BREW.IT

Over the last decade, the Italian brewing industry has experienced significant growth, driven both by large industrial groups and by an increasingly extensive network of microbreweries and agricultural breweries. However, the national supply chain still shows important structural weaknesses, mainly related to the limited domestic availability of malting barley, malt and hops, resulting in a strong dependence on imports. In this context, the BREW.IT project – Innovation and sustainability in the ITalian BREWing supply chain – aims to strengthen the Italian brewing sector through agronomic, technological, environmental and socio-economic innovations. The project brings together five Research Units with complementary expertise in barley cultivation, malting and brewing technologies, hop processing, analytical chemistry, life cycle assessment and agri-food economics. The activities focus on the development of low-input and organic cropping systems, sustainable malting and hop transformation processes, environmental impact assessment and the definition of territorial models capable of improving the resilience and competitiveness of the Italian brewing supply chain.

Results achieved

The project achieved its main scientific and technological objectives, providing an integrated framework for the sustainable development of the Italian brewing supply chain. Field trials on malting barley were carried out over three cropping seasons, comparing conventional, integrated and organic systems and evaluating modern varieties such as Laureate, Fortuna and Sunshine. The results showed that low-input and organic regimes are agronomically viable and can provide barley with technological characteristics suitable for malting, particularly in terms of protein content and grain quality.

Pilot-scale malting trials demonstrated that modern varieties, especially Laureate and Fortuna, can be successfully processed through simplified hydration protocols. The adoption of a single-steeping strategy made it possible to reduce water consumption by up to 50% and to shorten processing time by up to 41 hours compared with conventional protocols, while maintaining adequate malt quality and without the use of exogenous gibberellic acid. The results also highlighted a strong interaction between genotype, agronomic regime and technological response to malting: barley grown under organic and low-input systems showed particularly favourable characteristics in terms of endosperm modification, friability and final product stability. The application of response surface models made it possible to identify the main technological factors affecting malt quality, confirming the central role of steeping level and agronomic regime compared with the use of gibberellic acid. This allowed the definition of a low-impact malting model, based on varietal selection and process optimization, transferable both to pilot-scale plants and to territorial production contexts. The project also validated the production of Italian Pils, Crystal and Biscuit malts from domestic barley, confirming their technological quality and distinctive phenolic, antioxidant and aromatic profiles.

For hops, the project optimized the kilning and pelletization processes by testing different drying temperatures on varieties cultivated in Italy, particularly Cascade, Comet and Centennial, and by evaluating their effects on α- and β-acids, essential oils, phenolic compounds, proanthocyanidins, free thiols and sensory characteristics. The intermediate temperature of 55 °C emerged as the best general compromise between aroma preservation, chemical stability and process efficiency, while also highlighting variety-specific responses. Pelletization trials confirmed the importance of maintaining low outlet temperatures, applying rapid cooling and using protective packaging to preserve hop quality.

The environmental assessment identified the main hotspots of malt and hop production through a cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment approach. For malt, the agricultural phase represented the main contributor to overall impacts, especially due to fertilizer use, field emissions and land use, while kilning was the main energy hotspot of the industrial phase. For hops, the analysis carried out on Italian farms highlighted high variability in yields, agronomic inputs and post-harvest energy consumption: drying proved to be the most critical phase, with marked differences related to the type of equipment, insulation, airflow management and thermal efficiency. The project therefore identified mitigation strategies based on low-input agriculture, renewable energy use, logistics optimization, steeping-water recovery, improved hop drying technologies and circular valorisation of by-products, including barley residues and hop biomass.

The economic analysis reconstructed the structure of the Italian brewing supply chain at national and territorial level, through the creation of original databases on agricultural breweries, craft breweries, industrial breweries, closed breweries and malting plants. The results highlighted a strongly unbalanced supply chain: on the one hand, a large number of microbreweries and agricultural breweries, fragmented and often economically fragile; on the other hand, a highly concentrated malting phase, which represents the main bottleneck for the development of regional supply chains. Micro-malting proved to be potentially sustainable only in the presence of local raw materials, short logistics, adequate processing volumes and strong coordination among farmers, maltsters and breweries. The project therefore highlighted the strategic role of supply-chain contracts, food districts, collective brands and integrated territorial models in promoting supply-chain localization, reducing dependence on imports and generating added value in rural and marginal areas.

Overall, BREW.IT produced scientific results, conference communications and open-access publications, demonstrating that the sustainability and competitiveness of the Italian brewing sector depend on the coordinated integration of agronomic innovation, low-impact processing technologies, environmental assessment and territorial supply-chain governance.