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Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, while attending a Slow Food event in Torino in late 2006, befriended Agostino Arioli, who opened one of Italy’s earliest craft breweries. His brewery, Birrificio Italiano, makes a unique beer, La Fleurette, whose varied ingredients include flowers, black pepper and orange blossom honey. Agostino is in California this week for the world Beer Cup and the Craft Brewers Conference which begins next week in San Diego. But yesterday, he was in Santa Rosa visiting his friends at their brewery, Russian River Brewing. The plan was to brew his La Fleurette beer at Russian River, trying to approximate it as best they could using a different brew system. I spent the day documenting the brewing process. There are three galleries and approximately 54 photos of brewing the La Fleurette and the story of the beer, too. Start with gallery one and follow along as I present Brewing La Fleurette at Russian River. At the end of each gallery, there’s a link to the next part of the story, through three separate pages. Enjoy.
Agostino Arioli, from Birrificio Italiano in northern Italy, with Vinnie Cilurzo and Travis Smith, at Russian River Brewing.
The beer included two kinds of dried flowers, violets and roses (shown here).
At the point during the boil where dry-hopping normally occurs, the flowers are added along with orange blossom honey and black pepper.
For many more photos of the La Fleurette brew day at Russian River, start with Part 1.
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April 13th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Wow. And here I thought I was all experimental adding a couple of star anise to my last ESB.
By the way, I wish a brewer or two would just admit it and put a big TONKA sticker on their equipment. They are just kids in the sand lot having fun.
April 13th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Great job, Jay, on this mini-documentary! The pictures are awesome. They really convey the fun, as Alan says, that you can tell they were having.
I had the opportunity to sample of variety of Italian beers a few months ago and most are quite interesting and unique, to say the least.
One of the well-done chestnut brews is the Malthus Birolla. I also enjoyed the Scires that you mentioned as well as the Chocarrubica, Nora, and Super Baladin. It seems as a hallmark, at least of the ones I tasted, is to not “overdo” or “imperialize” the flavors in their beers. While they’re unique for sure and the flavors are noticeable, they don’t appear to be overly aggressive.
Hope to be able to see more of them; perhaps even this one!
April 14th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
This is a great post. I had the original Fleurette on draught at Bir & Fud in Roma last time I was there - very nice it was too.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Just found the site J, and I really like it.
Cheers!