The Only Mission Is To Follow Your Own Senses — Tracing the Journey of Italian Pilsner

An Italian brewer named Agostino Arioli wants to start a brewpub in northern Italy, at a time when no other such businesses exist there. It’s 1996, and he decides he’ll call his brewery Birrificio Italiano, or the Italian Beer Factory. It’s a grandiose name for a 200-liter brewhouse, but something about it feels right.

Among other beers, he most notably makes a German-inspired Pilsner—but because he loves hops, he will dry hop it in the English Ale tradition. As the owner of a small brewery, he doesn’t have the equipment needed to filter it, so his beer is a bit hazy. The result is not exactly a classical Pilsner, so he calls it “a kind of a Pilsner”—a Tipopils.

That’s the origin story of the Italian Pilsner, “one of those rare styles where everything can be redirected back to just the one beer,” says Mario Canestrelli, head brewer at Braybrooke Beer Co. in Leicestershire, England, which specializes in continental Lagers. It’s rare to see a new style of beer arise in so singular a moment, with so little debate about its history. 

But if the beer style’s origins are clear, its evolution is a little more complicated. As the popularity of the Italian Pilsner grows in the ensuing years, its story is picked up by many different people all around the world, repeated in breweries and across bar tops. Wherever it takes root, the Italian Pilsner evolves based on local drinking traditions. But those making it never forget where the style first began.

‘WE DON’T CALL IT ITALIAN PILSNER IN ITALY’

On a trip to Brooklyn in September 2017, Stefano Erreni, co-founder and brewer of Denmark’s Slowburn Brewing Co-op, noticed that every brewery he visited seemed to have a dry-hopped Pilsner. Bafflingly, they were all called “Italian Pilsner.”

“I was like, ‘What’s an Italian Pilsner?’ And everyone was like, ‘It’s a dry-hopped Pilsner, like Tipopils. Aren’t you Italian?’” He replied: “Yes, I’m Italian, but we don’t call it Italian Pilsner in Italy.”

In Italy, it’s just a Pils. And if you see a Pils from a small Italian brewery, then the expectation is that it’s unfiltered and dry hopped with German varieties, just like Tipopils. (Alessio Leone, co-founder of drinks and hospitality branding studio ByVolume, adds that: “If a small brewery would make a not-so-hoppy Lager, they would definitely call it differently, so a Helles or Lager.”)

“I was like, ‘What’s an Italian Pilsner?’ And everyone was like, ‘It’s a dry-hopped Pilsner, like Tipopils. Aren’t you Italian?’ ‘Yes, I’m Italian, but we don’t call it Italian Pilsner in Italy.’”

“Most Italian brewers brew Pils, and they brew it in the Birrificio Italiano way,” says Marco Valeriani, owner of Alder Beer Co., located just north of Milan. The style has become a foundation of Italian craft beer, and Tipopils serves as its near-universal reference point. “When someone invents something good, you try to not replicate but to make something close inspired from that, to emulate something that works,” says Valeriani. There’s a rare respect for the original beer, and it’s not just venerated by Italians.

“One of my favorite beer experiences ever is drinking Pils in Italy,” says Tim Adams, founder of Maine’s Oxbow Brewing Company. “Tipopils was the beer that I was most excited to try when I first went to Italy, and that was the first beer that I had over there, and it was mind-blowing. But what we found were all these other Pils,” like Birrificio Del Ducato’s Viæmelia, “and it seemed like every Pils I had was bursting with this traditional hop character; aromas and flavors that I had not experienced in Pils before,” while the serving of it—a special glass and a two-part pour, building up the foam and knocking out the carbonation—was “just so stylish.”

He came to realize that “every bit as much as a German Pils is different from a Czech Pils, an Italian Pils is different from either of those two.” It had unquestionably become its own distinct style.

Adams was inspired. “I want to make that but different,” he says, “I want to scratch the same itch that this scratches, I want to hit some of these flavor points but approach it our own way in how we produce it. The Italian-style Pils is kind of the poster child for this notion.” He recalls Arioli’s story of how he loved German Pilsner and did something different with it by dry hopping it. “That didn’t happen [in Germany]—that couldn’t happen over there.” (Dry hopping only technically became Reinheitsgebot-compliant after Tipopils was first brewed).

