Brentwood Brewing is a small outfit run by Essex CAMRA activists and borne out of a good old-fashioned love of real ale. Their winter seasonal Chestnut Stout is a corker. Or do we mean a conker?
It tastes — and don’t laugh at the Gooldenism — like chocolate bourbon biscuits. There’s only a little bitterness at the end, but it’s not sickly either. For a beer that claims to be only 3.999% (ha ha) it’s got a lot of body, too. Could we taste chestnuts? Probably not, to be honest, but it’s a fantastic stout we’d be pleased to see more of. Good job, chaps.
Compare this with Milton Caligula which we tried on the same night: 8.8% and, according to the barman, supposed to taste like blue cheese. Eugh.
Photo by FotoDawg at Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.
8 replies on “Brentwood Brewing Chestnut Stout: ker-ching!”
Interesting. I was looking at the beers made by Pietra on Corsica a couple of months ago, including one of which uses chestnut flour, chestnuts apparently being a major export for Corsica. I would have assumed they were of the eating, sweet chestnut variety though, not the one you picture?
I just grabbed a nice photo labelled ‘chestnut’ from Flickr… I’ve only ever seen an eating chestnut roasted, so I’m not sure what they look like in their shells. Horse chestnuts are poisonous, though, so I hope they’re not using them in the stout. We’ve had Pietra and thought it was OK but, like rye and honey beer, not as good as you think it ought to be.
They look spikey and dangerous. My wife picks them up when she’s out in the woods here in autumn. She’s a real hunter-gatherer. I prefer to just get them at the market lazy sod that I am.
That’s disappointing about the Pietra. Sounds like a lovely idea. Oh, and speaking of rye, I’ll be making an ale with malted rye on Sunday. Probably no honey though 😀
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut – some pictures there.
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conker
“chocolate bourbon biscuits” sounds good to me. I’ve given up trying Milton beers, had so many awful ones that I consider it no longer worth the risk. Pietra tasted very watery when I tried it – not worth the bother.
sounds realllyyy good, that’s a flavour profile made for neer, bourbon biscuits….
Sadly my only experience of this was the last very tired half in the barrel before the beer was replaced. Will keep an eye out for it.
The good news is they’ve just brewed this year’s first batch and although a bit more “stouty” than the last lots it is another cracking pint.
Definitely brewed with local sweet chestnuts from South Weald area so no worries about conkers etc.