La fabbrica di birra di Pedavena
The history
The history
The brothers Luigi, Sante and Giovanni Luciani came in Pedavena, where there was plenty of water of excellent quality, in the far 1896 and here they began to build a new factory, that would have become the Pedavena brewery.
This new plant starter the beer production already in 1897, but it took ten years to achieve an annual capability of 10.000 hl. We have to consider that, at the beginning of the XX century, the beer industry was very backward in comparison with the rest of Europe. The national annual production of beer was about 145.000 hl, equal to a consumption of 1,5 liter per person.
Until the first world war, the brewery grew rich with new plants and the beer became more and more diffuse in the part of Italy called Triveneto (the North-east of Italy).
In 1917, with the austro-ungaric invasion, the factory was sacked of its copper shaft and it was partially destroyed in a fire. So, at the end of the war it was necessary to build up everything over again. In those years, they built the maltery, the first in Italy with a pneumatic machine for the transport of malt. In this period it was tried to cultivate hop in Italy. In 1920 the Pedavena plant achieve an annual production of 90.000 hl, becoming the second brewery in the national territory.
We have to go straight to 1927 to have the fulfillment of the new wonderful brew house, with four shaft built up with an excellent copper alloy, completed with mosaics and bas-reliefs, which preserve their beauty at a distance of seventy years, being for the people belonging to the beer world an symbol of the synergy between production and tradition.
In 1928 the Luciani Brothers acquired the Dreher brewery, situated in Trieste, built up in 1869 by Anton Dreher, from Vienna; this plant was specialized in the production of low fermentation beers.
After the second world war, the beer consumption in Italy grew up greatly; the group of Luciani brothers acquired other new breweries, in Torino, Genova e Macomer. In 1965, in Massafra (Taranto), it was inaugurated a new plant, one of the most modern breweries in Europe. This plant was destined to become the biggest of the group in 1980, after following enlargements.
At the end of sixties, it was necessary for the group to concentrate own efforts on one only brand, to hit the Italian market. It was chosen the Dreher Beer.
In 1953-54, at the "Carlo Rizzarda" professional institute, it was opened the first and last brewering school in Italy. This school went on with creating new brew masters until 1977-78 and still now, a lot of people who are working for the group (managers included) have been seated under those school benches.
After a period of glory, in 1974 the Birra Dreher Group was handed over to the Dutch Heineken Group and in that occasion, Mr. Heineken came to visit the Pedavena plant.
Since, the main investments made in Pedavena by Heineken group have been:
- in 1983, the new cellar with cylinder-conical tanks for the fermentation and storage (double-purpose), the new bright beer cellar and three new fillers for the keg line
- in 1984 the enlargement and technological adjustment of the brew house
- in 1987 it was built a new shed for the enlargement of the keg line
- in 1987 the new bottling line began to work
Recognitions and Awards
There are no doubts that the Pedavena brewery has repaired fully the Heineken group, achieving recognitions and awards and being the best practice whom the other plants could learn by. In this site, we remind you:
- 1989 - Productivity award Heineken Italia
- 1995 - Pedavena was the first plant of the Operation Company Heineken Italia to achieve the ISO certification
- 1995 - Commendation for the plant which has obtained the biggest improvements in the year among all the Heineken brewery in the world
- 1996 - Quality Award Heineken Olanda for the best Heineken beer in the world (we have been the only plant in Italy to obtain this award till now!)
- 1997 - Quality award Heineken Italia
- 1997 - Implementation, first in Heineken Italia, of the working system called Team Based Organization (T.B.O.)
- 2002 - Commendation for the plant which has obtained the biggest improvements in the year among all the Heineken brewery in the world
- 2004 - The SGS, certification agency that check the product in the supermarkets, gave us the best score (no defects) with Heineken Beer and other brands (Dreher and Moretti). Concerning Heineken, is our second consecutive "en plein": we achieve the same result in the first quarter of the year as well, with 100% of bottles and boxes tested with no defects. These performances came after very good results obtained in 2003, that had a great improvement compared with the previous years.
- 2004 - Third place in the category Strong Ale with the beer Moretti "Doppio Malto" produced in Pedavena at the international Grand Prix of the beer, which took place in the USA, among more than 1.500 kinds of beer.
- 2005 - Bronze medal for "Moretti La Rossa" in the category "Strong Beer" and bronze medal for "Moretti Doppio Malto" in the category "Ale" produced in Pedavena at the challenge "Wine & Spirit International Beer Challenge 2005" organized in London.
- 2005 - "Moretti Doppio Malto" and "Moretti La Rossa" produced in Pedavena received last June two important prices at the Australian International Beer Award 2005 and at the Superior Taste Award in Bruxelles.
The legend of the jug and the wind
"Once upon a time", in Pedavena, where the storm had been raging for days and days, the old host dreamed a sorceress, who suggest him the way to appease the storm: to create a nectar which looks like the mountain peaks and to offer it to the wind in the most precious tankard of his. The old host took from the cellar the most affected beer of his, with its snow-white foam which looks like the mountain ridge. He filled a silver tankard with it and put it in the main square of Pedavena.
At the first toll of the bell-tower, the sow stop falling down ant the wind stopped blowing.
How was Pedavena beer created? And why here?
Here you are some abstracts from the small book written in the nineties, when we start to produce again the Pedavena beer, after a period it miss the Italian market:
For 700 years the beer has been a natural and wholesome pleasure, especially when it can boast of genuine and selected raw materials. (...) Not casually, the founder of Pedavena choose, among a lot of places, the small town at the feet of Avena Mountain: wholesome and rich of pure spring water (...)
(...) The composition of the Pedavena beer is simple and crystalline: the best barley, sweet-smelling hop, spring water and the purest yeasts. Probably for this, the foam of this beer reminds with its smell the Dolomiti mountain.
(...) Its typical taste is the result of a formula handed on from every brewmaster to his follower in Pedavena. (...)
And, about the Pedavena plant, we can read:
(...) The most ancient wing of the brewery, with the old-fashioned mosaics ant the typical copper boilers, today is a national monument, open to the public. The building is the destination of a lot of tourists, as it looks like a big castle always alive, with the pub near it and a wonderful park, where there was a zoo till some years ago.
The Centenary Pedavena Beer
In 1997 the brewery celebrated "its first century of life" and, for this occasion, the brewmasters of Pedavena created a new beer: "The Centenary", not filtered and not pasteurized beer, that you can taste only in the pub near the brewery, with its freshness and savouriness.
Being a very delicate product that you have to drink within very short time from the production, there is a synergy between the pub and the brewmaster of Pedavena to preserve intact all the characteristics of the beer and to grant its quality.
And it's just for its "uniqueness" and its particular freshness that the Centenary beer is the most requested and appreciated by the consumer of the pub.