Following trips to Italy in 2014 and 2015, Adams brewed his own version of the style. “We said, ‘Let’s give it an Italian name and let’s call it what it is: It’s an Italian-style Pils.” Oxbow’s resulting Luppolo—Italian for hop—was released in 2016, and was the first beer to be named as an ‘Italian-style Pils’ or ‘Italian Pilsner,’ though it wasn’t the first American-brewed Lager to be inspired by Tipopils.

Matt Brynildson, brewmaster of Firestone Walker Brewing Company, first tasted Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils at the European Beer Star competition in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2011. At the awards ceremony he listened as, predictably, the German brewers were winning most of the Lager medals. “But then there was this Kellerpils category and the Italians were winning in it, and I was like what?,” he says. “I never thought of the Italians making good Lager beer.”

Tipopils and Viæmelia both won medals at the event, and all the award-winning beers were poured after the ceremony, so Brynildson went to find the Italians. It was there that he got to try Tipopils, and meet Arioli.

“As soon as I had the experience of tasting [Tipopils], I’m like, ‘I gotta make this beer!’ The clouds parted and I went home and it was the first thing I worked on,” he says. The resulting beer, Pivo Pils, was released in 2012, and was described as a Hoppy Pilsner. It’s the beer which introduced the Italian type of Pilsner to American drinkers, and has come to be considered an era-defining release.

Many of the brewers that have been inspired by Tipopils, and have brewed their own versions of the Italian Pilsner, have been careful to credit their sources. “I always try hard to tell people that this is somebody else’s idea,” says John Marti of Lowercase Brewing in Seattle, Washington. 

“I try to stay true to what [Arioli’s] inspiration was, so that when I call it an ‘Italian-style Pilsner,’ it gives him, and it gives other Italians, the credit they deserve for coming up with the style. I want to be as honest with it as I can, so that when it says ‘Italian-style’ on there, it means something.”

But what does it mean? 

IT’S A DRY-HOPPED PILSNER

In 2021, Unionbirrai, the association for Italian craft brewers, introduced the Italian Pilsner category to its style guidelines. The summary is: a strong hop aroma, typically from floral, spicy, and herbal German hops, and enhanced by dry hopping. They are generally unfiltered, unpasteurized, and lightly hazy; they have a supportive structure of malt, but the overall balance is towards hops. (Alongside the Italian Pilsner, Unionbirrai also added a Hoppy Lager category, defined by the use of aromatic American and New World hops; it’s the type and character of the hop which distinguishes an Italian Pilsner.)

An Italian Pilsner is a dry-hopped Pilsner, but, “It isn’t just a normal [German] Pilsner and then dry-hopped,” says Braybrooke’s Canestrelli. “It’s not as dry as some German Pilsners, it’s got that almost Czech Pilsner-like body, it’s a bit smoother, and then it has that [hop] aroma.”

“The use of dry-hopping in the style, to me, is all about accentuating the noble hop character,” says Brynildson, but “not trying to bring too much to it. They can definitely be overdone.” Low dry-hop character is true to the style.

A common dry-hop volume for Italian brewers would be under one gram per liter (0.28lb/barrel)—for comparison, Firestone’s Mind Haze, a “tame Hazy IPA,” as Brynildson calls it, is 3lb/BBL or 11.5g/l. What really matters is the quality and freshness of those hops, as Arioli will explain to anyone who asks. Given their location and small brewhouses—Birrificio Italiano’s reputation is greater than its modest 7,000-hectoliter (4,300-BBL) annual output—Italian brewers can often select exactly the hops they want, from specific farms in Germany. That’s what Arioli does, getting his from Locher-Hopfen in Tettnang.

“As a brewer, as a beer hunter, and an ingredient hunter, I think that we were lucky because we are very, very close to Germany,” says Stefano Simonelli, founder of Vetra Brewery, who previously worked at Birrificio Italiano. “From my house, in three hours by car I am in Tettnang. Every year I go there to look [at] what happened in the harvest,” he says. “We know lots of very small, and very, very good hop growers, so every year we get there, and we choose the hops we want to use the year after to create the perfect balance in our Pilsner.”

These qualities are by now familiar to many Italian brewers and drinkers, but for those brewing the style abroad, more education and explanation are usually needed.

“As a brewer, as a beer hunter, and an ingredient hunter, I think that we were lucky because we are very, very close to Germany. From my house, in three hours by car I am in Tettnang. Every year I go there to look [at] what happened in the harvest. We know lots of very small, and very, very good hop growers, so every year we get there, and we choose the hops we want to use the year after to create the perfect balance in our Pilsner.”

