Craft beer and fine dining pair up in Italy

By Evan Rail

International Herald Tribune

TURIN: Halfway through our six-course tasting menu of regional
Piemontese cuisine, the sommelier arrived with a special beverage to
accompany the plate of raviolini stuffed with local pumpkin and
asparagus.

"I think this will go well, because it matches the sweetness of the
pumpkin," he said, setting down a glass not of wine, but of a slightly
oxidized golden ale, which, he explained, had been fermented with wine
yeast and had spent four years aging in the bottle.

A cold beer might seem like a strange pairing for traditional Italian
cuisine, especially in the heart of wine-loving Piedmont, but the entire
meal that night was based on local brews, and the sommelier himself was
Teo Musso, a brew master with near rock star status in the Italian
culinary scene. Through his artful small brewery, Le Baladin, Musso has
helped bridge the worlds of craft beer and fine dining, ensuring that
fine beers have a large presence in Eataly, Turin's high-end
supermarket, and founding his own beer-themed restaurant and hotel, Casa
Baladin, where my wife and I stayed one night this spring.

"I want people to think of my beer as something that belongs on a table
in a good restaurant," Musso said. "I do not want them to think of it as
something from the pub."

If fact, it would be hard to mistake Musso's creations for pub pints:
beyond the wild flavors, most of his beers are available only in
custom-shaped wine bottles, many of which sell in shops for around
EUR 30, or about $38.

But Baladin is hardly alone: Around Italy, a craft beer scene has sprung
up, bringing well-made specialty brews into haute cuisine dining rooms
and elevating the fare served in brew pubs, creating an attractive
destination for beer lovers who also love great food.

"Italian brewers have done a wonderful job of making it clear that they
are the same sort of artisans as chefs and others involved in food,"
said Stan Hieronymus, the author of "Brew Like a Monk." My wife and I
decided to make a five-day road trip to see what the fuss was all about,
focusing on two regions with growing reputations in the beer world:
Piedmont and Lombardy. Most travelers would probably want to start in
Milan, the heart of Lombardy's beer scene, though for our purposes it
was easier to drive via Munich, through Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Our first brew pub, Birrificio Italiano, was in Lurago Marinone. The
pub's legendary beers had brought tourists from around the world to the
glorious Alpine foothills minutes from the shore of Lake Como. We
celebrated our arrival with a couple of the brewery's pilsner-style
beers, a ubiquitous, often-overlooked style that Birrificio Italiano's
brew master, Agostino Arioli, has attempted to redeem with hoppier, more
flavorful versions, traveling to Germany to select his own hops.

As we sipped our lagers, commenting on their vibrant bitterness, our
appetizers arrived: a plate of poppy-seed toast with rich toma cheese
and a sticky, gooey beer jelly, accompanied by a glass of the brewery's
Scires, a wine-like strong ale flavored with local cherries. Our main
courses quickly followed: a thick pork chop, and scottata alla piastra,
a plate of paper-thin grilled pork fillets, both of which were marinated
in the brewery's malty Bibock ale, which made an excellent
accompaniment.

Milan might be best known as Italy's fashion capital, but it has a
growing reputation for beer lovers, in part owing to what's said to be
the city's first brew pub, Lambrate.

"When we started 12 years ago, the quality of Italian beer was fairly
low," said its brew master, Fabio Brocca, pouring a pint of Lambrate's
Ghisa smoked stout. "But that meant that people were free to pursue
their wishes to make whatever they wanted. And little by little, the
beer got a lot better."

A lot better indeed. The 180-degree opposite of the gassy, golden lagers
that dominate Italy's industrial beer production, my pint of Ghisa was
hefty and malty with a clean, dry finish followed by a lingering smoky
note. Like all of the beers from Birrificio Lambrate, it was impressive,
though the beer selection was overshadowed by the bar's happy hour
spread, which made for a festive atmosphere. I couldn't help but notice
how different the crowd was from the stodgy beer fans in countries like
England: the crowd at Lambrate displayed multiple piercings and tattoos.

