Final Thoughts From Como

I'm on a plane heading back to the US in the morning (which is to Oregonians 2am), and I'm beyond tired. Just to make sure I put a final period on things, let me revise briefly my comment yesterday about the German influence.

One of the most prominent breweries is Italiano, an old veteran and the main proponent of the German school. There and at other places, like Birrificio do Como which I visited today, they make real lagers in the German mode--decoction, proper lagering (at Como they do 4-8 weeks).

There are differences. Both Como and Lambrate (influenced by Italiano) make fruitier lagers, fermenting around 54 degrees. In Germany, it's almost as if they're allergic to esters (except in weizens, where the stoke them). I think Italians are used to strong flavors--I have been offered (and accepted!) about 46,000 cups of espresso--and so they don't strip their beers down, they adorn them.

Di Como is actually a brewpub, and the biggest in Italy. The talented brewer, Andrea Bravi, has an impressive kit to work with--including a sizable bank of tanks to age his lager. And for me, the stop was absolutely critical to try at least one chestnut beer. If Italians have anything solely theirs, it's chestnut beers. The species is in the same family as oak, and the nut, more starchy than oily, is similar to an acorn.

There is no style of chestnut beer, and the brewers all treat them differently. Bravi uses them in the mash. Once they've been roasted over a beech fire, they're ground into flour. It's dense stuff and gums up mashes, so he sticks with 20% and augments with chestnut honey. They contribute two things: a slight roasted-nut flavor (shocker, that), but also a silky viscosity, a bit like oats but gummier.

The pics:
1. Andrea Bravi
2. A view into fermentation from the pub.
3. Malthus is the name of the beer; in this photo, the helles (Marilyn, because it's blond) is flanked by chestnut beers.
4. My 46,001st espresso.

Parmesan Formaggio, Prosciutto, and Toccalmatto Birra

I hope you gathered that I'm in Parma now. This is one of the richest veins of brewing, with Ducato, Panil, and the place I visited today, Toccalmatto. Founded by Bruno Carilli four years ago, it has risen to that top layer of high-profile breweries (and thus came to my attention).

The more I see of Italian brewing, the more I see of three clear points of reference: Belgium, the US, and Germany. Of these, Germany is the least, expressing itself mainly as familiar styles--weizen, Kolsch, pils, and helles. From the US and Belgium, brewers borrow method. Like Belgium, Italy is bottle-based; breweries bottle condition their beer in warm rooms. (In the US, even when they do bottle condition, breweries rarely treat the process as a second fermentation that adds depth and character to the beer as they do in Belgium. And Italy.) However, Italian breweries hop their beers like Americans, and I'm not just talking dosage. They like lots of late--addition hops and dry-hops. (Belgians also often use sugar, which thins the beer and makes hops harsher and more violent. The Italians don't use sugar.)

Which brings us to Carilli. His first two beers were an American-style pale (Re Hop, or hop king) and a saison Sibilla). These are his two main tracks, but they blend in process. There's a third, smaller influence--England. His system looks more English than American and he's made a bitter and mild to boot.

In a lot of ways, toccalmatto looks pretty American in the surface. Scanning his line would bring nods of recognition from Portlanders. But the beers don't taste American. He uses US hops, but relies more heavily on Australia and New Zealand. A lot of people equate the "new world" strains, but as someone intimately familiar with American strains, I am here to tell you that that's just wrong. In Oceana, another saison, he gets a distinctive bergamot flavor--more Asian than American. I also picked up a flavor I couldn't adequately explain in several of the beers--my inadequate description is mint--but definitely nothing that comes from US hops.

He's got a barrel-aging program and here too there are differences. No bourbon; instead, rum, Scotch whisky (Caol Ila), and of course Italian wine barrels. He's aged a barleywine in the whisky barrels (Stray Dog) and it is spectacular.

I could say a lot more about Bruno, but it's near the end of my trip (home Monday), and I'm running out of gas. How's this: great beer, not exactly like anything out there, and you have to come to Europe to drink it (for now).

The pics, with captions.

1. Bruno at a fermenter.
2. Ancient rum barrels.
3. The filter that often doubles as a hopback.
4. A few of the beers.

From the Mind of Teo Musso

Baladin today. If you've heard of Italian beer at all, you may have heard of Baladin. The man heading the show is Teo Musso and, imagine in your mind the charisma of Sam Calagione, the pioneering stature of Ken Grossman, and throw in a huge dash of creative ferment, and that's Musso.

Teo entered the beer biz in his native Piozzo (less than a thousand souls) back in 1986 when he opened a pub with 200 types of beer (bottles, largely). This is pretty remarkable--even now, beer is a very niche thing. Yet there, in the remote (but spectacularly beautiful) corner of Piedmont, the townsfolk of Piozzo were drinking some of the world's finest beers. Over time, Musso began talking to Belgian brewers about starting his own venture, and with some converted dairy equipment, he launched his brewery in 1996.

