Ale, beer | Bread, Cakes And Ale

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep a record of all the wonderful Italian artisan beers I’ve been trying. I’ve been remiss.

I won’t say I’m going to “review” these beers. I might have reviewed several hundred films and videogames in my time, but I’m really not sure I have the right vocab for appraising alcohol. So yes, it’s just a record, and hopefully a source of some useful info for other anglophone beer enthusiasts who might find themselves in need of a good brew while in Italy.

Anyway. We had this one last night, in the wonderfully named Oasi della Birra (“Oasis of Beer”) in Testaccio in Rome. It’s a pretty cool place, basically a shop that’s expanded sideways and crams in dining tables among the wares (which can give it a feeling of eating in a warehouse, though at least that’s novel). In all honestly, though, a better of oasis of Italian craft beers in Rome is still Open Baladin bar, for the simple reason it has dozens on tap, whereas the Oasi, disappointingly, only has German beers on tap. Go figure.

The Oasi does, however, have an extensive menu of bottle beers, and a fairly epic menu of wines. Why it’s not called the Oasi del Vino I don’t know. It also does a reasonable aperitivo buffet, where you can pile up a plate for a fraction of what a restaurant meal would cost you, that is €10 for a drink and a plateful. (The cost of eating out is something that continues to confuse me in Rome – restaurants, and even most trattorie, are not cheap. Broadly, the only cheap way to eat sitting down in an establishment is an aperitivo buffet. There don’t really seem to be many options half-way between, in terms of price, bar a few genuinely cheap trattorie, mostly outside touristy areas, or the occasional good tavola calda. This literally means “hot table”; wordreference.com translates it as either “cafeteria” or “hash house”, neither of which is quite right. The former makes me think of British caffs, the latter sounds like “crack house” or “opium den”. They’re places that are generally defined by seating and a glassed-in counter displaying various dishes you can select. Volpetti in Testaccio has a good one, but it’s overpriced. The yummiest I’ve tried food-wise is Pasta… e pasta on Via Ettore Rolli near Ponte Testaccio, but I don’t want to get into the habit of eating there there I have an ethical problem with the throwaway plastic plates, cutlery, cups etc. Every diner creates probably around 50g of waste with each meal. It might not sound like much, but imagine the pile after just one busy day, say, and think of all that plastic sitting in a landfill for millennia. It’s a waste of resources, full stop. I know food and catering is all about overheads but we just have to think more sustainably in the 21st century.)

Anyway. Back to the beer.

So last night I tried to get a Sally Brown, a lovely brown (yep) beer that I’ve had at Open Baladin. It’s from Birrificio del Ducato, and on their site here it’s described as Birra di alta fermentazione, a cavallo tra le oatmeal Stout e le Porter inglesi – “A top- fermentation beer that straddles the styles of oatmeal stout and English porters.” The Oasi, however, had run out. This seems to be a typical factor of drinking from the Oasi beer menu. They don’t generally have what’s on the tatty photocopy, but are always happy to give advice about an alternative. It’s a process I really enjoy actually, as it usually involves trying something new.

This time, that something new was, well, I couldn’t work out what it was called last night, so had to check online today and in my Guida alle birre d’Italian 2013. The 75ml bottle is very elegant, with a minimal design. But as I’d never encountered this beer or this brewery before, I wasn’t sure immediately what was what from the label. Now I know though. The brewery (birrificio) is called 32 Via Dei Birrai.

The blurb on the homepage of their site says: 32 Via dei Birrai è il primo micro birrificio artigianale italiano a ottenere la certificazione di qualità ISO 9001:2008 DNV e la certificazione CI, a testimonianza di un prodotto 100% Made in Italy. / Passione, per 32, significa infatti selezione di materie prime e accorti procedimenti che rendono onore al nome stesso di essere e fare birra. Which means: “32 Via dei Birrai is the first Italian micro bewery to obtain the certificate of quality ISO 9001:2008 DNV and the CI certificate, testimony to a product that’s 100% made in Italy. Indeed, passion, for 32, first and foremost means the choice of materials and a grasp of how to make beer that honours our name.” (I know I could just put my [not Google translate’s] English translation, but I like the two side-by-side, it helps me learn Italian. Plus, my translation is probably a bit shonky, so if you speak Italian and English, you can likely do it better.)

Anyway, 32’s beers. Atra is from a range of nine beers, most of which are made with top fermentation and bottle conditioned. Atra itself is, well, molto buono, as the waiter who recommended it said. But then he also said it’s non troppo forte, “not too strong”, when in fact it’s 7.3%ABV. I love how that’s not strong in Italy. In the UK, anything above about 5% is considered strong. To give some context to the Italian attitude to beer strength, Tennent’s Super is popular here, and that’s 9%. Apparently, it’s even considered kinda classy, as it was among the first import beers to make inroads here. The mind flippin’ boggles, as in Britain Tennent’s Super is basically a beer for alcoholic tramps on park benches. I’ll say now, so as not to confuse things, it’s popular among undiscerning Italian beer-drinkers, in much the same way as Fosters, say, is popular among British drinkers despite them having so many wonderful quality beers to choose from; hell, even if you like lager, you can choose a better lager… (I’m trying not to get started.)