“One of the reasons we wanted to call it ‘Italian-style Pils’ is that we welcome those conversations,” says Adams. “A dry-hopped Pils,” would be the quick sell for Oxbow, but with more time the brewery is “talking about its noble hop character … it is very frequently discussed with our customers just how hoppy it is,” he says. “It’s not the hops you’re thinking of—it’s not going to be citrus and pine, and the American [aroma] of New World hops—but this is a very hoppy beer, and look for these beautiful floral and herbal flavors.” The cadence may feel distinct, but it’s a language the stateside craft beer drinker can identify with.

If American brewers talk up the hoppiness, conversely Italians often talk about the style as a reaction to heavily hopped beers. “Normal customers want something easy to drink,” says Valeriani. “They say, ‘I want to drink beer!’ so I say, ‘Try this [Pils], it’s a simple beer.’”

Simonelli agrees. “I like to say that if you drink my Pilsner, you can have it very easily, or you can taste it and you can find the complexity, and then keep drinking without too many thoughts.”

Those differences among international drinkers’ expectations also impact the flavor profiles of the Italian Pilsners brewed around the world. American versions are often more aggressively hopped, for instance, while Italian versions are mellower (and have grown more mellow since the style’s inception, as some Italian brewers have suggested).

Perhaps inevitably, those variations have led to recent debates about whether the Italian Pilsner is foremost defined by its ingredients or its flavor profile. Anna Managò, co-founder of ByVolume, believes that “it doesn’t need to be the traditional hops from Germany or Bohemia, but the hop profile in terms of aroma should be the same as intended by Agostino,” so the ideal would be elegant and noble, or noble-like, not intense. (Oxbow has brewed an Italian-style Pils in collaboration with Manchester’s Cloudwater Brew Co. using only English hops, for example.)

Those who would be rigidly protective of the style may be missing the point, however. Italian Pilsner resulted from merging several countries’ beer traditions and processes and creating something familiar but distinct—and new adaptations are only continuing as the style becomes better known around the world.

FESTIVITIES

Birrificio Italiano celebrated its 25th anniversary on April 3, 2021. That date is also, therefore, the anniversary of the Italian Pilsner, and effectively the 25th anniversary of the Italian craft beer industry, too. Perhaps contrary to how this story is often told, Italian craft beer is not dominated by the Pilsner, and just like elsewhere, it’s a country that loves IPAs. But it was this love of IPA and other strong beers which ultimately became the catalyst for the popularity of the Italian Pilsner.

“The Lager movement here in Italy exploded eight, 10 years ago, not 25,” says Valeriani, and it can be linked directly to a festival called Pils Pride, organized by Birrificio Italiano and first held in 2006. The aim, as the brewery’s website explains, was to celebrate “beers which could be directly enjoyed with the senses … beers to which the cultural and conceptual values were of course relevant, but always dependent from the sheer pleasure of drinking.”

“The beers invited needed to fit a certain profile, which was obviously kind of similar to what Agostino was making,” says Leone. As the festival grew, Arioli became friends with brewers around the world, and he’d invite them and their beers to Pils Pride. Later, he had the idea to hold the festival in North America, where it was renamed Pils & Love. The inaugural event took place in Portland, Maine, in 2017.

“The first Pils & Love was the single biggest identifiable moment in American beer history of the Italian-style Pils,” says Adams. Brynildson agrees. “That takes the learning curve and accelerates everything,” he says. That was also the moment when the name “Italian Pilsner” took on greater meaning for many in the industry.

Now, the Italians are embracing the new attention. “Everything it took to get this name, this recipe, this product … I think that for every Italian brewer it’s a very good thing,” says Simonelli.

“[This] is the way we brew Pils in Italy. We deserve this,” says Valeriani.

‘IN GERMANY NOBODY USED TO DO THAT’

“Birra artigianale must be a process where there’s always, always an artisan behind, and every artisan has his own senses, preferences, taste,” says Arioli. “We can use traditional beers, and use styles, to see which is our own way.” 

In 1985, at the age of 20, and while studying agriculture and food industry at university in Milan, Arioli and his friends would visit different pubs, drink different beers, and argue about their qualities. When he found “a dusty book on homebrewing” he decided to try making his own beer. “I was producing malt in my mother’s kitchen, I was picking wild hops, using the yeast they sold in the supermarket for breadmaking, so at the end the beers were very bad!” he laughs.

