An Umbrian agronomist, three friends and a small plant in Fidenza.

Toccalmatto began brewing in Fidenza, a town in the province of Parma in Emilia-Romagna, in October 2008. The company said on its own website that production started that month on a plant of 550 litres per brew, and it described the brewery as the personal dream of its founder, Bruno Carilli, who set out on the project with three friends. The food site Scatti di Gusto, in a profile published in September 2010, gives the same date and adds that groundwork had begun in March 2008 and that the brewery opened with four partners and a detailed strategic plan.

Carilli did not come to beer from the usual homebrewing route alone. Scatti di Gusto says he is from Umbria, trained as an agronomist at Perugia and spent years in food-industry logistics, first at Cirio Bertolli De Rica and then at other multinational groups. In 1997 he joined Carlsberg at Induno Olona, near Varese, as director of logistics and purchasing, and stayed until 2003. It was there, the profile says, that his interest in beer and especially in hops took hold, and that he began brewing at home on a small kit, trying blanche, saison, Belgian strong ale and bitter. The Induno Olona site is the historic home of Birra Poretti, which Carlsberg has owned outright since 2002.

Later, while working for the Consorzio Agrario di Parma in Fidenza, Carilli brewed experimental batches with two homebrewers, one of whom became a partner, Scatti di Gusto reported. The brewery’s first brewer was Andrea Paini. Only four months after opening, Toccalmatto showed six beers at the Pianeta Birra trade fair in 2009, the same profile says, and by 2010 the brewing team was Alessio Gatti, Marcello Ceresa and Carilli himself. The company later summed up its early influences as the living, bottle-conditioned beers of the Belgian and British traditions.

Hops first, Belgian yeast and a name for every beer.

Hops were the centre of the range from the start. Scatti di Gusto wrote in 2010 that Carilli’s knowledge of hops shaped a line-up leaning towards American pale ales and IPAs, made with techniques such as dry hopping, and praised the beers for originality rather than strict adherence to style. The company called hops the “ingrediente principe” of its production and said its long relationships with growers and merchants around the world gave it access to new varieties for its experiments. It also said that all of its beers were top-fermented and naturally refermented in every format, whether bottle, keg or cask.

The beer most tied to the name is Zona Cesarini, an IPA. The company’s timeline says it was presented in 2010 at Domus Birrae in Rome, describes it as a Pacific IPA and calls it one of the brewery’s leading products. The 2010 profile lists other early beers with characteristic names: Surfing Hop, an imperial IPA with Belgian yeast; Sibilla, a saison; Ambrosia, a blanche with elderflower, heather and jasmine; and Jadis, a double blanche made with the must of Fortana grapes, both of the last two inspired by the Belgian brewer Pierre Celis. Later beers on the company website included Stray Dog, Stria, Re Hop, Skianto, Madame Satan and Maciste.

The way the range was presented carried the brand’s voice. The website’s title in 2024 read “Toccalmatto | The Beer Freakshow”, and its pages used the line “Born to Be Different, Born to Brew Different”. The beers were sorted into groups called “Easy Drinkin’” and “Hop Freaks”, with limited editions alongside, and the company said it enjoyed making “one shot” beers, brewed once on a whim, with a rare ingredient or as a collaboration with visiting brewers. Its blog in early 2021 ran a conversation with Brian Strumke of Stillwater Artisanal.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian beer names: Baladin, Birra del Borgo, Forst, Birra Poretti, Lambrate, Birrificio Italiano and Toccalmatto. Two are nineteenth-century breweries. Forst was founded in 1857 at Forst, near Merano in South Tyrol, and has been in the hands of the Fuchs family since Josef Fuchs took it over in 1863, Italian Wikipedia says. Poretti brewed its first beer at Induno Olona, near Varese, in December 1877 under its founder Angelo Poretti; Carlsberg bought half of the business in 1982 and has owned it outright since 2002, according to Italian Wikipedia and VareseNews.

The other five belong to Italy’s craft-beer era. 1996 was a busy year: Teo Musso began brewing at Baladin in Piozzo, Piedmont, where he had opened the Le Baladin pub in 1986; Agostino Arioli and his brother Stefano opened Birrificio Italiano as a brewpub at Lurago Marinone, near Como, moving production to Limido Comasco in 2012, Il Sole 24 Ore reported; and Lambrate poured its first beer in the Milan district of the same name, founded by Giampaolo and Davide Sangiorgi with Fabio Brocca. Birra del Borgo followed in 2005 at Borgorose, Lazio, founded by Leonardo Di Vincenzo, and has been wholly owned by AB InBev since April 2016; in June 2026 it began a procedure towards ceasing activity, Beverfood reported. Toccalmatto was started by Bruno Carilli in Fidenza, near Parma, in 2008, and the Tribunale di Parma declared the judicial liquidation of its company in February 2025.

A beer’s identity is carried by a name, a label and the place it promises, while the company behind it may have changed hands or moved its brewing. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A bigger plant, a Belgian partner and a court procedure.

The brewery grew in steps. The company says a new plant opened in 2015 in Fidenza’s industrial area, eight times the size of the first, while the original site kept its shop; the same period brought 33cl bottles and a barrel room for ageing beer. In 2020, the company says, it installed its own canning line inside the brewery, starting with four beers in cans: Zona Cesarini, Skianto, Madame Satan and a new beer, Fistful of Hops.

In 2017 Toccalmatto tied itself to the Caulier beer brand. Cronache di Birra reported on 3 July 2017 that the two had announced a partnership, that its terms had not been disclosed, that the Fidenza plant would become the reference brewery for Caulier’s Italian market and that Carilli would be its director. Beverfood reported the next day that the collaboration had begun with two Caulier beers, an IPA and an Imperial Pils, brewed at Toccalmatto. In October 2017 the trade site Inside.beer described the deal as a joint venture between equals, with Carilli in charge of the technical side and Caulier’s Eric Coppieters leading international expansion.

On 27 February 2025 the Tribunale di Parma declared the judicial liquidation, or liquidazione giudiziale, of Birra Toccalmatto Srl, the Fidenza company behind the brand, according to the procedure’s public record on the Fallco creditors’ portal, which listed hearings on creditors’ claims through 2026. The brewery’s old web address, birratoccalmatto.com, carried the company site until at least May 2024, Internet Archive captures show, displayed a registrar’s holding page by June 2025 and no longer belongs to the brewery.

For a design guide, Toccalmatto shows how a small brewery can build an identity out of hop-forward recipes, vivid beer names and a “freakshow” voice. Compare Birra Poretti, brewed at the Carlsberg site where Carilli first worked with beer, and Birrificio Italiano, the Lombardy brewpub opened in 1996. For this guide we use hop green, amber and label cream with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Toccalmatto’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.