Birra

Most people associate Italy with wine but in fact a lot of beer is consumed here. Years ago Italians consumed wine with their pizza, today most have pizza and a beer. Wine remains a staple of most home meals and of food in restaurants but there has always been a mix of beverages available. There have always been Italians who drink no alcohol and some who prefer soft drinks to wine or beer.

A typical Italian grocery will devote as much shelf space to beer product as to wine. In both cases that is very ample space. Most Italian beers resemble most popular American or European beers, being very mild flavored lagers. A brand popular here, and also available in the US, is Nastro Azzuro or literally Blue Ribbon. A few American brews are available here, most commonly Budweiser (American brewed and imported) and a few micro brewery types. Not surprisingly, Northern European beers are popular the largest selling being Heineken, Beck's and Stella Artois.

What is also available here are Europeans ales and other more full bodied and higher alcohol content beers. My favorites, and very popular here, but never as popular as the Heineken type, are: Trappistes Rochefort 8 and Duvel. The Trappistes beer is brewed in a Belgian monastery and also available with the numbers 6 or 10. The number are not directly related to their alcohol content but do correspond to rising alcohol contents of 7.5%, 9.2% and 11.3%. These are beers that start to have wine like alcohol contents. I usually drink 8 because 10 is not always available and 6 has a similar but more watery taste than 8. I understand that 6 is hard to find in the US but here it seems to be always available and 10 is difficult to find. Rochefort 8 is a full flavored beer that is a joy to drink. Because of its full body I never seem to want to drink as much of it as I would a more watery beer which is probably a good thing considering the 9.2% alcohol content. If you have never tried it, I highly recommend trying one.

When I want a change or when we are having pizza, I drink some Duvel beer, another Belgian ale but this one more like a typical mainline beer. It has an alcohol content of 8.5% and a taste much more like an American beer than the Trappistes Rochefort. It is not a light beer but resembles American beer before light beer became the dominant type. Duvel is a great pizza beer where the Trappistes beers are, in my opinion, too flavorful to accompany pizza. Duvel is stocked pretty much everywhere in Italy, and Europe, but is outside of the popular beer base of the like of Heineken. Duvel's lighter taste makes it easy to drink in large quantity, so you have to beware of its alcohol content.

While these are my favorites, the good news is that most grocery stores stock a pretty full range of Northern European Ales, mostly from small specialty producers. The Belgian, Dutch and Flemish breweries produce some remarkable ales that always surprise me. If you come to Europe on vacation you should not miss the opportunity to try a few.