But it was more than a brewery. It was an integrated expression of Teo's vision: he designed the distinctive fonts and artwork and even the unique bottles--from the start (now Italy easily leads the world in cool bottle shapes). He had the vision of a circus, more medieval Italian than creepy clowns, and that's how the original pub is decorated. The used to have a tent over a courtyard to the side of the building, but as they expanded and grew, they had to put in a permanent roof--but Musso designed it to look like a tent.

He continued to add components like Casa Baladin, the hotel I stayed in last night (and paid for, full disclosure), and Open Baladin, pubs that recall Musso's first, with dozens of Italian craft beers available. (When he open his brewery in 1996, he only sold Baladin "a huge mistake," he said--it cost him 60% of his business.)

Eventually he built a production brewery down the hill from Piozzo (which has all the artistic flourishes you see in all his buildings). He has a barrel-aging project going on, also using wine barrels like LoverBeer, but liquor barrels as well. He has dabbled with exotic ingredients and was committed to food pairings from the start. In fact, one of his early marketing strategies was to deliver beer to restaurants he admired unbidden, asking them to see what people thought. (Apparently more than a few went straight tithe chefs' stomachs.)

His most amazing project is just under way: agriculture. Musso bought over 200 acres of land for grains (mostly, but not exclusively, barley) and two separate fields for hops. Ten American varieties at one site, and Mittelfruh and Hersbrucker in the other. They are definitely the first hops in the country, and if grain production and malting happen in Italy, none of the brewers I've talked to use local malt.

When I left, Teo offered me any beers I wanted. Suitcases being a confounding limitation, I confined the haul to two, and the one I was most interested in was Nazionale, a 100% Italian-sourced beer.

The photos require a bit of explanation:

1. Example of Teo's strange ways: he's experimenting with music and fermentation. Using speakers suctioned to the side of fermenters, he pumps music in, thinking the vibrations will affect yeast activity. It's not a joke, either; he hired a sound engineer and is doing experiments with different kinds of music.
2. Teo and his Mom--they live just two blocks from the pub and the old, now converted, chicken coop is where Teo does some barrel-aging.
3. The pub
4. When we were at his parent's house trying some beer from barrels, Teo started rooting around behind the family tractor. After awhile, he pulled out an experimental ten-year old bottle of beer made with local grapes. A while later he went back in and found another! (If you're ever in Piozzo, look in dark corners--you never know, maybe Teo has squirreled away some beer there.)

Mr Toad's Wild Italian Brewery Ride

Note: post cleaned up slightly. (iPhones are hard.)

I have been in Italy 26 hours and have visited two breweries in two towns and am now at location three, ready for a morning chat with Teo Musso at Baladin. I did Lambrate no justice last night, and I worry that that's going to be par for the course. Let's see if we can't do a little remedial work.

Lambrate
Italian craft brewing started in the relatively recent year of 1996, when five different enterprising spirits started breweries--including Lambrate (and Baladin, too). It was a modest joint venture of three friends which later grew to five, starting with a 1.5 hecto system (that's a barrel and change--glorified home-brewing). They put the brewery in a bustling part of Milano called Lambrate, and next to the brewery was a gorgeous little pub.

Over the years, the system went in increments to 5, 10, and its current size of 20 hectos. They moved the brewery out of the pub and into a neighboring space. Following this pattern, every time they grew, they found another chunk of space in one of the buildings. Now it's a honeycomb with the malt room here, the brewery there, the office upstairs, the lab down the way. (The rooms are joined by courtyards, which makes the whole thing actually *look* charming as hell--though probably the brewers curse.)

They make American inflected ales and lagers that are fruitier and stronger than their northern neighbors (except the helles, which is very much in the Fort George 1811 mode--in other words, not a helles). America has a substantial influence here, not just in hop varieties, but intensity. (America, which came to craft brewing long after we'd lost the memory of characterful diversity, is analogous. There's no "Italian" style of beer and no customer expectation, so they can just follow their bliss.)

The final piece is that from the start, the folks behind Lambrate wanted their beer to be drunk with food. Their little pub couldn't really meet that goal, so last year they opened a restaurant where the beer and food can be showcased. The beers came first, so the chefs have to build the menu around them.

There were some real standout beers. My favorite was Gaina (guy EEN ah, I think), a pale ale that used American hops to create the fruitiest, non-fruit beer I ever had. Strawberries and apricots, but they fade into more recognizable hoppy bitterness at the swallow. They do an imperial porter/stout made with smoke malt that is versatile with the menus (meat and porcini mushrooms dance with it gracefully). The helles, too, is a fantastic session.

LoverBeer
From Milano, I drove toward Marentino to the southwest (near Torino), skirting the spine of the Alps. (The green rolling plains look, at a distance, like West Bengal and the white Alps, which shoot up vertically, like the blade of a serrated knife, look positively Himalayan. Stunning.) Morentino is less a town than a slightly more congested part of the countryside, and LoverBeer is tucked into a house along a row looking out over grape yards.

But inside that house, Loverier (from which the brewery takes its un-Italian name) is making wild ales, including one with a very Italian provenance. It's called BeerBera, another play on words, and refers to Barbera grapes (which actually grow down the road 50 (?) kilometers, not across from it. The novelty is so obvious it seems like this should be more common: he inoculates his wort solely with fresh, yeast-covered grapes. And not just a few; they make up 30% of the sugars.

