‘na biretta Rossa and Birra Roma – 2 Stylish Italians

Recently, Back of the Ferry reviewed an Italian beer called ‘na biretta Chiara. In that review BotF lamented the fact that the brewer, Birradamare S.R.L., seemed to have more interesting varieties – but as always, we Aussies got the Export Premium Lager version or the blandest of the range. I should stress that the Chiara was not bland. BotF was delighted to find that someone actually reads our blogs and tweets and the Australian importer contacted us to say he’d send us samples of the rest of the range. Today, we review two of those.

BotF is not a blog that usually comments on a beer’s packaging. We’ll leave that to aesthetes like Tipples or Mason HellCat, but these are Italian beers after all and they have taken some time on their appearance. All Birradamare beers come in very stylish medicine style bottles. Inside, as well, these beers present beautifully. The hues of both beers in the glass are wonderful.

We sampled Birra Roma first. This is a Marzen style beer, which pours a not unpleasant cloudy mid brown colour. Not sure why this is called “Birra Roma“, because it is a classic Marzen or Oktoberfest beer and as German as you can get. Plenty of depth, toasty and smoky with a decent 5.5% kick to it. The 4 foundation members (illiards, pommy_ch and lamb0 and bladdamasta) all had a lash and were unanimously impressed. A real sipper to savour. We then had a crack at the Rossa. This looked great in the glass, pouring a rich red colour. The Rossa proclaimed to be brewed in a Bock style, and it delivered. A malt bomb, this was pretty smooth, despite its 6.3% strength. The collective view was that it was probably more sessionable than the Birra Roma even with the 6.3%. Both beers are fine examples of the variety they proclaimed to be and are as atypical of any Italian beer I’ve tried.