The next day, I found similarly young and edgy beer fans in Milan going
through the wares at A Tutta Birra, a shop with hundreds of bottles,
glasses, lamps and other beer paraphernalia from around the world.

"Most of our customers are interested in beers of the highest quality,
like those from Belgium," said Vittorio Panzeri, who owns the shop with
his wife, Flavia Nasini. "About 30 or 40 percent are more interested in
Italian craft beers."

That day we drove west from Milan to the gently rolling foothills of
Piedmont. We stopped for lunch in Bra, at the celebrated Slow Food
restaurant L'Osteria del Boccondivino. Fortified with a simple but
elegant two-course lunch of chicken with aceto balsamico and fusilli
with ragù, we moved on to the village of Chieri, near Turin, where we
found our next brewery, Birrificio Grado Plato.

While the beer-friendly menu includes simpler dishes like pizzas and
pastas, local escargots are the big draw, which we tried first stuffed
in fresh ravioli with tomato sauce, paired with the brewery's Sticher. A
play on Düsseldorf's Sticke beer, a strong version of the old-fashioned
Altbier, the Sticher was slightly sour and sweet, pairing perfectly with
the hearty pasta and rich sauce. In a second version, the snails were
sautéed and topped with white cheese, radicchio and baby lettuce
leaves. With them I drank the brewery's Spoon River ale, brewed with an
American hop variety, Cascade, with a much more subtle hop bouquet than
many Cascade beers.

For dessert, we shared a vanilla gelato, strikingly sweet, gently
aromatic and topped with fragrant mugolio, a syrup made from the buds of
pine trees. That would have been remarkable enough, but it was
overshadowed by an accompanying dark beer: Chocarrubica, a thick black
stout brewed from chocolate malt and a prodigious amount of oats, as
well as real Venezuelan cocoa beans and Sicilian carob.

But when it came to beer in the place of wine, nothing quite compared
with our final night at Casa Baladin in Piozzo, a village celebrated for
its annual pumpkin festival and the Baladin brew pub. Across from the
brew pub was Casa Baladin, a new hotel and restaurant, where the
wine-free dinner started off with an aperitif of Baladin's own hard
cider.

The intimate dining room felt filled to capacity with just 14 guests,
all of whom seemed quite enthralled by Baladin's beers, as well as the
presence of the brew master-by-way-of-sommelier, Musso. A celebrity in
gastronomic circles Musso chatted with guests about the dinner and his
chosen beverages, most of which were limited editions, and not available
anywhere else.

"I find that, for me, beer has become a great beverage for pairing with
food," Musso said, introducing one of his brews that, he added, "had
never been put on the market" as the accompaniment for a fillet of wild
boar, seared in Cognac and served with a spicy, ginger-scented chutney.
A variation on his renowned Xyauyù barley wine, the beer had a sticky,
glass-coating viscosity and notes of clover honey, peaches, as well as
black tea and lemon peel in the finish, and it seemed almost
custom-tailored to the flavors of the chutney, a rich complexity shared
by all of the beers that evening.

It turned out to be quite different from any beer-flavored evening I'd
ever encountered.

On 2008-11-05, Victor Sack > wrote:
> Craft beer and fine dining pair up in Italy
>
> By Evan Rail

> oxidized golden ale, which, he explained, had been fermented with wine
> yeast and had spent four years aging in the bottle.

Oxidized beer is a major no-no, not a tasting note. It gives beer a flat
cardboard taste that is quite horrid. As for using wine yeast, again not a
direction I'd want to explore. Some decent beers use champagne yeast, but
wine and beer yeast are quite different.

> their wishes to make whatever they wanted. And little by little, the
> beer got a lot better."

Let's hope so. Italian beers have, for the most part, been abysmal. They
could only get better.