Loverier makes only soured beer. He invested in two substantial wooden fermenter/aging vessels (17 hectos) made by a cooper nearby who usually sells them to wineries. He has cultivated a native population of yeasts in there (all four--brett, pedio, lacto, and regular sachharomyces), and a lot of his beer spends some time on that wood picking up some character. But he also sometimes pitches regular yeast first or, in one case, uses wild yeasts from Wyeast. (Obviously, I immediately pointed out it was from Oregon.)

His range includes an amber, a non-spontaneous version with Barbera grapes, an Oud bruin, and one of my favorites, a fantastic sour made with local wild plums (golf-ball-sized). They have such a short window of ripeness that you actually have to pick them off the ground. It captures the ripe aromas and flavors so well I think I would recognize the fruit if I ever found a fresh one rolling away from a tree.

All his beers are characterized by a light tartness--even though none spend less than several months ripening (a three-year vintage is in the works; 16 months or thereabouts is typical). The BeerBera is amazingly wine-like, though the varietal is specific and unfamiliar to me. Halfway between satsuma and strawberry. Absolutely unlike any beer I've tasted.

I was hugely impressed with what Valter was doing. His beers definitely achieves a character that puts his beers among the most accomplished in the world. (He's been experimenting with wild yeasts a decade, but the brewery was only founded in 2009.)

The business model is a work in progress. Sixty percent of the beers come the the US (though not to Oregon that I've seen)--but on his ten hecto set-up and with the huge aging time, he can't be making even 500 hl a year (I stupidly forgot to ask) His wife, the money part of the business, confessed that they see back less than five bucks on a $20 bottle. But obviously, as long as they're committed to this kind of beer, they have to sell it for a premium. (Wish I had some scintillating advice for them.)

After I left Valter, headed further south to gorgeous little Piozzo, and after that I'm off to Bussetto to see Birricio del Ducato. The sprint continues....

In Lambrate

I don't want to make an assumption about the entire country based on one brewery, but man, Lambrate was sweet. Brewery sprawls across several buildings in charming Milano, and the pubs had that extraordinary energy that makes you want to be in them. But I was corrected when I complimented Milan. "It's Lambrate, not Milano," they said. (Lambrate, like St Johns, is a neighborhood.)

Program Note: European Blogging

On Saturday, I head back to Europe for round two of research for the Beer Bible.  Internet permitting, I'll be posting every day.  Probably not a lot more than a photo and brief description of where I am and what I saw, but at least that.  Here's the itinerary:

Sun-Mon, Oct 14-15: Dusseldorf
Tues-Wed, Oct 16-17, Köln
Thurs, Oct 18, Kelheim 
Fri-Sun, Oct 19-21, Bamberg and Franconia
Mon-Wed, Oct 22-24, Munich
Thu-Fri, Oct 25-26,Plzeň (Pilsen)
Sat, Oct 27 České Budějovice (Budweis)
Sun-Tues, Oct 28-30, Prague
Wed, Oct 31, Milan
Thu, Nov 1, Piozzo (near Birrificio Baladin)
Fri, Nov 2, Busseto (near Birrificio Del Ducato)
Sat, Nov 3, Fidenza (near Birra Toccalmatto)
Sun, Nov 4, Tradate (near Il Birrificio di Como)

Those are the places I'll be laying my head; with travel, I'll be spending less time in some of them than it looks (I really only have a day in Plzeň, for example, and two in Prague). 

Last year I focused very heavily on scheduled brewery tours (I averaged one a day).  It's going to be a bit more leisurely this year--14 scheduled tours in 22 days.  I am looking forward to every stop on the tour, but there are three places that I expect will hugely deepen my understanding of the beer world.  Franconia (#3 on the map) is a region studded with small brewpubs that Americans have never heard of (unless they read certain blogs).  I am especially keen to try ungespundet bier--German cask ale.

In Prague, I will rendezvous with the best guide the city has--the man who literally wrote the book on Prague's beer.  (My copy is already in the suitcase.)  Max is going to give me an insider's view, one that will be hugely useful when I sit down to write about světlý ležák and tmavé vycepni. 

Finally, Italy is on the cutting edge of European craft brewing--an edge that cuts further south every year--and it will be fascinating to see what they're up to.  Spontaneous fermentation, chestnuts, and gastronomic beers are apparently in the offing, but I'll tromp around and see for myself.

I will try to post on the various other social media--Twitter, my Beer Bible Tumblr page--but I'll use this blog as my first line of communication.  Keep reading--

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Postscript.   Last year I toted a bunch of beer with me so that, when I came to the end of a tour, I could make an offering from the homeland.  I wanted the brewers to know how much I appreciated their time and effort.  This year, I've serendipitously scheduled the trip during fresh hop season, and I'll be taking some Deschutes Hop Trip and Killers (Red and Green) from Double Mountain--among other non-fresh-hop beers. It pleases me greatly to think of spreading this bounty.  And of course, the space I clear out by emptying the suitcase of beer is ideal for replenishing.