Italian Craft Beer Today

By Tony Forder

So we just returned from our annual European beer tour. Usually we do Belgium with an add-on or two. This year it was Italy and not just beer – naturally wine also, with a few white truffles thrown in.

Here's a few things we learned about Italian craft brewers and their beer:

1. Italian craft beer is alive and well with nearly 1,000 craft breweries operating, although they have still experienced post-covid challenges and inflationary pressures like everyone else.

2. They seem very friendly to American craft beer lovers and hold American brewers in high esteem – from whence came their inspiration.

3. This is probably fairly well-known among American brewers but we heard it from the source. Agostino Arioli brewed the first Italian Pilsner at Birrificio Italiano which he opened in 1996. His secret for TipoPils? German malt and dry-hopping with Noble (German) hops. We also tried a fresh hop version at the brewery. Agostino likes to play around with hops – including roasting them. TipoPils was the inspiration for Firestone Walker's Pivo Pils (2012) and Italian Pilsner has lately been popping up all over the place stateside.

4. Traditional British ales seem to be quite popular in northern Italy and we encountered a number of beer engines pouring cask bitter on our trek. Herba Monstrum, a brewpub on the shores of Lake Como served us Discordia, a 5.3% cask English Bitter as well as Deca, an Ordinary Hoppy Bitter (4.3%). Birrificio Menaresta had just hosted a British Beer Festival and Lambrate poured 3 cask conditioned beers at each of their two British-style pubs in Milan – a smoked stout, a barleywine, and a tiramisu imperial stout.

5. The brewers at Menaresta told us that Italian law prevents the inoculation of wild ambient yeast in beer making so they came up with a different method of brewing their wild beers. They used starter yeast from a sourdough bakery – literally liquid bread.

6. We came across another Italian beer style on our travels – IGA, not an international grocery company, but Italian Grape Ale. Kinda makes sense for the brewers at De Lab Fermentazioni since they are in the heart of wine country. Druiven is a kickass version of a Belgian Tripel using grape must. They are experimenting with various varietals from nearby wineries in the Alba region.

7. I first encountered the colorful bottles of Baladin when Matthias Neidhart had them in his eclectic B. United portfolio back in the '90s. I've crossed paths with the ever-entrepreneurial Teo Musso several times and visited his brewery headquarters in Piozzo. OK, it's been 10 years but in that time Baladin has taken a quantum leap. The campus outside of the village is impressive to say the least. The story of Baladin was recounted to us by Teo's son Isaac. Teo was taking care of business at Baladin's resort in Essaouira, Morocco, one of several properties they operate globally. I was in that beach town once, back in the '70s, ran out of money, had to hitchhike back to France...but that's another story. Check out Baladin's world.