There is
beer
and beer. In our country, too, unfortunately-beyond the Italian brands.
and homegrown craft beers.
– happen to cross drinks with additives and ”alien
alien sugars
‘
. Keep an eye out for labels.
Italian beer, the rules to guard quality
The Italian beer law is undoubtedly the strictest, among the industry regulations in different countries. (1) Both in Europe and internationally. In fact, Italy is the only country to have prescribed stringent quality requirements, which are expressed in terms of Plato grade.
The Plato degree is a saccharometric index and expresses the amount of dry matter, i.e., the value of a beverage that-other than dry matter-is essentially composed of water and alcohol. Beers brewed in Italy can be marketed in our country under the appropriate legal names, subject to the following conditions:
-‘non-alcoholic beer‘, degree Plato 3-8, alcohol content
<
1,2%.
-‘Lightbeer’ or ‘light beer,’ Plato 5-10.5, alcohol 1.2%-3.5%.
-‘beer‘, Plato >10.5, alc. >3.5%,
-‘special beer‘, Plato
>
12,5,
-‘double malt beer‘, Plato
>
14,5.
The ‘
craft beer
‘ in turn is only that ‘produced by small independent breweries and not subjected, during the production phase, to pasteurization and microfiltration processes.’ (2)
Beers, additive issue and alien sugars
The designation ‘beer,’ in Italy, ‘shall be reserved for the product obtained by the alcoholic fermentation with strains of saccharomyces carlsbergensis or saccharomyces cerevisiae of a wort prepared from malt, whether or not roasted, of barley or wheat or mixtures thereof and water, bittered with hops or their derivatives or both.’ (3)
Italian legislation
however
, over the years, has had to give way to European imperatives related to the ‘
free movement of goods
‘. Quality requirements cannot therefore be demanded on ‘low cost’ imported beverages, for example. And even worse, even in Italy now:
-is ‘allowed to use roasted malt extracts and the food additives,’ and
-‘barley or wheat malt may be substituted with other cereals, whether broken or ground or in the form of flakes, as well as with starchy and sugary raw materials to the maximum extent of 40 percent calculated on the dry extract of the must‘. (4)
Food additives-such as thickeners and antioxidants-are thus commonly used to correct the inherent vices of poor quality beverages. Especially those coming from far away, from Central America in particular (e.g., Corona).
Alien sugars are also employed in Italy, however, on the drinks of international giants (e.g., Tuborg). In a financial logic of erosion of the already minimal production costs on a beverage that, it is reiterated, is essentially composed of drinking water. (5)
Glucose syrup used in beer, for example, is the least noble part of the cornstarch hydrolysis process. It costs considerably less than barley malt and reduces process costs because the syrup does not require cooking. (6)
Authentic beers, how to choose
Assobirra and
Brewers of Europe
– the associations representing producers, in Italy and in the EU – have long made a voluntary commitment to list ingredients on labels. Although it is by no means easy to consult such news on the Web.
The ingredients list
however, it should be noted, to date is not mandatory for the generality of alcoholic beverages
. And indeed it is well concealed, on the wines in particular.
ConsumAtors are in any case recommended to consult the ingredient list of cervogia on the shelf. And when you read ‘glucose syrup,’ rather than the category and abbreviation or name of an additive, choose another product instead. Drink less, drink better.
Dario Dongo
Notes
(1) See Law 1354/1962 and subsequent amendments (intervened by Laws 329/74, 556/76, 141/89, 489/92, 52/96, Presidential Decree 272/98, Legislative Decree 507/99)
(2) ‘It is understood to mean
small independent brewery
a brewery that is legally and economically independent of any other brewery, that uses facilities physically distinct from those of any other brewery, that does not operate under a license to use the intangible property rights of others, and whose annual production does not exceed 200,000 hectoliters, including in this quantity the quantities of beer produced for third parties‘. See Law 154/16
(3) See Law 1354/62, Article 1 (as replaced by Presidential Decree 272/98). A standard that is, on closer inspection, outdated compared to the variety of strains actually used in quality brewing
(4) Idem c.s., paras. 3 and 4
(5) Some producers try to justify the use of glucose syrup under the guise of preventing the most common risks associated with the use of corn (mycotoxin contamination and, on imported grain, GMOs). However, these risks can be mitigated without any need to distort the recipe
(6) Savings between barley malt and corn syrup are bordering on 100€/ton at this time (following a very bad barley harvest in 2018). Note well that to produce 100 liters of beer requires 15-18 kg between malt and corn. And the latter still cannot exceed 40 percent of the total
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