Okay, Atra itself. It’s dark (“the colour of friars’ habits”), with a taste that’s charcoaly (ie from well-toasted malt) and surprisingly sweet. It’s very pleasant indeed. We had no idea whether it’s the done thing to drink such beers while eating, but it went very well with a plate of salads and cheese and salumi and bread. Indeed, now I’m reading the brewery’s own description, it seems like it’s fine to drink it with food. But as with wine culture, Italian micro-breweries are very specific in their descriptions of their beers and what to drink them with. So here it says, Abbinamento suggerito: contorni di lenticchie e fagioli, minestre con legumi, stinco con cotenna caramellata, torta al cioccolato, crème caramel, panna cotta. “Suggested accompaniment: lentils and bean sidedishes, vegetable soup, shin with browned bacon rind, chocolate tart, crème caramel, panna cotta [‘cooked cream’ desert].”

If you want a more in-depth appraisal, the Guida 2013 says it has scents of coffee, cocoa, liquorice and toasted cereal and a taste of barley coffee, cocoa and caramel. I’m not sure I got the liquorice, but I can’t argue with the rest. Delicious. And also remisicent of my friend Michele’s Cotta 74 from Mastri Birrai Umbri brewery, which I talked about here.

Hopefully next time we go to the Oasi, they’ll have more from 32 Via dei Birrai, as I’m keen to try the others. And I do like the design of the bottles. Especially now I know 32 is the abbreviation for the name of the brewery.

The second weekend of November, we visited the handsome Tuscan town of Lucca. Avoiding the storms then ravaging much of northern Italy, we dived into a restaurant. After several evenings drinking wine with my oenophile parents, I was pleased to see this place had some beer on the menu and, more specifically, some real, craft beers. I’ve got no time for the big name Italian lagers – ick – but the craft beer movement here is incredibly rich and dynamic.

In this case, the beers on offer were from a brewery in Lucca province: La Petrognola. A quick visit to their website gives some idea of what they’re about: “From the most ancient wheat known to man is born a new craft beer, with its own unique and unmistakable taste, like the land from where it was born.” Or words to that effect (Here’s the original if your Italian is better than mine: “Dal più antico frumento conosciuto dall’uomo nasce una nuova birra di produzione artigianale. Un gusto unico e inconfodibile proprio come la terra in cui nasce.”). It’s earthy. It’s steeped in history.

This got me thinking though. Can Italian beer be steeped in history? Surely the warm Med was always a wine region, whereas it was the cooler north of Europe that has a more solid history in beer and brewing. Well, yes and no. Beer, like most of Western culture, has its origins in the (warm) ancient Middle East. (I’m not going to comment on the irony of that region now being dominated by conventions that deny a healthy ongoing engagement with the culture of alcohol.) And like much of that ancient Middle Eastern culture, beer reached Europe, including Rome. In Rome, it was considered a “barbarian” drink. Now, it must be clarified that the word “barbarian” has its origins in a Latin, then Greek, then even Sanskrit word that alluded to stammering, or incomprehensible speech. So, for the ancient Romans, “barbarian” didn’t imply savage so much as foreign. Anyway, as the Roman empire was so massive it also naturally included territories where beer and mead were the everyday drinks though in Rome itself it was a peasant drink, cheaper than the cheapest wine.

So beer has been here in Italy for at least two millennia, though it’s not exactly been at the heart of culinary heritage. Today, many of new craft beers are tied into the more overt culinary heritage by the use of local, traditional ingredients. Of the Petragnola beers we drank in Lucca, one, for example uses 100% malted farro (that is, spelt; though specifically what strain of spelt I don’t know. Wheat taxonomy is a thorny, or perhaps beardy, subject I will tackle at some stage [EDIT: I have now done so, see this post]). Another uses sweet chestnuts. I’m really enjoying chestnut beers these days. Borgo brewery also does one. We ordered it in Oasi della Birra in Testaccio last night, but they didn’t have it – but what they did have instead was Petrognola one, Marron. It’s a smooth, sweet beer (not bitter) with wholesome body, a dark amber colour and a nice depth of flavour. It’s 6.5% ABV, so strong by UK standards, but not that strong by Italian standards.

Between these two sessions quaffing sweet chestnut beer, I’d paid a visit to Blighty. My father-in-law had got some decent beers in and among them was this Conker King. A conker, of course, is a horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) and – I didn’t realise this till now – not even in the same taxonomical order as the sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), despite the similarities in the seed and leaf forms. And indeed while the sweet chestnut is edible, the horse chestnut isn’t: it’s mildly toxic, though has traditionally had medical uses.

So while I enjoyed the superficial connection between all these chestnut beers, the Conker King does not contain chestnuts, sweet or horse. It’s named thus simply to evoke things Autumnal. The blurb on the Holsworthy Ales site says: “Conker King is an Autumnal Ale, the copper brown colour of falling leaves. Made using hops harvested in England, this brew is beautifully balanced and thirst quenching – just what you need after a hard day gathering conkers.” Like the Marron it has a lovely burnt amber colour, but it’s a more bitter beer, with a lower ABV: 3.9% ABV.

I’m very much enjoying the emergence of Holsworthy ales, as my family has a house there, in northwest Devon, and I’ve been visiting the area for more than a decade. According to the publican in Holsworthy’s best beer pub, CAMRA champ the Old Market Inn, it was was set up by a chap (Dave Slocombe) escaping London and an office job, whose passion for home brewing has grown into something commercial (though still on a craft scale). My 2013 Guida alle birre d’Italia says something similar about La Petrognola, which was set up by one Roberto Giannarelli, who had been homebrewing in his garage before setting up the brewery. Gotta love the craft beer movement, nuts and all.

(Apologies for the quality of the photos – all taken on rubbish phone.)

Category Archives: Ale, beer

32 Via Dei Birrai brewery’s Atra beer at Oasi della Birra

A Tale of Two Chestnuts

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