Is Menabrea Actually Worth Drinking? The Truth About Italian Lager

The Alpine Standard

The sound of a cold bottle of Menabrea hitting a wooden bar top in Biella is unmistakable—a sharp, crisp clink that promises exactly what you need after a long day. The air in this part of Piedmont smells of damp stone and mountain air, a sharp contrast to the humid, hop-heavy atmosphere of a modern taproom. You’re likely reading this because you’ve seen those blue and red labels sitting on the shelf next to the high-octane IPAs, and you’re wondering if you’re paying for a legacy or just a clever marketing team. Let me be clear: Menabrea is the only mass-market Italian lager worth your fridge space.

Most consumers treat Italian beer as a monolith—a collection of watery, adjunct-laden lagers designed to be served ice-cold to mask the lack of flavor. This is a mistake. While the big-name Italian brands often rely on corn or rice to keep costs low and profiles thin, Menabrea has maintained a commitment to the fundamentals for nearly two centuries. According to the Oxford Companion to Beer, the definition of a quality lager relies on the patience of the brewer during the conditioning phase. Menabrea doesn’t rush this, and it shows in the glass. You aren’t buying a novelty; you’re buying a piece of alpine history that actually delivers a clean, balanced drinking experience.

Water as the Foundation

To understand why this beer stands out, you have to look at the water. Biella sits at the foot of the Italian Alps, and the water source there is exceptionally soft. In the world of brewing, water is the primary canvas for everything else. When your canvas is loaded with minerals and harshness, you have to mask it with aggressive hopping or heavy malt bills. But with water this clean, the brewers can allow the malt profile to breathe.

The BJCP guidelines for a standard Pale Lager emphasize a balance between malt sweetness and hop bitterness, with a clean, crisp finish. Most commercial lagers fail this test because they finish with a metallic or vegetal note—a hallmark of rushed fermentation and cheap adjuncts. Menabrea avoids this by keeping their process traditional. They aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, nor should they. They’re simply executing a century-old recipe with high-quality ingredients, resulting in a beer that tastes like a proper, well-made lager should. It’s the difference between a mass-produced frozen meal and a simple, well-executed pasta dish.

Dispelling the Craft Beer Bias

A common critique I hear is that Menabrea lacks the intensity of a modern craft beer. If you’re looking for a beer that hits you over the head with citrus, resin, or tropical fruit notes, you’re looking in the wrong place. Treating this beer like an IPA is a fundamental misunderstanding of the style. It’s like criticizing a classic Porsche for not having the features of a modern SUV; you’re judging a tool by criteria it was never designed to meet.

When you approach it as a sessionable, refined lager, the nuance begins to reveal itself. There’s a faint, bready sweetness on the front of the palate that fades into a subtle, grassy hop finish. It’s not aggressive, but it is deliberate. It’s a beer designed for the table, not for a tasting flight of extreme styles. Anyone who’s spent time in Italy knows that the best beer is the one that complements the food, and Menabrea does this better than almost anything else in its price bracket.

The Bionda Benchmark

If you’re walking into a bottle shop today, look for the Bionda. It’s their flagship, and it’s the only one you need to worry about to understand the brand’s quality. It pours a brilliant, clear gold with a persistent white head that doesn’t vanish the moment it touches the air. The key here is serving temperature. If you serve this near freezing, you’re essentially muting the beer, which is exactly what the industrial giants want you to do so you don’t taste their flaws. Serve it at 6 to 8 degrees Celsius—let it sit out for a few minutes after taking it out of the fridge—and you’ll actually taste the malt character.

The brewery has managed to navigate the transition into global distribution without losing their soul. They haven’t been swallowed by a conglomerate that switches ingredients based on quarterly commodity prices. They’ve stuck to their roots in Biella, and that consistency is something to be celebrated. If you’re tired of the endless search for the ‘next big thing’ in the craft beer world, pick up a six-pack of Menabrea. It’s an honest beer, and at dropt.beer, we believe that’s worth more than a fancy label ever will be.