HALFWAY through our six-course tasting menu of regional Piemontese cuisine, the sommelier arrived with a special beverage to accompany the plate of raviolini stuffed with local pumpkin and asparagus.  I think this will go well, because it matches the sweetness of the pumpkin, he said, setting down a glass not of wine, but of a slightly oxidized golden ale, which, he explained, had been fermented with wine yeast and had spent four years aging in the bottle.  A cold beer might seem like a strange pairing for traditional Italian cuisine, especially in the heart of wine-loving Piedmont, but the entire meal that night was based on local brews, and the sommelier himself was Teo Musso, a brewmaster with near-rock-star status in the Italian culinary scene. Through his artful small brewery, Le Baladin, Mr. Musso has helped bridge the worlds of craft beer and fine dining, ensuring that fine beers have a large presence in Eataly, Turins high-end supermarket, and founding his own beer-themed restaurant and hotel, Casa Baladin, where my wife and I stayed one night this spring.  I want people to think of my beer as something that belongs on a table in a good restaurant, Mr. Musso said. I do not want them to think of it as something from the pub.  If fact, it would be hard to mistake Mr. Mussos creations for pub pints: beyond the wild flavors, most of his beers are available only in custom-shaped wine bottles, many of which sell in shops for around 30 euros (about $40 at $1.32 to the euro).  But Baladin is hardly alone: Around Italy, a craft beer scene has sprung up, bringing well-made specialty brews into haute cuisine dining rooms and elevating the fare served in brew pubs, creating an attractive destination for beer lovers who also love great food.  Italian brewers have done a wonderful job of making it clear that they are the same sort of artisans as chefs and others involved in food, said Stan Hieronymus, the author of Brew Like a Monk, who is making his own trip to the region this fall. That makes a trip to Italy to find more of these beers and to experience them, along with local cuisine, particularly appealing.  After hearing so much about that appeal, my wife and I decided to make a five-day road trip to see what the fuss was all about, focusing on two regions with growing reputations in the beer world: Piedmont, along Italys French border, and, next-door, Lombardy, which borders Switzerland. Most travelers would probably want to start in Milan, Lombardys capital and the heart of the regions beer scene, though for our purposes it was easier to drive a rental car in via Munich, through Switzerland and Liechtenstein.  After about five hours of driving past shadowy Alpine peaks and spring snowbanks illuminated by crystalline sunbeams, we came to the Italian border, where we flashed our passports and tried to adjust to the new landscape  bumpier roads, narrower lanes, bizarre detours and cars that seemed to have a higher gear. The chill of the Alps was difficult to remember in the sudden heat as we gazed at the noble villas, overgrown with ivy and oleander, overlooking the valley and the lake. Along the way, we stopped to take photographs of shuttered villages, walled cemeteries and romantically decrepit abandoned factories, before finally reaching our first brew pub, Birrificio Italiano, in the small town of Lurago Marinone. The pubs legendary beers had brought tourists from around the world to the glorious Alpine foothills minutes from the shore of Lake Como.  We celebrated our arrival with a couple of the brewerys pilsner-style beers, a ubiquitous, often-overlooked style that Birrificio Italianos brewmaster, Agostino Arioli, has attempted to redeem with hoppier, more flavorful versions, traveling to Germany to select his own hops.  As we sipped our lagers, commenting on their vibrant bitterness, a jazz band set up on the pubs small stage, beginning to play just as our appetizers arrived: a plate of poppy-seed toast with rich toma cheese and a sticky, gooey beer jelly, accompanied by a glass of the brewerys Scires, a wine-like strong ale flavored with local cherries. Our main courses quickly followed: a chunky, inch-and-a-half-thick pork chop, and scottata alla piastra, a plate of paper-thin grilled pork fillets, both of which were marinated in the brewerys malty Bibock ale, which made an excellent accompaniment. The same flavors showed up in our shared dessert: a panna cotta made extra sweet and slightly bitter with a dose of Bibock, which combined perfectly with the light dusting of chocolate on the puddings top.  As I finished the meal, I found myself thinking: If this is what Italys craft beers are like, they can keep the wines.  MILAN might be best known as Italys fashion capital, but it has a growing reputation for beer lovers, in part owing to whats said to be the citys first brew pub, Lambrate.  When we started 12 years ago, the quality of Italian beer was fairly low, said its brewmaster, Fabio Brocca, pouring a pint of Lambrates Ghisa smoked stout. But that meant that people were free to pursue their wishes to make whatever they wanted. And little by little, the beer got a lot better.  A lot better indeed. The 180-degree opposite of the gassy, golden lagers that dominate Italys industrial beer production, my pint of Ghisa was hefty and malty with a clean, dry finish followed by a lingering smoky note. Like all of the beers from Birrificio Lambrate, it was impressive, though the beer selection was overshadowed  at least in variety  by the bars happy hour spread.  Overwhelmed by the number of dishes, I grabbed my notebook and a pen. Without making a prioritized list, I would have no idea where to begin.  More than 30 different plates and trays offered such atypical beer snacks as a shaved fennel salad, fava beans, caperberries, marinated mushrooms, cooked zucchini, pizzas and more variations on pasta salad than I could realistically hope to sample.  The vast spread and constantly replenished platters made for a festive atmosphere, and I couldnt help but notice how different the crowd was from the stodgy beer fans in countries like England: in the place of folk music, the stereo was playing punk rock; in the place of cardigan sweaters and ratty beards, the crowd at Lambrate displayed multiple piercings and tattoos. It felt less like a pub than a house party, with flashes of friendly smiles and blasts of shared laughter bursting out among the clientele.  The next day, I found similarly young and edgy beer fans in Milan going through the wares at A Tutta Birra, a shop that overflows one tiny, wood-paneled room with hundreds of bottles, glasses, lamps and other beer paraphernalia from around the world.  Most of our customers are interested in beers of the highest quality, like those from Belgium, said Vittorio Panzeri, who owns the shop with his wife, Flavia Nasini. About 30 or 40 percent are more interested in Italian craft beers.  Glancing at the local bottles, I could see their appeal: unlike many of the imports, most of the local craft brews showed an Italian eye for stylish design in everything from the labels typeface to the bottles shape. Before we got back on the road, our rental cars trunk acquired several beautiful examples, many of which, I feared, would not make it all the way home.  That day we drove west from Milan, past sprawling industrial areas and vast tilled fields of farmland until we toured through the gently rolling foothills of Piedmont. We stopped for lunch, sightseeing during the afternoon in Bra, getting lost in the narrow streets off the main square before a local pointed us to the celebrated Slow Food restaurant LOsteria del Boccondivino. Fortified with a simple but elegant two-course lunch of chicken with aceto balsamico and fusilli with ragù, we moved on, driving past flowering chestnut groves and signs for the tasting rooms of the regions legendary winemakers.  After a long day of driving, our navigator finally directed us to the village of Chieri, near Turin, where we found our next brewery, Birrificio Grado Plato. After checking into a surprisingly stylish and yet inexpensive hotel nearby, it was time to sample the brew pubs line of beers and its unique culinary specialty: snails.  EVAN RAIL, a frequent contributor to the Travel section, is the author of Good Beer Guide: Prague and the Czech Republic.
In the regions of Lombardy and Piedmont, a nascent craft beer scene has begun to emerge, bringing well-made brews into the dining rooms of some of the country’s best restaurants.