Birra Artigianale

People seldom visit Italy based on its reputation for world class beer. Wine perhaps, but not beer. In truth, however, Italy has a long history of beer brewing with mass market products such as Peroni and Moretti. Recently Italy has joined the world in a beer renaissance, following on the heels of the American microbrew revolution of the past two decades.

In the province of Lazio there are no fewer than 25 breweries. Most have opened since 2008 and there are three new ones in the first four months of 2013 alone! There are even three within a few miles of our house: Turan is 3 miles away in Bagnaia, Bai is 5 miles away in Southern Viterbo and Free Lions is 15 miles away in Tuscania. I like beer as much as the next person, so you can imagine my frustration when they announced that the Italian Beer Festival would be in Milan last February and inaccessible to me. And imagine my joy when they announced it would be coming to Rome for a 3 day run from 10-12 May! Thus, last Sunday found me boarding the train headed to beer heaven! The Italian Beer Festival was held at Atlantico, a short walk from the southern end of the Rome subway.

It featured no fewer than 22 microbreweries, but whose counting.

Admission was 8 euros and gettone (tokens) for tasting were one euro each. One gettoni got a 10cc taste while two gettone yielded 25cc. Given the number of options I settled on the small size and was happy that I did since most servers were overly generous and I was sipping half a beer at a time. I stopped by the booths for both Free Lions

and Turan and introduced myself in broken Italian. I have contact information for both and intend to hit them up with friends before we leave.

Turan debuted “Dry Hard”, a one-off batch made just for the festival. It wasn’t ready until Sunday, I was the second person at their booth and the first person outside of the brewers to give it a try – yummy! There were all styles of beer available as most birrificio had 4 or more on tap. Italians seem to gravitate toward doppia and tripels so there were many intense beers to sample. My standard operating procedure was to try something interesting, perhaps that wasn’t even available in a bottle or outside of the brewery and then to purchase something to bring home.

I am partial to dark beers, birra scura, so my haul includes mostly stouts with an occasional porter thrown in. I will be enjoying them for some time to come. As an added aside, I am part of a beer social network called Untappd. It was quite a thrill to add 4 new beers to their database including one from a brewery that they didn’t even have!