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 [...]

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 [...]

Yes, it sounds crazy. But genious too. All of you know (I hope) Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fa’ in Rome. A beacon of the craft beer quality in Rome and in Italy as a whole, great beers and huge coarse mood, 2010 Best Beer Pub of the world according to Ratbeer (whatever the meaning of these rankings, if they have a means). For the 10th Anniversary of the pub Manuele, Fabio and the stuff [...]

As I already wrote on some Italian blogs, what it sounds weird to me is that this initiative doesn’t come neither from an association nor from a group of professionals, but it is an idea of a single person, Andrea Turco, beer lover and author of the most followed Italian beer blog. Well, credit where credit is due…  better him than anyone. All in all this is not very crucial if this gives you the [...]

I cannot really say you have to be there if you can choose a beer festival to attend in Italy. It is very small and in the middle of nowhere. But if someday you attended it (and if it still existed, every year seems to be the last one), you would have to be there for the people and the mood more than for the beers. “Birre della merla” means beers of the blackbird in [...]