10 Years of Bolle di Malto: The Taste of Inclusion

From August 25 to September 1 in Biella, Italy’s largest craft beer event returns

Bolle di Malto, Italy’s largest craft beer event, celebrates ten years of taste, culture, and shared future. In 2025, the event embraces the entire city of Biella, transforming it into a grand open-air stage, where every location has a purpose, a story to tell, an experience to live.

“Bolle di Malto was born ten years ago with a simple and revolutionary idea: to put the human being back at the center,” says Raffaele Abbattista, co-founder of the festival. “It wasn’t created to put on a show, but to build community. To bring us together. To restore space for encounters, conversation, storytelling. We chose craft beer as our common thread, but what we celebrate is the dignity of the artisan, their story, the hands that produce, the passion of a territory. For ten years, without ever charging admission. With our first 10 years, we’re not just celebrating an anniversary: we’re launching a vision. We’re planting the seed for the creation of the Italian Beer Salon, a new format that speaks of education, enterprise, and humanity. Because the future is built this way: by putting the human being, finally, back at the center.”

This year the festival, scheduled in Biella from August 25 to September 1, marks a historic milestone with the debut of the Italian Beer Salon, a new format that puts the Italian brewing sector, its excellence, education, and inclusion at the center.

From August 28 to 30, starting at 11:00 AM, in the splendid setting of Piazza Duomo, the Italian Beer Salon comes to life. A space for dialogue and exchange among craft breweries, agri-food, tourism and Horeca ITS Academies, institutions, local organizations, and the public. A program of talks, networking moments, tastings, masterclasses, and multisensory experiences developed in collaboration with the Disability Agenda. A unique opportunity to strengthen the connection between the production world and education, foster new synergies, and build the foundations for the sector’s future, giving value to a supply chain that in Italy counts over 1,000 companies, involves 110,000 operators, and generates tax revenue of 4 billion euros.

Among the Salon’s highlights, the conference “Salumi da Re” curated by Gambero Rosso and hosted by Mara Nocilla, accompanied by a seminar on beer and cured meat pairing. Gambero Rosso will also oversee the food court, with a selection of the best Italian food trucks and pork butchery companies, testifying to the increasingly gastronomic and cultural value of quality beer.

Strengthening the commitment to an increasingly inclusive approach, the Disability Agenda offers 5 multisensory play experiences, which through games and their variations promote accessibility and active participation of people with disabilities.

“We confirm our commitment to quality beer culture,” states Gambero Rosso Editor-in-Chief Lorenzo Ruggeri. “These are the ideal contexts for building the sector and contributing together to the promotion and enhancement of our country’s virtuous productions.”

The heart of reflection on the sector will be Arena Bolle, which will host the fourth edition of the Beer General Assembly – with the patronage of MIMIT and MASAF – and Parole a Bolle, a new narrative format designed to tell the story of business through people. Leading the dialogue will be Filippo Poletti, journalist, writer, and LinkedIn Top Voice, in conversation with Italian food protagonists such as Alfredo Moratti (Amica Chips), Carlo Preve (Riso Gallo), and Lara Ponti (Ponti). Within the Arena Bolle setting, there will be no shortage of comedy moments with Turin’s phenomenon of the year Davide D’Urso, on August 29 at 6:00 PM with his show “Sabaudo.”

There will be no shortage of entertainment and conviviality in the traditional Piazza Martiri della Libertà, which from August 28 to September 1, starting at 6:00 PM, will host the most popular and festive soul of Bolle di Malto. The protagonists will be craft breweries selected from among Italian excellence, with over 300 beer styles to taste and discover. Alongside them, a renewed food court and a local gastronomic offering enhanced by UNPLI Piemonte and the Pro Loco associations.

Music will accompany the evenings with free admission concerts on the central stage of Piazza Martiri: Planet Funk, Stazioni Lunari (with Nada, Ginevra Di Marco, Cristiano Godano – Marlene Kuntz Frontman, Drigo – Negrita Guitarist and Piero Pelù), Daniele Incicco with La Rua, and many artists from the Generation Bolle format, who will give voice to a young and inclusive music culture such as Giulia Mei, Chiamamifaro, and Tigri da Soggiorno. Space also for BDM Sour Jazz, with three free jazz concerts scheduled at Palazzo Ferrero from August 28 to 30.

The program will be completed by BOLLE OFF (August 25–27) and BOLLE OUT (August 28–31), with events spread throughout the area including high-altitude tastings, meditations, urban trekking, yoga, and bike rides among breweries, activities designed to discover the Biella area.

In 2024, beer production stood at 17.1 million hectoliters, marking a very slight decline (-1.90%) compared to the 17.4 million hectoliters of the previous year. Individual consumption also declined slightly with 36.4 liters per capita annually, marking -1.89% compared to 2023.

Data from the craft sector appear to buck the general trend. The number of microbreweries and brewpubs continues to grow so much that in 2024 it breaks through the 1,000 mark, with production data showing a substantial increase (480,000 hl) after the 2023 decline. In 2024, craft beer references also grow, reaching 700, while there is a slight decrease in average alcohol content, which stands at 5.82%, down from 5.89% in 2023: a sign of attention toward more conscious and inclusive consumption.