Amiata Bastarda Doppia 75 Cl.

Bastarda Doppia is a red beer, produced with a double percentage of chestnuts compared to Bastarda Rossa. Hence the "double" in the name. Amiata has always been considered the ideal mountain for chestnut cultivation. The Amiata chestnut is dried in the characteristic rooms (metati or driers) through the heat given off by the fire and the smoke of beech or chestnut wood, then threshed (removal of the peel), making it suitable for being ground in special mills, and being transformed into chestnut flour. Birra Amiata purchases the dried, peeled chestnut from the producers of the local consortium and grinds it directly into small parts the same size as barley grains. It is thus added in the initial stages of production, not only with the task of providing a characteristic flavor to the beer, but also of releasing starches which will then transform into simpler sugars and then into alcohol by the yeasts. It cannot therefore be defined as a chestnut flavored beer, like other fruit beers, but rather a specific type of beer. Bastarda Doppia is therefore produced using 10 different varieties of malt, 2 different types of hops and 40% (of the fermentable) of Amiata PGI chestnuts. Water also proves to be a fundamental ingredient, that of the Fiora aqueduct, which is particularly pure and light. Bastarda Doppia was awarded 5 stars of excellence by the Slow Food Guide to Italian Beers 2009 – 2010. It is therefore one of the two Tuscan craft beers to have reached 5 stars and one of the two chestnut beers to have achieved this rating at a national level. (www.birra-amiata.it)