Lagerboy Speaks – Pietra

The Mediterranean brings to mind beaches, olives, carpet salesmen, and British lager louts. But does it bring to mind decent beer? The drunken idiots parading around Ayia Napa and Magaluf might be satisfied with Stella or Carlsberg, but clearly Lagerboy has a bit more of an advanced palate – which is why Pietra took his eye in a recent foray to the beer shop. Admittedly, it’s not really a lager – it’s a 6%abv amber – but coming from the small Francophone island of Corsica was obviously worth a punt.

The brewery was started in 1996 on the outskirts of Bastia, in the north of the island. Surrounding the area are the chestnut forests of Castagniccia, and these nuts play an important role in the beer. Ground into flour, it is added to the malt and hops into the brew, which is fermented for eight weeks in a carefully-controlled environment. I don’t know of any other chestnut beers out there, so Pietra has to be pretty much unique. It pours a very golden colour (presumably thanks to the chestnuts), yet tastes darker, with an unsurprisingly nutty aftertaste, along with some faintly metallic things going on. There’s more to it than most beers, and the slight alcohol increase and unusual ingredient make it stand out.