I said enough about Birre della Merla last year: check here. Small but true, no tricks, just real beer lovers, winter temperature and strong beers. It will be held in the same place, Locanda del Grue in Sarezzano just along the main road to Montegioco, from Friday, January 27 at 9 p.m until Sunday, January 29 at 2 p.m. Five breweries: Birrificio Montegioco (of course), Troll, Orso Verde, Bi-Du and Extraomnes. A laboratory about cold cuts and beers and [...]

During these days this domain is expiring and I was wondering if it worths to keep on subscribing the fee since I let it agonize without posting. There was several problems. The first one is that, as the most of you (hopefully, we are living  troublesome times), I have a job that makes me short of time for this enjoyable things. The second one, the hardest for me, is that I am Italian and I like [...]

This blog started as an experiment for me and seemed not to have a very long life. First of all I am lazy, also English is a hurdle, it doubles the time and halves my forcefulness. I was quite curious to understand how much interest there is abroad about Italian beer scene and I still do not have an answer, the experiment lasted too little and the traffic on the site was still skimpy. Anyway, [...]

As the British experience teaches, Free Houses are the skeleton on which a country can build a genuine and widespread quality beer movement. Beyond bottles, the most part of beer consumption comes from taps. And In Italy the problem is particularly serious since almost all the installations inside pubs are borrowed from distributors or multinational beer companies, extremely narrowing the offer to consumers and the potential market of small breweries. In this contest United Indi [...]

Part #3 of the interview here. (Stefano) – I really enjoy beer competitions and I think they are a very useful instrument both for consumers and producers, especially when they are in conjunction with a beer festival. However, it always stroked me the two different approaches in beer classification followed by CAMRA and Brewers Association: while categories at GBBF are a few traditionally identified styles, at GABF there are been a continuous increment of style [...]

Part #2 of the interview here. (Stefano) – Italian beers are often not fully identifiable with a style and sometimes not even with a single tradition. An extensive range of creative ingredients (often local) and procedures are used to realize innovative products, generally paying attention to the final balance. Living in a wine country without an historical beer background makes Italian brewers free to experiment and construct excellent beer, even if someone is getting bored [...]