CulturAle Press

Mesh Estiqaatsi Session IPA, Santa Maria di Sala, Italy at Il Santo Bevitore, Venice

Date:  December 8,2018

The Story—  Before we return to the United States tomorrow, we’ll post one more beer from the extraordinary Il Santo Bevitore  in Venice.  Scroll back through previous beer reviews and you’ll see a gondola of well above average beers from all over Italy.  There are many bars with more beers, but few that choose as well as the Drinking Saint.

When we were researching our first book, we had a chance to share a couple of beers with one of Italy’s top beer judges.  (We can’t say who, when, or where, but this guy was one of the country’s top beer dudes.)   He candidly admitted off the record than no more than 10% of Italy’s hundreds of new breweries were even palatable, much less exceptional.  We’d love a chance to sit down with him today.   New Italian breweries we’ve found in the last three years have far surpassed many of the pioneers.   Some of the breweries stumbling into the 21st century have cleaned up their acts and are producing very drinkable beers.

This is one of those proliferating breweries that rely on Facebook posts to give information they should be shaping on a webpage.   So we’re annoyed at the lack of available information, we respect the beer.

Good session IPAs are hard to brew.  When we described the hop bill for our Hop Pocket Ale, the brewers unanimously and immediately told us we’d have to go to at least 6% to create any balance.   They were essentially right, but session IPAs try to avoid that limitation.   So they wind up over hoppy and underbodied, or underhopped for anything called an “IPA.”   These guys strike a pretty good compromise, though you need to like fruit flavors to enjoy it.

The Beer—It has the light body a 3.8% necessitates, but has lots of flavor that’s relatively pleasant. Pineapple greets with some orange and tangerine accompanied by a light mild chalk after.  Good for style.

Value — Fair.   It’s the same nine buck chuck that every beer at a good Venice beer charges.   If you’re on an expense account, no problem.   For me, I’d rather pay the same price for a beer of twice the strength and drink more slowly.

 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.

This week we feature HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Some of the great beers we’ve found in our European travels. Some of these are the specific beers readers of Drinking In the Culture wanted us to include in that book.   A few may be some of the surprisingly good beer we’ve found in “bad beer cities”  as we researched our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)

Next week we’ll return to the US and highlight some great American craft beers, some of which 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.

COMING LATER IN DECEMBER:   THE TEN BEST OF THE LAST FIVE YEARS.  We count down to the New Year by thinking back on some of the greatest beers we’ve found in the last five years of hunting.   These beers are in our top 0.2% of the beers we’ve tasted in those five years.