Corsican Craft Brew · Chestnut Beer
Bière Pietra (Corsican Chestnut Beer)
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Arnaud 25 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Pietra was the first beer anywhere on record to be brewed with chestnut flour worked directly into the mash — a nod to the chestnut groves that once fed half the island — rather than added later just as a flavoring.
Pietra is an amber lager brewed near Bastia since 1996, made with a portion of Corsican chestnut flour alongside barley malt. It pours copper-colored with a malty, faintly nutty, toasted sweetness that sets it apart from standard European lagers.
Why it's made this way: Chestnuts were long a staple crop and even a currency of rural Corsica, and the Sialelli family's Pietra brewery, built near Bastia, turned that island-specific ingredient into a beer that's now inseparable from Corsican identity.
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