> how different the crowd was from the stodgy beer fans in countries like
> England: the crowd at Lambrate displayed multiple piercings and tattoos.

Totally bizarre statement. Italy can only wish its beer will rise to the
level of great traditional British beers.


It's good to see Italy trying to brew better beer. Heavy red sauced dishes
like pizza are perfect with a great hoppy ale.


Thanks for the article, Victor. I'll save it and look to see if some of
these new Italian craft beer brands are being exported to the USA.

nb

notbob wrote:

>> their wishes to make whatever they wanted. And little by little, the
>> beer got a lot better."

> Let's hope so. Italian beers have, for the most part, been abysmal.
> They could only get better.

That was true until circa 1995, then these microbreweries started popping up
in all north and then centre of Italy. Le Baladin, for example, is nowadays
available in all the nation and it kept up with the initial high quality.
Normal 75cl bottles cost around 8 euros, the 30 euros ones are the fanciest
stuff.

>> how different the crowd was from the stodgy beer fans in countries
>> like England: the crowd at Lambrate displayed multiple piercings and
>> tattoos.

> Totally bizarre statement. Italy can only wish its beer will rise to
> the level of great traditional British beers.

I agree: who cares for piercings and tattoos? I don't think that represents
the average italian beer-lover.
As for "British"... Sorry, we aim higher than that
Belgium styles are the most seeked in nowadays italian breweries.

> It's good to see Italy trying to brew better beer. Heavy red sauced
> dishes like pizza are perfect with a great hoppy ale.

I love hop beer, recently I had a Le Baladin "super" with a pizza margehrita
with added gorgonzola, it was wonderful. And yesterday I drank a small
bottle of a belgian beer which scores 13% alcohol, damn it was good, with an
incredible intensity and acidity, endless in the mouth. Its' a beer which
gets aged for one year in old barriques, a good match for a saucy fat dish
as "trippa alla parmigiana".

> Thanks for the article, Victor. I'll save it and look to see if some
> of these new Italian craft beer brands are being exported to the USA.

Probably Le Baladin gets exported, but I don't know the destinations. In you
happen to find something from Torrechiara give it a try: they're very good
brewers expecially on the pilsner/lager side. I toured theyr brewery a
couple of times, tasting theyr beers along with some salami and prosciutto,
and they're good. The brewery is near Parma, 30km from here.
The most renowned breweries in that article are Le Baladin and Birrificio
Lambrate, others aren't as outstanding as these two.
--
Vilco
Mai guardare Trailer park Boys senza
qualcosa da bere a portata di mano

Ice-cold beer goes good with anything, including ice cream and cake!
Try it.

notbob > wrote:

> Oxidized beer is a major no-no, not a tasting note. It gives beer a flat
> cardboard taste that is quite horrid.

Oxidation is usually a defect in most beers, but not in all of them. In
aged or vintage beers oxidation is to a certain extent inevitable and is
often considered a benefit. The beer is developing in a sherry-like
fashion and that is exactly what is happening with some of Le Baladin's
beers, such as their Xyauyù.

<http://www.bunitedint.com/portfolios/producers/birreria_baladin/xyauyu/overview.php>

<http://www.bunitedint.com/resources/sales_sheets/baladin.pdf>

<http://www.geaneys.com/beer/vintagebeer.htm>

<http://www.whitebeertravels.co.uk/italybrew.html#baladin>

<http://www.bjcp.org/study.php#trouble>
see "Sherry-like"

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012900725_pf.html>

<http://www.beertown.org/events/wbc/competition/reg_info/style_descr.html>
scroll down to "Aged Beer".

At <http://www.realbeer.com/library/beerbreak/archives/beerbreak20010308.php>
there is a quote from the lexicon in the late Michael Jackson's _Great
Beer Guide_:
"Madeira - Caused by oxidation. In very strong, bottle-conditioned beers
that have been aged many years, this will be in a pleasant balance. In
another type of beer, it is likely to be unpleasant."