In Italy, a bar serves coffee and little beer - Italy part one

I arrived in Pisa very late and it was after midnight by the time we got to our hotel in San giuliano. After walking around the town looking in vain for some sign of life we gave up and went back to the hotel. The friendly guy behind the desk said he could sort us out with beer from the taps and I was introduced to my first Italian beer other than Nastro Azzurro and Peroni. This was from Birra Moretti and it was called La Rossa. At over 7% it was quite strong and not knowing anything about it I was very surprised to taste it. It tasted like a bock to me at the time and on further investigation it seems it is a dopplebock. I had no notes or camera as I figured I could get it again and take notes, sadly this little hotel was the only place that stocked it until I found one place in Rome but never got a chance to go in for a drink. What I remember was that it was a very lovely beer with a hint of sherbet fizziness but not enough to put me off.

The next day I did the sightseeing thing and saw the leaning tower before picking up the rental car and driving to Florence.

Florence was fantastic, lots of great restaurants and bars but it became pretty obvious at this point that a bar in Italy is a café and they usually only have one beer on tap and if you are lucky a few bottles, most of which are not Italian beer. I can not recommend Florence enough for the food though.

It was in Florence that I had my first normal Birra Moretti. As lagers go, this was pretty tasty. There is not a whole lot to it but there is a nice malty base and enough bitterness to balance it. I had it in bottle and on draught and the draught was better I thought. A good thirst quencher if nothing else is available other than peroni and Nastro Azzurro.


There were a few times when having Italian beer was a little boring because the sheer lack of it was a little depressing. A lot of places had bottles of Heineken and other muck like that but a I saw a few of these Ceres Strong ales and decided to give it a go.
It is 7.7 % so the strongest beer in Italy so far It has a strong malty base with fruity alcohol and a fruity bitterness, though what fruit I can not guess. It is tasty enough but nothing special, it does make a nice change to Italian lager though, even if this is more a strong lager than an ale. It does not seem to be listed on their website so seems to be mainly exported to Italy and probably some other countries too.

I am going to hold my hands up and say I was ill prepared for this trip in terms of beer. The biggest mistake was not printing out directions and addresses for places to go. I figured I could just get on the internet and find places once I had my bearings, unfortunately there is little to no free wi-fi in many of the places I was. As a result, I left Florence with very little to remember about the beer, even though I know there is at least one brewpub there and went to Rome. The other thing is that since I was not on my own I could not concentrate on beer tourism. I was with my mother and brother in law as well as my wife's aunt so it was old fashioned tourism all the way.

In Rome I found the same thing I did in Florence, bars everywhere but little to no beer and little in the way of Italian craft beer.

After finishing up at the Colosseum we found a nice restaurant nearby and I found this German wheat beer called Oberdorfer and was pleasandtly surprised to find it came in brown swingtops. Between myself and my wife we had 4 of them and I took the bottles home for homebrewing. The beer itself was a very respectable heffeweisse. The usual banana/clove thing was going on. There does not seem to be a website for the brewer so I am thinking it is a pretty small operation. If anyone knows then let me know so I can link up to it.


On my last full day in Rome (leave the next morning) I got a little breather, while everyone else went gift shopping, I had an hour to find some beer. I was in what is probably the biggest shopping area in Rome given that all the large names such as gucci, armani etc are all located here. I was hopeful for something and eventually I found what looked like a wine bar but had a long sit down bar (not normal for Italy I found) so I went in and found they had a few extra beers than the normal stuff. I had a pint of Hopfweisse hoping it was hopfenweisse but alas it was not. I am not sure which Hopf beer it was as it did not say but it was probably this one. I can not say for certain if it is but I did not enjoy it. It was not a typical weisse beer, little in the way of sweetness or banana/clove. It was actually rather bitter and it just seemed wrong.

The bar also had London pride on tap, I avoided temptation as I can get it any time in bottle at home.

So that is it for part one of my Italian trip and you might be thinking that I just said it was my last day in Rome? Well that evening, once all the tourist stuff was done deserves its own blog post.