The following year he went hiking in Canada, ending up in Vancouver where he visited Granville Island Brewing, and his life found a new path. “I thought this is what I wanna do. I had my target in my life, I had my dream.”

He finished his degree, spent time working in large Lager breweries, then sent 40 handwritten letters to guesthouse breweries in Germany asking for work experience. He got two responses. He studied the breweries, developed a business plan, learned to make and serve Lager in small brewhouses, and worked on his beer recipes.

“A craft brewer in our really small scale, the only mission is to follow your own senses,” he says. “You take everything, you drink everything, and then you put together your own idea of the beer that you would like to drink.” That’s where his Pilsner came from, and you already know the rest of this story.

Tipopils was based on Jever, the markedly bitter German Pilsner, and also took inspiration from England, where Arioli learned how brewers dry hopped their beer by putting a small plug of hops into casks of Ale before sealing them and sending them to the pub.

“Birra artigianale must be a process where there’s always, always an artisan behind, and every artisan has his own senses, preferences, taste. We can use traditional beers, and use styles, to see which is our own way.”

“I thought this is fucking interesting. I love this way to use the hop. I didn’t know about this thing, and I am very curious,” he says. “I’m a kind of alchemist, I like to experiment, I like to try, so I thought I could do this in my serving tank.” Because dry hopping was not permitted by the Reinheitsgebot at the time, this technique represented a key departure.

“I was ignorant about beer—but I’m happy to be ignorant because I’m more free to do whatever I like. So I combined this typical English system with a typical German beer.” The result wasn’t exactly like a German Pils, nor any other kind of Pils; it was his type of Pils.

It’s the dry hop which really makes his Pilsner distinctive. “I was in love—I’m still in love—with the hop. Of any kind. I’m a maniac for hops,” Arioli says. For Tipopils today, “The hoppy soul comes from the Spalter Select,” which gives an herbal quality, alongside a small amount of Saphir with its lemony freshness.

“It’s difficult to describe the herbal character of the hops,” Arioli says, before evocatively achieving it. “Herbal character is like when you cut the grass on the mountains, on the Alps, and it dries in the sun and it’s a very big mix of different plants and they have a very special aroma.” Like he says, it’s a beer guided by his senses.

A TIMELESS PILS

In the mid-90s, at a time when Italy had no small brewing culture to follow, brewers were able to take traditions from elsewhere and make them their own. But that didn’t mean that drinkers were ready for them, and after two years Birrificio Italiano almost closed.

“I was pouring beer that, compared with a normal beer experience, was warm, cloudy, with very low gas content, a lot of foam—and they didn’t want foam—and it took 10 minutes to pour one fucking glass!” Arioli remembers.

He’d say: “Listen [to] what I’m doing here, it’s because of this and that. There’s an idea behind it. There’s a concept.” Gradually drinkers started to understand it, and other brewers started to make their versions of his beer. The great success was that a decade later, Tipopils was a normal beer. But then, like elsewhere in the world, the excitement for IPA made normal beer boring.

“Fifteen years ago in Italy, drinking a normal beer like Tipopils was shamed,” says Arioli. “If you were a beer geek you had to drink special, strange stuff like strong beers, with special ingredients, and I was thinking, craft beer can be an easy, normal beer, not only some special and fancy stuff, not only Disneyland beers.” That’s where the idea for Pils Pride came from, and then Pils & Love. Those events were catalysts in Italy and then around the world, and they’re the reason we’re now talking about the Italian Pilsner.

The story of Tipopils continues to be told, and Arioli is doing it in his own way. Birrificio Italiano is updating its branding this year, and “it was far too easy to write ‘Italian-style Pilsner,’” Arioli says. “I like joking about the styles that do not exist,” as “none of our beers is in style.” The new labels describe Tipopils as a ‘Timeless Pils’ because, “It’s not hyped beer, it’s never been, it’s always good, you always like it.”

Back in 1996, when Agostino Arioli called his beer Tipopils, it was a way of saying, “Don’t bother me if you don’t think this is a real Pils because this is a tipo Pils, okay?” Now he doesn’t have the problem of people bothering him because it’s not a Pils; they bother him because it’s the Pils.

“Now there are many tipo Tipopils around, and I’m very proud and very happy,” he says.

Words by Mark DredgeIllustrations by Colette Holston
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