|
Italy’s new craft beers have attained a certain cachet with exotic ingredients and colorful labels. A new line of Italian brews with a different sort of cachet is now entering the import market; they are brewed by Italian prison inmates.
Like Italian craft beers in general, the beers of Pausa Café have a strong connection with the Slow Food movement. Beginning with the commodities of coffee and chocolate, Pausa Café (Coffee Break in English), began as a sociological cooperative project working on two levels. It was founded with the central mission to demonstrate that it was possible to take the problem of coffee (very impoverished producers, treated with unjust international trade practices, often making less than the cost of production beans) and the problem of prison inmates (who may have certain skills but can’t get a job or any assistance after being released from the prisons, thus being forced to return to crime in order to survive) and work towards some solutions to these two issues under the same roof.
By working directly with coffee bean growers in Guatemala and cacao (the raw material for chocolate) farmers in Costa Rica, the project sought to eliminate the costly chain of supply for coffee and chocolate and put more money, and recognition, in the hands of the farmers (similar to the Fair Trade movement). The second level revolves around rehabilitating prison inmates with meaningful skills and creative work which can be utilized after their release.
The founders of Pausa Café began their coffee roasting project in the Lorusso e Cotugno prison in Torino in 2004; the chocolate project was added in 2007. The beer project followed last year, incorporating a 15-bbl. brewing system into the Rudolfo Morando prison in the town of Saluzzo. The coop tapped Andrea Bertola, who formerly brewed with Daniel Meinero at Troll Brewery in Piedmont, as their brewer; he went to work developing recipes.
The American connection came through Michael Opalenski of the importers B. United International who have made Italian beers a specialty over the past few years. opalenski, a Rhode Islander with some Italian roots — his parents both met and lived in Italy and his grandfather was in the diplomatic corps in Rome — decided to parlay his philosophy degree into further study at Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo. Towards the end of his three and a half year stint he had the opportunity to participate in some tastings for a new Slow Food Guide to Italian Beer.
The beers of Pausa Café gave him pause to say the least. He was particularly intrigued by Chicca, a beer brewed with both green and roasted coffee beans, and Tosta, a 12% barleywinish brew made with cocoa paste, chocolate’s raw state, before the addition of sugar, etc. The other Pausa Café beers are Taquamari, an organic and biodynamic beer using tapioca, quinoa, basmati rice and amaranth, and a traditional Bohemian Pils aged in washed Slovenian wood barrels.
Opalenski reached out to brewer Bertola and visited the prison brewery. “The two prisons are very different places,” he said. “No one has a sentence over 10 years in Torino. It’s very large and the inmates are quite friendly. Saluzzo’s smaller and quite dismal and the inmates typically have longer sentences.” He said he talked with the prison psychologist at Saluzzo. “In the winter they only get 30 minutes a day outside in a small square. They dream of touching trees.”
Back in the U.S., when opalenski was hired last year by B. United’s president, Matthias Neidhart , he immediately spilled the beans on Pausa Café’s unique project.
“Michael’s Pausa Café project perfectly fit our company philosophy,” Neidhart said. “When we started in 1995 my ultimate objective was to create a ‘true learning organization’ making ‘products of highest flavor/aroma complexity, continuous improvement, curiosity, innovation, knowledge, training, and humility’ the critical attributes of our organization. About three years ago we added the dimensions ‘social responsibility’ and ‘environmental responsibility.’
“The only concern we had,” said Neidhart, “was ‘did the quality of Pausa Café ales meet our highest standards?’ When we finally had an opportunity to taste Chicca, Tosta, and Taquamari, we were speechless…blown away...and silent. We had rarely ever tasted anything quite like it.”
Opalenski said that currently two inmates work in the brewery and five in the coffee and chocolate facility in Torino. “It’s not for everyone, but for those who are ready, it teaches them a trade and helps with the process of reintegration. It’s an alternative to turning back to their old ways when they get out,” he said. Two “graduates” of the program are already working for Pausa Cafes outside prison walls.
Opalenski told me the story at The Ginger Man, over an Italian beer of course Quarta Runa made with peaches by the Montegioco brewery unfolded nicely as it warmed a little. Maybe the next beer we share, we’ll be able to reflect on the help we are giving to keep someone in Italy on the straight and narrow as well as to the survival of farmers in the mountains of Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
|
