On our way to the train station
Agostino Arioli of Birrificio Italiano
was kind enough to contact Alessandra from the brewery Lambrate. She was extraordinary in rearranging her schedule to meet
with us for lunch. We stopped at the original brewery and found a young man wearing
a Left Hand fleece and asked him for
direction to their new pub. The man was Stefano, one of the five investors.
With Stefano’s directions we found Lambrante’s second location celebrating its
first anniversary, a lovely new pub with a solid wooden bar and the typical
Italian brass pour system.
Bartending was a tattooed man in
his early forties, with a goatee and piercings—the flamboyant Giampaolo, one of
the original owners. His brother, Davide works the kitchen. We ordered beers,
the Xmas and a cask conditioned Double IPA—both exquisite. Sitting at
the bar, we could see the curious looks from people sitting next to us. We quenched
there curiosity when we began to explain to Giampaolo who we were. He was
excited and friendly. Alessandra arrived and we sat at a table to have lunch
and begin our interview.
Lambrate was started sort of on a
whimsical idea by Davide and Giampaolo’s father. Their father was an environmental
engineer and traveled considerably for his work. He saw many breweries and
suggested to his sons, who were in college nearby, to open a brew pub. Though
the boys had little to no experience with beers, and absolutely none as far as
brewing, they set about making a business. They stared tasting beers in their
twenties and at 23 they had begun to brew.
Their first facility was the very
small brewery we visited first in the heart of Lambrate. With such a small
facility they bought equipment that would fit. In fact, the brewing was done with
a 150 liter system directly on the pub floor in a small section about 12’ x 12’,
smaller than a child’s bedroom. The brewing system was so small that they were
only able to brew one or two types of beers and could only brew three days’
worth of beer. So the pub was only open for three days at a time to give them
time to brew.
Their first clientele were their
friends who came in and made sure that every drop of each batch was drunk.
Through trial and error the boys developed their beers as they honed in their
skills. As word spread the pub bustled with college students from the local
University of Milan Bicocca. Their neighbors complained and many times the
police came and threatened to shut them down. Many nights the tiny streets
outside the pub filled with clients smoking who made so much noise that, as Alessandra
put it, “all forms of authorities were called in from one point or another”. In
one incident the police blocked off the entire block and shut them down for the
night.
Regardless, beers were being
brewed and locals were coming from all over the area to drink beer. As they
began to reap the fruits of business, they saw their neighbor’s small
businesses closing: a cobbler, a jeans tailor, a mechanic shop. As these places
closed, the brewery expanded, buying out their spaces and expanding their brewing
facilities into the closed shops. In 2000 they bought a 10hl system and in 2008
they bought a 20hl system. They quickly refurbished the shops and filled them
with vats, hoses, tanks, keg cleaning lines, a bottling system and finally a
very sophisticated lab with a true scientist, Ivo, at hand to work it. Today,
Lambrate brews 23 different kinds of beer: eight classics, four seasonal and
the rest are special beers.
A year ago, out of desperation
not to be shut down, they moved their ever growing crowd away from their angry
residential neighbors and Lambrate opened their new pub.
Again, I proposed the question to
Alessandra, why did a craft brewery work now and hadn’t been done before? It
was the usual shrug. Who knows? Their success was in part because of friends
and location. Today, the town of Lambrate is on the tourist maps not for its
Duomo, or leaning tower nor for its spectacular piazza or artistic partisans—they
are on the tourist maps for beer and beer only. An incredible feat for two
brothers who eventually grew to five young investors who had never really even
drank beer, not to mention brewed it.
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