TOPIC:

I know I'm going to be in Italy's prime wine region and I have no doubt I'll try at least 1 or 2 wines, but I'm more interested in Italys great craft beer scene; especially seeing as they can't be bothered to export...

Anyone have any recommendations in the Milan or Torino area?

-I've visited the beer mapping project's site and there is an insane amount of selection, it's just a matter of knowing which would be the 2-3 most worth my time.

I really know very little about the breweries in Italy other than Le Baladin (Which is quite a ways south of Torino although I'm still tempted to go if I can convince my other half...).


(I'm going to scour the TBN blog travel archives now...)
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Adam

Not much about Italy from me. Go scour Knut Albert[/url:1h6j6k12] instead.

I found a nice place in Milan had very good beer selection, many craft beers from Italy, also from belgium etc, had cask OHaras stout even!

Was called BQ, and was on via Losanna (NW of Milano centre). Map here[/url:1yfmdg0r]

Hi, I was reading this forums because I'm planning a trip to Ireland, I saw your question and I wanted to help you, since I'm a big beer fan from the Milan-Turin area.

If you're in Milan you absolutely have to visit the "Birrificio Lambrate" Brewpub, in the centre of the city close to the Lambrate train station. It's a cosy wood-panelled pub, open Mon-Fri for lunch and dinner and Sat-Sun only for dinner: great atmosphere and very good brews, they concentrate on very clean and easy-drinking beers, like the "Magut" pilsner (it means bricklayer in Milanese dialect), the "Urtiga" pale ale, "Ligiera" amber ale and their famous "Ghisa" smoked stout. The pub gets really overcrowded in the evening, so my advice is to visit it at lunch or before 8PM.

There are many other places in the city and in the suburbs but since you asked for the 2-3 most worth I'll jump forward.

Another great brewpub in the Milan Area is the "Birrificio Italiano" in Lurago Marinone (Como province) about 20-30 mins by car north of Milan. It's more like a posh restaurant so if you want to dine you absolutely have to book in advance. This brewpub is renowed for its world-class pilsner, the "Tipopils", but also brews other excellent beers like the "Bibock" bock, a Weizen, a dunkelweizen, a more hoppy pils "Extra Hop", and two strange beers, only bottled, named "Cassisona" and "Scires", the former with blackcurrant and the latter with cherries. Both food and beers are a bit pricey.


The Turin area has a little few brewpubs but with great quality. Apart from Baladin which you already know, I suggest you the "Grado Plato" brewpub in Chieri. It's a quite big but quiet pub, restaurant and pizzeria, and the food is concentrated on snails. It may sound awful but I assure you that they are very tasty! The beers are quite good, I suggest you the "Sveva" pilsner and the "Spoon river" strong bitter, If you're lucky you'll find the "Sticher", inspired by the Düsseldorfer Sticke.

A brewpub in downtown Turin that I like is the "Piazza dei mestieri", with good food and good beers, I especially like the doppelbock and the Kölsch but all their beers are quite good.

In Turin there's another great brewery, "San Paolo", but they haven't a pub, so you can try to phone them and arrange a visit. There's another great brewery in Marentino, 20km east of Turin, it's called "Loverbeer" and focuses on wood-matured beers and experiments with wine.

In Turin, just outside the "Lingotto" (a former car factory now converted in a mall) there is "Eataly", a big (and expensive) food market that focuses on quality food; downstairs there is the wine and beer market and there you will find a lot of bottles from italian microbreweries! Unfortunately italian micros almost only use 0,75 L bottles so they may add much weight to your baggage. And they are extremely pricey.

South Turin, about 1h of driving, quite near Baladin in the Cuneo province, there are two interesting places.

The first is called "Birrificio Citabiunda" and is in the nice town of Neive. The brewer concentrates on spicy and sweet beers, they all are worth the detour and the food is very good as well.

The second is called "Open", is situated in Cinzano (in front of a massive Diageo factory) and comes from a joint-venture between Baladin, "Birra del Borgo" brewery (near Rome) and Eataly. It's a radical-etno-folk-chic pub that only serves italian beers (6 on draught and around 70 bottled). It's a bit biased towards Baladin and Borgo beers (how could it not be, in the country of the conflict of interests!) but you'll find a good selection of beers from brewers from any part of the country.

If you wanted 2-3 places I think this is enough <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->
Plan carefully your visit and check the opening times since 99% of pubs and brewpubs in Italy only open in the evening. You may visit my website[/url:1dz6lydc], it's in Italian but it's just a list of pubs, micros and brewpubs in Italy, with POIs, addresses, phone no.s, opening hours, and so on.


Have a nice trip! <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

Wow! Thanks Mr. Chiodi!

I could not regret not checking back here more. I didn't get this message until I got back.

I did make it to Birrificio Lambrate and tried the Magut (that my wife ordered), Urtiga, Ligiera, a full ping of Ghisa, and a taste of the weiss beer. After a few questions to the owner, he sent the brewer (Stephano) over. Stephano had recently been in Chicago and finished an internship with Bells in Michigan, he gave me a quick, personal tour of the brewery as he had a break while the wort ran through the whirlpool.

They have WAY more capacity than the size of the brewpub would indicate and you can just tell that the owner is obsessed with quality and high-end brewing gadgets. Great partial vacuum boiler (1000 L capacity, if I remember right, high levels of automation, a separate yeast propagator, lots of fermenter space, seems like way more and way higher end brewing kit than is needed but it was REALLY cool. All Weyermeyer malt and Servomyces yeast nutrient (not cheap). -They seem to have adopted the best ingredients, equipment, and techniques from Germany and the US.

Stephano was pure BEER GEEK and he was super enthusiastic just talking about brewing and craft beer including wanting some more information about the craft brewing scene in Ireland. (He's been here a couple of times to Porterhouse and remembers "a small brewery from Western Ireland that only brews a single beer (Galway Hooker)" -I told him about the Great Irish Beer Festival so maybe we'll see him next year. <!-- s;-) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s;-) --> (Stephano is also the brewer at Birrificio Italia that you recommended.)


That was unfortunately, about the ONLY beer-related part of the trip that went well.

I drove out to the Baladin brewery (the guy owns half of the village; lol!) really cool to see it and the locals playing cards under the trees in the heat, but it was unfortunately closed when I arrived. (2 other cars full of beer hunters showed up in the parking lot confused about it being closed, too.)

When back in Milan I tried making it to Isolla Della Birra before my fligth back home (hoping to track down some Baladin beers) but it was also closed.


In summary, if Italy DOES happen to have some of the best craft beers around, they certainly keep it a secret and seem to want to keep it that way. No posted open hours (even on websites), very few off-licenses from which to purchase Italian craft beer, all make beer hunting that much more difficult. (The cost when you can actually find them doesn't help much either.)

I did get to try Baladin's Saison while in Barcelona and was impressed, just not 20 Euro impressed... (I was 10 Euro impressed, though). <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->


I'm going to break down and import a bunch of Italian stuff from one of the European speciality web-based stores at some point, though.


I'm sure that if I had read Mr Chiodi's message, I would've found it easier going, though.



Adam

&amp;quot;Biertourist&amp;quot;:lggqwa95 wrote: I could not regret not checking back here more. .. I'm sure that if I had read Mr Chiodi's message, I would've found it easier going, though.[/quote:lggqwa95]
[img:lggqwa95]http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff91/IrishCraftBrewer/notify.png[/img:lggqwa95]

Shame about Baladin. If the bar in Rome[/url:lggqwa95] is anything to go by, I'd say the brewery is well impressive.