Ophiuchus
Special · 33 cl bottle
Organic Tuscan chestnut honey in the recipe
€5,50
What it is, and what is in it
Chestnut honey is not a sweet honey: it's the kind that turns bitter in the mouth, and putting it in a beer means accepting that the finish will be slightly bitter. Here, it's a choice, not a side effect.
The base is an amber pale ale, with a selection of malts and hops kept low—twenty-two and a half bitterness units, not many—precisely to make room for the honey. The honey provides the color and an aroma not usually found in beer.
The honey is organic Tuscan chestnut honey, declared on the label among the ingredients. Five percent ABV, top-fermented, unfiltered, unpasteurized.
- Fermentation
- Top fermentation, natural bottle conditioning
- Filtration
- Unfiltered, unpasteurized
- Ingredients
- Water, barley malt, chestnut honey, hops, sugar, yeast.
- Allergens
- Gluten (barley malt).
What it is like
Color
Light amber
What the brewery drinks it with
The pairings declared for this beer.
- Long and medium-aged cheeses
- Sweet gratins
- Savory pies
- Grilled meats
The label’s terms, explained
“Special” is not a codified style
Unlike Golden Ale, Porter or IPA, “special” points to no set of rules and no tradition: it is the word breweries use when a recipe steps outside the pattern, usually because of one extra ingredient. Here the extra ingredient is there and is declared on the label: chestnut honey. The base underneath is an amber ale.
Chestnut honey
It is the most bitter of the Italian honeys, and the most recognizable: dark, dense, with a faintly bitter finish and a note that recalls wood and tannin. Putting it in a beer does not serve to sweeten it — that would be the opposite of what it does — but to bring into it a bitterness different from that of the hops. The brewery declares it organic and Tuscan.
What honey does in a beer
Honey is almost entirely simple sugar, and the yeast consumes almost all of it: it raises the alcohol and lightens the body instead of weighing it down. What remains is not the sweetness but the aroma, which survives fermentation. That is why a honey beer can smell of honey and be dry in the mouth.
What IBUs are
International Bitterness Units: the laboratory measure of the bittering compounds the hops have given to the beer. An industrial pale lager sits around 10-20, a pale ale between 30 and 45, a modern IPA often goes past 60. The number counts only the bitterness from the hops: what comes from the chestnut honey does not appear in it, and that is why a low figure does not mean, here, a sweet beer.
What it says on the bottle
The mandatory label information, transcribed from the label of the size on sale.
- Ingredients
- Water, barley malt, chestnut honey, hops, sugar, yeast.
- Allergens
- Gluten (barley malt).
- Alcoholic strength
- 5% vol.
- Contents
- 33 cl bottle
- Place of production
- Tuscan organic chestnut honey; beer produced in San Pierino, Fucecchio (Florence)
| Energy | 184 kJ / 44 kcal |
|---|---|
| Fat | 0 g |
| of which saturates | 0 g |
| Carbohydrate | 3,4 g |
| of which sugars | 0,9 g |
| Protein | 0,4 g |
| Salt | <0,01 g |
| Alcohol (ethanol) | 4,0 g |
Where and how it is made
Daniele Nespeca, per Birrificio Aries, in Fucecchio.
A two-hectoliter brew · from barley to bottle, all in house
All 76 products by Birrificio Aries- How it is made
- Selection of raw materials, barley milling, mashing, filtration, whirlpool, yeast pitching, primary fermentation in fermenter, secondary fermentation in bottle or keg. All stages on-site: 2 hl brew kettle and two 600 l temperature-controlled stainless steel conical fermenters.
- Other sizes
- 33 cl bottle; 24 l keg.
The brewery’s other beers
Gli elementi
Il cielo
Le speciali
