NeIPAliana, the NeIPA with all Italian Ingredients

NeIPAliana, the NeIPA with all Italian Ingredients

As an Italian brewer abroad, I think is very important to brew beers with ingredients coming from my own country.

I am following forums, Facebook groups and so on, where I read many brewers testing different kind of malts and hops coming from all over the world giving just a little attention to the local ingredients, but in my opinion is also very important to test and taste the local malts and hops to bring more value to the Italian Brewing movement that is getting bigger and bigger year after year, and is winning international competitions as well.

Few years back, the only Italian ingredient you could use to make your beer were the malts, reason why all the massive Italian beer breweries, or the majority of them, are only using Italian malts in their recipes, but recently many farmers started to grew some hops variety in different parts of Italy and joined their forces in few associations to start selling their high quality products. This, in my opinion, is great for 2 main reasons, first of all, young professionals are just making use of lands that for years were not used giving those a complete new life; secondly, those young entrepreneurs are establishing new business connected with the passion they have for beers.

Luppolo Made in Italy

Luppolo Made in Italy is a research projects that aims the creation of an autochthons kind of hops. That is not just a company but a cooperative, means that more small companies are joining their forces in order to make the project successful.

They take care of the complete supply chain, starting from planting and growing the plants, to the packaging and selling of the product.

They have started last year a tasting campaign, where you could order for free some types of hops and try it.

I found this quite interesting, so i also order some free hops. I just went for two of my favorites, the Cascade and the Chinook.

The NeIPAliana

Since I started this beautiful hobby, I was always dreaming of making my own recipe using Italian malts and Italian hops.

The NeaBrew project, aims to bring the Italian culture, especially from the South, to the Netherlands. That’s the reason why as soon I heard about the Luppolo Made in Italy project I started to be excited because I could realize the main purpose of my project that would be even more a success because of the usage of Italian ingredients. That’s how Neipaliana born.

Unfortunately due to some circumstances i couldn’t brew this recipe the moment i received the order, so i had to freeze them.

After one year, i could finally plan when this recipe would became finally a batch, and once back from a family trip in Italy, where i brought some Italian malts (produced by Italmalt) with me back to the Netherlands, I finally brewed the recipe late in January.

The Recipe

Vital Params

OG	1.047
FG	1.010
ABV	5.4
IBU	52
Batch size (lt)	20

Grain Bill

Malt Name	EBC Color	Percentage
Italmat Pilsen	4	87
Italmalt Vienna	10	13

Mash Profile

Step Name	Target Temp. (°C)	Duration (min)	Ramp (min)
Mash-In	69	5
Beta	67	60	15
Mash-out	78	15

Hopping Profile

Name	A.A (%)	Usage	Duration (min)	Quantity (gr)	IBU
Chinook	10.86	Bitterness	60	23	42
Cascade	5.89	Aroma	10	20	10
Chinook	10.86	Dry Hopping		20
Cascade	5.89	Dry Hopping		40

Fermentation Profile

Yeast: Fermentis SafeAle S-04

Temperature (°C)	Duration (days)
19	15
3	21

The Neipaliana tasting

After some weeks from bottling just tried the first official bottle, after many tries of fermentation samples. The result? A very refreshing beer, with a nice citrus aroma. The low alcohol content and the light body makes it a real summer beer.

This was my first experiment with Italian ingredients like malts and hops and I am very surprised. The recipe I posted above is a recipe i brewed many times just adjusted to this new ingredients.

If you want, just try it out yourself and let me know your experience.

Cheers!