What is this Italian brewery doing with cheese?
Matt Brady heads to Italy and discovers a special bond between an Italian brewery and its cheesemaker neighbour.
While its wine is arguably more famous, Italy's beer holds its own on the global stage too. The UK is familiar with brands such as Peroni and Birra Moretti, but there’s a now a lesser known name on the scene: Menabrea.
And it’s doing some very interesting things with its neighbouring cheesemaker.
Birra Menabrea
I visited the town of Biella, nestled amongst the rolling foothills of the Alps in northwest Italy. From the old town, elevated above the main spread of houses, you can see the mountains rising up to the sky. Some are still capped with snow from winter, though at this point in the year they are mostly stark rocky peaks.
Residing just below the first mountains is the Santuario di Oropa, an important spiritual retreat for Roman Catholics, and nearby flows the water which is used to make Menabrea beer. CEO Franco Thedy believes he is the only man in Italy who is creating beer with holy water!
The Alps seen from the old town of Biella
Franco Thedy on a tour of the brewery
Franco is the fifth generation of the family-owned business. Though not a Menabrea by name, he is a direct descendant; his grandfather Emilio married a daughter of the Menabrea family and later took over running the brewery.
Although it was founded in 1846, Menabrea only recent began exporting its blonde and amber varieties to the UK.
Unfortunately, the unpasteurised version available in its adjoining restaurant is not coming along for the ride. It’s astonishingly fresh, but won’t travel well due to its limited shelf life. If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Biella, be sure to try it.
Following samples of Menabrea's beers, it's time to find out more about the link between the brewery and the cheesemakers.
The bottling process in full swing
What are they working on together?
If you were to knock through the side of the brewery’s cellar (please don’t), you’d end up surrounded by the cork-covered walls and pinewood planks of Botalla’s cheese maturation facility. Here, 80,000 cheese forms are kept cool below the building, and every single one is checked and turned daily, with some washed on a weekly basis too. But you need a strong constitution to work down here.
One of Botalla's maturation cellars
It’s not just the lack of daylight that would get to you – as soon as you enter the cellar, the stench bursts into your nostrils and momentarily sends you reeling. Export officer Alessandra Vigliani, who is leading the tour of the underground vaults, says it took her a few months to get used to the environment.
If you have no sense of smell, and love food, cheesemaking could be the perfect career option.
Despite the challenging conditions, there’s some fantastically creative cheeses being made here, using cow, water buffalo and goat’s milk, and additional ingredients including herbs, hot peppers, and (drumroll) beer.
We know beer and cheese can pair together well as separate parts of an enjoyable after dinner treat with crackers and chutney, but the relationship between the two can become even closer than that.
Forms of toma al peperoncino, made with hot peppers
The Botalla beer cheese, Sbirro, is soaked in Menabrea’s amber beer several times during the ageing process, and it is wrapped with the spent grains from the beer production process. All of this lets the beery flavour sink deep into the cheese, offering something rather unique.
While Franco admits that beer cheese is not a completely original idea, and wine cheese tending to be more popular in Italy, Sbirro is definitely winning fans.
It can now count me among them. It’s a soft cheese which goes beautifully with a pint of the beer it has been soaked in. It is made with the milk of Pezzata Rossa d’Oropa and Bruna Alpina cattle, and has a creamy, light texture and complex layers of flavour that incorporate both the beery tang and smooth cheese.
Large wheels of Sbirro - note the grain encrusted surface
In typical Italian fashion, the idea arose during a relaxing chat over an after work drink on the brewery’s terrace. Despite early hiccups experimenting with the process – for example, discovering that mixing beer with the milk in the early stages was a bad idea – the final product is exceptionally good.
Sbirro, and Botalla’s other cheeses, will be distributed in the UK by wholesalers Delitalia, but the details are still being hashed out. So, unfortunately, there are no details yet on exactly where it will be available or how much it will cost here.
What else is in the region?
The closest major city to the Menabrea brewery is Turin, which has its fair share of lively food markets including the porta palazzo, which translates as the ‘door to the palace’.
Keep an eye out through the city: The Italian Job was shot here, and you may well recognise various locations used for the film.
Shopping for groceries in porta palazzo
Maria Malandrino, a Turin local, tells me that it used to be a covered meat market, but over time the neighbourhood has become popular with immigrants. This story is well told by the numerous alphabets and pictographs plastered over nearby shop signs.
A large proportion of North African and Chinese migrants have brought with them over time, and continue to import, a beautiful selection of goods.
Traditional Italian sausages and antipasti selections sit side by side with fresh herbs stacked high, vibrant fruit, vegetables and spices – even snails get a look in.
On the banks of the Po River you’ll find plenty of restaurants serving fresh pasta dishes, fish and meat meals, and good Italian wine (and beer, including Menabrea).
Further into the mountains you’ll find plenty of ski resorts operating in the winter, and the fashion capital Milan is a two-hour drive east.
In the middle of the city is the Mole Antonelliana, which is the tallest museum in the world. The Jewish community of Turin began building it with the plan that it would be a grand synagogue, but ran into money troubles. The city took the building off their hands and finished the project. In 2000, it became a museum of film.
These days, there's a lift that will take you to the viewing platforms near the top - but this is suspended in a see-through glass column. Not good if you don't like heights, but you get a stunning view of both the interior of the museum's bulbous, decorated roof and from the top, you can enjoy a vista of Turin and beyond.
Not, strictly speaking, a foodie attraction (though there is an 'Eataly' chain outlet at the bottom of the lift), but unmissable all the same.
The view from the platform at the top of the Mole Antonelliana
Five other great ideas for pairing beer with food
It's not just cheese that can benefit from an infusion of beer.
Pies
Meat cooked in beer is delicious. The Great North Pie Co. brews its own beer on a small scale for use in its products, and Neil Broomfield, who heads up the company, says that it’s great “play[ing] around with different flavours. Plus we can have a drink in the kitchen!”
Beer mustard
Cusacks make coarse and smooth beer mustards. Although we didn’t think that these taste particularly beery, we still thought them rather fiery and delicious when we tried them earlier in the year.
Beer bread
Beer bread is, obviously, a loaf of bread flavoured with beer. Paul Merrett recommends this recipe pairing beer bread with salmon for Christmas, but just make the beer bread on its own and enjoy with butter – and cheese, if you fancy.
Real ale sausages
Sausages and mash have long enjoyed the company of caramelised onion and ale gravy. So why not put that ale in the sausages as Powters has done? Imagine toad in the hole made out of these, with plenty of gravy and a pint of bitter. That meal would be an unbeatable winter supper.
Barbecue beer can chicken
It's barbecue season, the sun is high and you’re getting hungry. Did you know that beer is the fast route to a perfectly barbecued chicken? Read the barbecue beer can chicken recipe to find out how.
What’s your favourite beer to enjoy in the summer? Have you tried beer cheese before? Do you have a favourite? Talk to us in the Comments below.
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