallertau (Mittelfruh) , german "noble" hop with a delicate spicy herbal aroma
7g at the start
3g with 5mins to go (not really sure about the hop quantities, just sort of guessed based on other recipes)
cooled it down topped it back up to 3ltrs and added some yeast.
tell you how it tastes in a couple months

 

[celiacsurvivor]

I racked my chestnut IPA and brown ale to a secondary the other day and both had really low FG's. The IPA was 1000 and the brown ale was 1003. This seems a bit strange to me as I added 63g of maltodextrin which should have boosted the FG.

I will probably be bottling this weekend, should I add some more maltodextrin to help with body etc, or will it end up being too much and too sweet?

The lager is still bubbling away slowly in my fridge at ~4C

 

[SexPanther13]

I racked my chestnut IPA and brown ale to a secondary the other day and both had really low FG's. The IPA was 1000 and the brown ale was 1003. This seems a bit strange to me as I added 63g of maltodextrin which should have boosted the FG.

I will probably be bottling this weekend, should I add some more maltodextrin to help with body etc, or will it end up being too much and too sweet?

The lager is still bubbling away slowly in my fridge at ~4C

What other fermentables did you use? And if it is that low adding maltodextrin will just make it sweet. I had my chestnut brew finish at 1000 and it was SUPER dry so I threw in a pound of maltodextrin and it still ended up with a dry finish and just tasted like a bad wine. So I don't know how to go about fixing that.

 

[Leeinwa]

I racked my chestnut IPA and brown ale to a secondary the other day and both had really low FG's. The IPA was 1000 and the brown ale was 1003. This seems a bit strange to me as I added 63g of maltodextrin which should have boosted the FG.

I will probably be bottling this weekend, should I add some more maltodextrin to help with body etc, or will it end up being too much and too sweet?

The lager is still bubbling away slowly in my fridge at ~4C

Instead of adding more malto why don't you try some heading powder as per directions.


leeinwa

 

[Blackhawkbrew]

I was thinking of doing a porter or stout with the dark roasted chestnut chips. What hops would work best? Any different sugars I should use?

Thanks

 

[Leeinwa]

I was thinking of doing a porter or stout with the dark roasted chestnut chips. What hops would work best? Any different sugars I should use?

Thanks

I think I'll put the hop question out there for open dicussion. Most have been with ales and I'm sure there will be several opinions on the hop thing. Hello out there!!! Got any suggestions for Blackhawk?

I'd keep using corn sugar. it always gives and good clean alcohol with no side tastes.

Leeinwa

 

[SexPanther13]

I would use brown sugar or maple syrup for a porter or stout. They would both help with color and leave a little more character behind when it finishes. But that's just me. Maybe Belgian Candi Sugar as well if you didn't want too much leftover character.

 

[Lcasanova]

I was thinking of doing a porter or stout with the dark roasted chestnut chips. What hops would work best? Any different sugars I should use?

Thanks

While it wasn't a porter or a stout, I used blackstrap molasses and maple syrup as additional fermentables in my american brown ale (check my drop down for some details). You couldn't really taste either in the final product and the molasses adds some nice color. For hops I'd try to use fuggles and east kent goldings. The thing I'd be worried about right now is getting the right color for the beer, while I haven't tried chestnut chips (yet) I haven't had success getting that dark dark beer using my own home roasted grains.

 

[Leeinwa]

I was thinking of doing a porter or stout with the dark roasted chestnut chips. What hops would work best? Any different sugars I should use?

Thanks

Talked to a 20 vet of home brew. He said hops are still a matter of taste. Just don't OVER-HOP with Porters and Stouts. He said brown sugers and other dark carbs will change flavor.

leeinwa

 

[celiacsurvivor]

I've made a stout with malted buckwheat, and unmalted millet. It turned out jet black but with severe burnt coffee flavour. I'm letting this age now in the hopes that it will mellow.

The trick to getting the colour right is roasting your grain till its really dark. This is kind of trial and error as I think I over roasted mine which gave it the burnt coffee taste.

I used fuggles and east kent goldings.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

 

[celiacsurvivor]

I still have a lot of chestnuts in my fridge that I want to peel and freeze before they go off.

I have found that if you boil them for about 10-15 minutes, the inside goes all crumbly and comes out really easy.

Do you think this boiling will affect the chestnuts at all? I boil them before I add the amylase anyway so I don't think it will make much of a difference.

 

[Leeinwa]

I still have a lot of chestnuts in my fridge that I want to peel and freeze before they go off.

I have found that if you boil them for about 10-15 minutes, the inside goes all crumbly and comes out really easy.

Do you think this boiling will affect the chestnuts at all? I boil them before I add the amylase anyway so I don't think it will make much of a difference.

Take those surplus nuts and put them in a Seal-A-Meal vaccum pack and freeze them until you need them. Don't cook them first. They lose a little texture quality but will keep for a year or so. DON"T just freeze them or they will freezer burn.

leeinwa

 

[celiacsurvivor]

Thanks Lee, will do.

 

[SexPanther13]

So after my epic chestnut failure a few months ago I am going to get back on the horse and do another. This time I'm going to use sorghum syrup instead of just corn sugar as my other fermentable and hope it doesn't over attenuate. I'm going to do a pale ale.

*5 Gallons*

5lbs Light Roasted Chestnut Chips
6lbs Sorghum Syrup

2oz East Kent Goldings (60min)
1oz East Kent Goldings (30min)
1oz East Kent Goldings (1min)

Danstar Nottingham Yeast

Does this sound like it could make a decent beer? I don't have any calculators to figure out the IBUs on it so if someone could run those numbers for me that would be awesome. Also, how long do sorghum beers take to age to get rid of their off flavors?

 

[dorklord]

So after my epic chestnut failure a few months ago I am going to get back on the horse and do another. This time I'm going to use sorghum syrup instead of just corn sugar as my other fermentable and hope it doesn't over attenuate. I'm going to do a pale ale.

*5 Gallons*

5lbs Light Roasted Chestnut Chips
6lbs Sorghum Syrup

2oz East Kent Goldings (60min)
1oz East Kent Goldings (30min)
1oz East Kent Goldings (1min)

Danstar Nottingham Yeast

Does this sound like it could make a decent beer? I don't have any calculators to figure out the IBUs on it so if someone could run those numbers for me that would be awesome. Also, how long do sorghum beers take to age to get rid of their off flavors?

I don't know what style you're going for, or just how much gravity you are going to get from the chestnuts, but it sounds like this is going to be a fairly big beer.

 

[SexPanther13]

Well I said in the post I was aiming for a pale ale but if you think it will be big I can always half the sorghum and go for a smaller beer.

 

[dorklord]

Well I said in the post I was aiming for a pale ale but if you think it will be big I can always half the sorghum and go for a smaller beer.

Don't know how I missed that pale ale part.
That amount of sorghum should net you an initial gravity of 1.044. In a previous post, someone mentions that 2.2 lbs of raw, whole chestnuts in .8 gallons of water gave him a gravity of 1.017, (removing as much of the shells as he could left him with .8 lbs). So, if your chestnuts are whole, you should get a gravity of 1.009 from the chestnuts (assuming you get the same conversion % he did.)

 

[SexPanther13]

My chestnuts will be the chipped kind from Lee. I'll just go with 3lbs of Sorghum syrup, and keep the 5lbs of chestnut chips.