Beer Craft Bozen 2024 – Craft beer meeting with international flair
Italy | The Beer Craft Bozen 2024 took place in Bolzano, Italy, from 24–25 May. This beer festival has now become firmly established and the venue, Maretsch Castle, offers an extraordinary backdrop for the 48 exhibitors from South Tyrol, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Poland and even Finland, and the 4850 visitors from 17 different countries.
This beer festival is not only of local importance, it also offers international flair and a wealth of beer specialties, both traditional styles and new creations, or revived beer styles.
KuBo Beer Award
The KuBo Beer Award with its international jury is also an integral part of the festival. It is special in that only breweries also represented at the festival can take part. In addition, it is not just a blind tasting, but it also encourages a lively exchange between the brewers and the tasters, in which the beers in question and the ideas behind them can be discussed.
Lecture programme with a focus on yeast
For the second time, a lecture programme was put together in cooperation with the Institute for Regional Development (EURAC), Bolzano, in order to present scientific research. One of the main topics this time was brewer's yeast.
Dr Martin Zarnkow and Juan I. Eizaguirre, both from the Research Center Weihenstephan for Brewing and Food Quality in Freising, gave an introduction to the exciting research on the development of today's bottom-fermenting yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus, which also keeps looking out for other yeasts for beer production and, last but not least, wants to track down ‘regional yeasts’ that have been forgotten. To this end, a project will also be launched in South Tyrol to search for traces at the sites of former breweries. After all, there were 27 breweries in South Tyrol before World War I, most of which had to close down afterwards due to a lack of staff or raw materials.
PHD Lorenza Conterno from the Laimburg Research Centre in Auer, Italy, presented in her lecture the investigations of various strains of S. cerevisiae for their suitability for beer production. Werner Tomasi from Gristo, Wasserburg am Inn, Germany, introduced a patented process he has developed for the use of spent grains as a high-quality, high-fibre supplement to baking flours.
For scheduling reasons, Eric Wibmer and Sebastian Eßl from the Stiegl-Gut Wildshut brewery in Salzburg, Austria, were unable to come to Bolzano in person. However, they explained the various fermentation and maturation processes of the beer specialties Mystique, Antique and Perlage via video link, which the 40 or so participants at the lecture event were able to taste at the same time.
Overall, the Beer Craft is becoming a fixed date not only in the calendar of brewers from South Tyrol, but also from other regions of Italy and abroad. Beer enthusiasts get their money's worth with the wide range of beer specialties on offer, and Bolzano is always worth a visit.
Keywords
craft beer exhibitions Italy beer competitions Europe craft brewing industry meetings
Source
BRAUWELT International 2024
Organizer
- constantia GmbH, Bolzano, Italy
