There’s More to Italian Pilsners Than Dry-Hopping

We need to talk about Italian pilsners. This slow-burning style has been picking up fans—especially among brewers—for several years. The first folks to make it, like Matt Brinyldson, who introduced Pivo Pils at Firestone Walker, were aware of the source beer: Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils and created examples informed by first-hand experience. An unusual pilsner, it has a soft palate of lightly bready malts infused with saturated but gentle herbal hopping. The more you drink, the more it impresses, as the saturation of flavors grows—even while remaining soft and gentle. It’s just 5.2%, but it’s full, rich, and deeply aromatic.

As more brewers have embraced the style, knowledge of that touchstone beer is less widespread. In common use, “Italian pilsner” has come to mean one thing: dry-hopping. That’s a big part of the picture, but there are a couple other elements that need to be present. Increasingly, I’m encountering examples that are too thin and lacking in malt character; beers that are overly bitter and top-heavy with hops. They lack the softness and complexity of Tipopils—elements that are central to the “Italianness” of the style.

Agostino Arioli (center) at Gayle Goschie’s hop farm a few years ago (that’s Gayle next to him).

I’ve been a fan of it for years and even wrote a chapter about how to make one in Secrets of Master Brewers, including Arioli’s formulation and instructions. Given how common the beer has become, it seems like a great time to return to Lurago Marinone in Como and listen to how Agostino Arioli thinks about beer and what he does to make Tipopils

Thinking Italian

In my travels throughout the beer country in the north of Italy, I kept encountering beers that were amazingly balanced, no matter what the style. The hoppy beers were not too hoppy; the sour beers were not too sour. It is not a characteristic that the brewers even seemed aware of. Eventually, after much prodding, I got Arioli to ponder this a bit, and what he came up with was instructive. “These beers are beers you drink with your senses more than with your brain. Birra da meditazione—meditation beers. When you drink a meditation beer, you really think about it. ‘This taste reminds me of flowers; this taste reminds me of the food my aunt used to prepare me.’ So you’re really thinking about the beer.”

With lagers, this means tweaking and pulling until you’ve extracted a bit of extra flavor from each element of the beer, always making sure to keep them in balance. I think this comes from the Italians’ instinctive sense of flavor. Arioli agreed that it was a strong possibility. “In Italy we grow up where you can spend hours and hours discussing food. The whole family, we can discuss food for a long time. ‘This is better; last time was worse. It’s overcooked, or it’s too rare.’  Really, we talk about food a lot. We really care about food. So this probably automatically require us to brew beers that can fit with our sense of what is pleasant, what is balanced.”

Arioli first brewed Tipopils in 1996 when he founded the brewery, but the inspiration emerged earlier, after a peripatetic journey through the different traditions of brewing. As he learned to brew, Germany was his first influence. Later he spent time and brewed in the UK, Canada, and US. All of this informed the way he thought about beer. “I [had] visited some English brewers and studied some more about English cask beer. I knew that they were using dry-hop in the cask. I thought, why don’t I do this with my Tipopils?” he wondered. Americans often approach the style like they do IPA, putting all their attention on the hops. But Arioli was shooting for something with the character of a German kellerbier crossed with an English cask ale.

Three Elements

Arioli’s approach seems to be: start with a German model and trick it out. The recipe Arioli offered me looks very German—pilsner malt, a tiny hint of CaraMunich, and Perle, Northern Brewer, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, and Saphir hops. Yet other techniques are less traditional. “When we are talking about lager, especially pils beer,” he said, “Italian beers are more hoppy, more fruity, and also a bit more malty.”

Possibly the most important element is fermentation temperature. “We ferment at higher temperatures, and this makes a certain differences,” Arioli says. While it’s typical to ferment in the middle-forties, Arioli goes higher, as much as ten degrees. The coldest he ferments is around 52˚ F. We know that higher fermentation temperatures produce more esters, but there may be more going on than that here. Arioli also dry-hops during primary fermentation with Tipopils. We know the biochemistry changes hop expression when yeast is still active, and that must be in play here—the hoppy character he gets is certainly unusual. It’s richer and more integrated, deeper somehow, than in any other lager I’ve tried. Interestingly, Arioli dry hops at very low levels (30 grams/hectoliter in primary, 70 grams/hecto during maturation), but nevertheless gets massive character. This is the classic less-is-more approach of an Italian (as opposed to the American more-is-more thinking). Finally, Arioli doesn’t just dry-hop the beer, he does a quick post-flameout addition as well.

Arioli is also far more attentive to pH than other brewers I’ve spoken to. He starts with a low mash pH and suggests adjusting your sparge liquor to a pH of 5.5. Why? Because higher pH may extract tannins from the husk of the grain, giving the beer astringency. Arioli’s suggestion of 5.5 ensures no tannins are extracted. He also starts fermentation at a low pH for yeast health—usually around 5.1—and sometimes adjusts the wort again at this point. What effect does this have on the dry-hopping? At the time I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask, but it may be a factor as well.

(There are a few other small details I’ve omitted because—come on, you really should own your own copy of Secrets of Master Brewers, and this is a great excuse to pick up a copy.)

Small Adjustments

Italiano isn’t the only Italian brewery making lagers—not by a long shot. Other breweries have slightly different approaches (though warmer fermentation is quite common). It was instructive to travel in Italy because I came to see a philosophy of subtle adjustments emerge. Whether they were making IPAs, Belgian styles, wild ales, or lagers, the brewers weren’t looking for dramatic gestures. They tinkered at the margins, and the collective changes had a substantial effect. To return to the food analogy, the Italians make beers that are like sauces simmered for hours with a complex blend of herbs and spices, not blazing preparations dominated by chili peppers.

Italian pilsners aren’t just hoppier. They’re softer, more saturated, and more lush than the German pils they otherwise resemble. It’s a more holistic way of thinking about beer, and the results are more interesting than a dry-hopped German lager. How a brewery gets there may vary, but the “Italian” part of the equation means more complexity, depth, and character. I’d love to see more of those on the the market—especially because Tipopils is so hard to find.

COVER PHOTO: Birrificio Italianio