From today you may drink Birra di Modena at the Juta Cafe, Via Del Taglio, 91, It is one of the places most appreciated in Modena and is at the center of the movida of Piazza Pomposa!

It refers to a law issued by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria in 1516, the Prohibition of Substitutes (Der Surrogatverbot), which was only much later, in 1918, renamed the Law of Purity (die Reinheitsgebot). This appears on the labels of the majority of German beers, but the importance of the law has been exaggerated. It [...]

It is possible thanks to a loophole adopted soon after the proclamation of the law. Thus even the esteemed and law-abiding German brewers have followed our Italian saying of “as soon as the law is made, the tricky way around it has been found.” In 1516 Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria issued the Law of [...]

Brewdog, the iconoclastic brewery of Aberdeen, seems to have reached the apex of the politically correct with its beer in protest against climate change. It is called “Make the Earth Great Again” and is produced with water from melting polar icecaps. Please see the ANSA report indicated below. James Watt and Martin Dickie, Brewdog’s founders [...]

The Bierwärmer (beer-warmer) is an endearing little contraption that is a testimony to old people’s attachment to beer. Because they have digestive difficulties and intolerance for cold beverage and though beer is normally served at a moderate temperature of about 8° C in German establishments, they may ask the waiter for a Bierwärmer, a metallic [...]

In the American state of New York (NYS) recent legislation promotes breweries that use local ingredients. They are defined as farm breweries and within a year 60% of their ingredients (apart from water, so barley and hops) will have to come from NYS agriculture. The first producers of beer of around 2500 B.C. were farms [...]

Craft brewers in the United States and Great Britain have a predilection for bizarre brand names and for their various beers. They are very much in function of Anglo-Saxon humor, which runs from typical understatement to the farce along the lines of Monty Python and Groucho Marx. Their Italian confreres lack comical names, so we [...]

These two are often cited, and they lead to different considerations: 1) "Beer is the proof that God wants us to be happy." – Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first ambassador of the new republic to Paris, where he was known as a bon vivant. This is [...]

A:B = C:D, an equation viewed from Maranello in the province of Modena A) Craft beer is to B) Industrial beer as C) A car produced by craftsmen in a basement workshop is to D) A Ferrari produced with its very high degree of industrialization

We recommend this article by Davide Bertelli which offers some keen reflections on the theoretical betrayal committed in the sale of Anchor Steam Beer to the Japanese “megagroup” Saporo. He underlines with irony how Anchor is a cult icon of draft beer when in fact it is a successful phenomenon of industry and marketing. In [...]