Welcoming sign at Pub 27 in Pompeii
Baladin Soraya, Baladin, Piozzo at FICO Eataly World
Date: October 17, 2018
The Story— This seems to be Baladin week on Beer of the Day and really, why not? Balladin, the brewery perhaps responsible for catapulting Italy into the top ranks of beer brewing countries, makes more than enough first class beers to warrant a different delight every day of the week.
Eataly World, the world’s largest food court amusement park, is a perfect place to try them. They’re well-tended in Baladin’s outlet, the selection is exceptionally good, and you don’t have to drive to Piozzo to get them. Baladin has other pubs in Italy– the one in Rome not only served great beer, but the conversation there became the backbone of our research for our upcoming guide to great beer where you don’t expect it in Europe. But this small brewpub in a huge space gave us the feeling of drinking outdoors without the heat or rain that a real garden would provide.
We don’t usually get much pleasure from spiced ales; it often seems like we could be drinking “beer” instead. But Baladin manages spices better than most breweries and Soraya is certainly interesting enough to justify trying one and maybe clean enough to justify having several. “Habituation” is the process of the palate tuning out an outlier flavor as you drink — a process that can take a liter or two to fully complete. We didn’t have the time or Euros to try the two or three liters of this, but it’s one of the few spiced ales for which we’ve been tempted to try.
The Beer— A Kentucky Fried Chicken of beers with probably at least 11 herbs and spices over a soft lemon cream foundation. Not a great deal of depth but a nice yeasty summer drink. Ellie found it odd but clean with well blended spices and herbs. It was actually her rating that pushed this into our “well above average” category.
Value — Good. Six bucks for a third of a liter is quite fair.
This week we return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE– Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.” The best we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.) We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.
Next week we return to the US to highlight some great beers we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it in 2019.
About these posts: We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year. The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings. Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.
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