The 9 best craft beers from Italy to drink under the snow

Have you ever thought about preparing a Christmas lunch and then pairing only beers? Let’s try to make a game this year: no wine for Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year: we will uncork only the best Italian beers.

We will try to find the most enjoyable beers to pair with classic dishes such as tortellini, lasagna bolognese, passatelli, braised in beer, but also fish, appetizer and desserts.

There will be plenty of craft beers for all tastes, delicate light beers like pilsner and imperial stout, porter and obviously double IPA. From the simplest octopus salad with potatoes, you can also combine beer with dessert and chocolate cake.

The list of the best Italian craft beers that we offer is also an excellent opportunity to give Christmas gifts to your loved ones and friends. These beers are so good that you don’t have to be a beer hipster to like. Well, let’s not waste any more time talking and let’s beer!

My Antonia, Birra del Borgo

Let’s start with an incredible beer, an imperial pilsner of rare elegance, full of tropical and floral suggestions, endowed with grace and great drinkability, despite being full-bodied. Foam is a sea of ​​hoppy cream. If you are looking for an elegant beer to be uncorked for Christmas fish dishes, you’ve found it!

Quarantot beer from the Lambrate brewery

The Quarantot Beer is a mythical beer: a very clean double IPA with the right bitter touch and a lot of thickness. It is an alcoholic and structured beer, complex but never difficult. Perhaps a bit bulky due to the high gradation, but its charm is undeniable. The balance between bitter hops and the sweetness of the malt is inviting and leaves the palate always satisfied. Combine it with your best roasts, with elaborate fish dishes such as cream of cod with truffles and hazelnuts.

Chocolate Porter, Fabbrica delle Birra Perugia brewery

Birra Perugia’s chocolate porter is a ductile dark beer, soft but at the same time very fragrant. As you can imagine from the name it has been flavored with cocoa and this cocoa amplify all the earthy scents that create a beautiful symphony for the nose. In the mouth it is generous, but never too abrasive. Excellent for pairings with baked lasagna, cannelloni, well-seasoned pasta, but above all it is a perfect beer to combine with chocolate or all chocolate desserts such as Tiramisu, brownies, chocolate mousse, chocolate tart.

Wayan, Baladin brewery

The Wayan of Baladin is perhaps one of the most interesting beers of this famous Piedmontese brewery. The nose is a marvel: the aromas of spices alternate in rapid succession, offering citrus and ginger and a finale suggestion of pepper. In the mouth, it is bitter, fresh, of medium structure and very pleasant, with excellent persistence. It is a very extrovert beer, with marked perfumes, but it is never exaggerated and always credible. It wants to be particular, but not surprising at all costs. Excellent for pairing with cured meats or to enhance the sweetness of the prawns with its sharp ginger flavor. Pasta with shrimp sauce, chowder.

Killer Queen, Hammer brewery

The Killer Queen of the Hammer brewery is the best beer for fish dishes. You can pair it with spaghetti with clams, gnocchetti with lobster and vermouth, with simple skewers, but also the classic roasted eel. It has a sinuous but tough body, lots of tropical fruit and endless flowers. Mouth always tense, flavored, but well balanced. To combine with codfish and sarde in saor.

Perle ai porci, Birra del Borgo

A peculiar dark beer, Perle ai Porci is a lightly smoked and super salty Oyster Stout, thanks to the addition of oysters before final cooking. The result is a tasty beer, but much more delicate than one might think. Medium body, enveloping aromas, great elegance. To pair with Christmas roast beef.

American Ipa Canediguerra

American Ipa Canediguerra is an uncompromising beer, of great ambition, bitter, tasty, rich in pulp and a thousand flavors, but it is not an immediate beer. You need a palate accustomed to experimentation to enjoy this beer. The tropical flavors are iridescent, dart and intertwine and create a very subtle balance that comes and goes. However, it is a beer of undoubted quality and great breadth, a beer for the palates that dare. To combine with Piacenza anolini or tortellini in brodo. Splendid also for the salt of Cervia or the fish soup.

Nadèl, the Christmas beer from Valsenio Brewery

Could he miss the Christmas beer on a list of the best beers to drink under the snow? Of course not, and the legendary Davide of the Valsenio Brewery, in the heart of the Apennines has done an excellent job. It is a high fermentation beer, sweet and round, ample, with hints and flavors of dates and hazelnuts, with a fabulous persistence. The depth and the aromatic variety are excellent. Candied tones on the caramel driven finish. The bitterness is there and pushes right on the palate, but it’s never too aggressive. A tough and delicious beer with hints of honey to pair with meat, skewers, artichoke soufflé, beef pies.

Zona Cesarini, Toccalmatto brewery

Zona Cesarini is the beer that everyone should taste at least once in their life. It’s a marvel, poetry in the bottle. Elegant and pungent nose with a profusion of flowers, ginger, and orange peel are combined with more mature aromas of honey, nuts, and cardamom. If the nose is pure ecstasy in the mouth it is measured, precise, savory, with dense freshness and a lot of depth. The balance between the malt sweetness and the hop is perfect: a pendulum that oscillates with absolute precision. More than a beer, a myth. To pair with grilled fish, fish carbonara, paccheri stuffed with swordfish, mixed paella.

Alfredo Ravanetti