Birreria Menabrea

The establishment's date of birth dates back to 1846, when G. Welf of Gressoney and the brothers Antonio and Gian Battista Caraccio, coffee makers in Biella, founded a laboratory to produce beer, with the aim of making the most of the pure waters that flow from the mountains. of Oropa, then used mainly by the flourishing wool industry in the area.

In 1864 Giuseppe Giuseppe Menabrea, together with his partner Antonio Zimmermann, bought the plant for 95 thousand lire. The company is doing very well: it produces a blonde beer type Pilsener and a dark type Monaco, the latter is also appreciated by the Minister of Finance and founder of the Italian Alpine Club Quintino Sella and, on October 5, 1882, receives the appointment as Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy.

In 1896 the first exponent of the Thedy family (the same family that governs the fate of the company today) takes over the leadership of the company. The two brothers-in-law Emilio Thedy and Agostino Antoniotti, husbands of Eugenia and Albertina Menabrea, founded a company that continues the beer production business.

Since the eighties of the last century, the brewery has produced about 36 thousand hectoliters of beer annually, to reach and then exceed 40 thousand. After a careful examination of the markets, the company decides to add English and German imported products alongside its traditional Edel Bier product.

Nowadays, the Menabrea brewery, led by Paolo Thedy (fourth descendant of the family), produces about 100,000 hectoliters of which a small part is exported to about 20 countries around the world.

As for other historic Italian breweries, the Menabrea plant, which has always been in the Riva district, is an excellent example of industrial archeology, carefully and scrupulously looked after by the owners. Even the latest works, linked to the expansion of the brewery's cellars, have not affected the historic façade of the building, in which a votive shrine built decades ago still testifies today to the Marian devotion of the local population, who gathered at the brewery when the Madonna of Oropa was taken on pilgrimage to the Biella area, and the Menabrea factory was one of the first stops on the journey of the faithful.

Attached to the historic brewery, the restaurant is housed in the old stables of the factory and offers excellent cuisine with an international character whose delicacies can be washed down with a unique beer: Menabrea, of course. Since 1983 the management of the restaurant has been entrusted to the Patti family.