Andiamo says ‘let’s go’ to low-ABV Italian beers

New Aurora brewery has no taproom, but growing distribution

By the Thirst Team

Two cousins named Kevin Barnes and Brian Terra leaned into their Italian heritage to launch Andiamo (“let’s go!” in Italian) Brew, which crafts low-alcohol versions of classic European beer styles.

Class of 2024
We are closing out 2024 with profiles of a few new breweries that opened this year.

The brews may be low in ABV (alcohol by volume), but they are full of flavor. A pair of Team Thirst judges gave Andiamo a medal in the Pours on the Plains beer competition last summer. 

Their Aurora-based business does not have a taproom, but has lagered pale ales, pilsners and more on tap throughout the metro area. Andiamo Brews have been served at Stanley Beer Hall, the First Draft Taproom, Copper Kettle Brewing Co. and more. They expect to have liquor store distribution soon. Click here to find their beers.

We recently checked in with Terra about the brewery after the first few months in business. 

Brian Terra works the tanks at Andiamo Brew

Why did you start your brewery?

The co-founders are Kevin Barnes and me (Brian Terra). We are cousins who share Italian-American heritage through our mothers. Growing up we spent time together mostly at our grandparents house, and were taught to be proud of this heritage and Italian culture, celebrating the love of music, game playing and of course food and drink. 

As is commonly known, Italian grandmothers love to implore their grandkids to “mangia mangia” or “eat more!” We bonded over this shared heritage and experience at birthdays, holidays, and over playing football and basketball out front and cheering for the 49ers.

As we grew older we would visit our grandparents less frequently and when we did, it was more often separately than together. They changed their harping from just eating more to include “why don’t you visit your cousin?” By the time our grandparents passed away, we hardly knew each other anymore despite living close to each other and even having gone to the same college at the same time. It’s a shame.

Kevin had moved to San Diego to pursue a career in brewing, and I had moved to San Francisco to work in the restaurant industry. We decided it was time to reconnect to fulfill our grandparents’ wishes and reform our bond. While I was visiting San Diego, Kevin asked if I liked IPAs. Of course, being in the food and drinks business in the Bay Area, I was a huge fan.

Enter Green Flash Palate Wrecker, and we became best friends once again. We continued to visit each other and enjoy the hoppiest Double IPAs we could find. We vowed to start a brewery together within 10 years. We got busy with life, as you do, but both found ourselves with some extra time 10 years later and committed to making it happen. 

By now we had become husbands and fathers and our love for hops did not translate to a continued love for Double IPAs. We found ourselves looking for lower and lower ABV beers instead, and not just American style hoppy beers but also traditional European style ales and lagers as well. We decided to create our brewery with a focus on big flavors and small ABVs. 

What makes your beer unique?

We brew low-alcohol beers you can thoroughly enjoy and still get going for the rest of the day. Beers that honor European tradition and precision but also embrace American innovation, creativity and envelope-pushing. 

Andiamo Brew is named with the Italian word for “Let’s Go!,” because we are amped about low ABV beers. Each of our beers features some kind of nod to our Italian heritage, making us not only one of the only breweries exclusively making low ABV beers, but also the only one with a focus on an Italian theme. 

What’s next?

We are currently working on some exciting and interesting new beers. First, people have been asking us if we are going to do a cream ale, and flavored cream ales do seem to be a trend.

We sampled many at the Arapahoe County Fair this summer. We decided to create our cream ales with a decidedly Italian character, and we are working on a gelato beer series. We currently have plans for lemon gelato and affogato (gelato with espresso) beers, with plenty more ideas for future releases.  

On that espresso front, we also plan to introduce a unique blend of two ubiquitous Italian liquids. We call it Caffetino, and it’s an Italian red lager made with espresso. It will be a low-ABV beer, but brewed to have the flavor of a full-strength red bock beer with a strong complementary coffee aroma and taste.  

We plan to release Caffetino around January, and will use coffee from Purple Door, with whom we are collaborating on the beer.  

Lastly, keeping not only Italian beverage trends but also American hoppy beer experimentation in mind, we are developing an Italian-American grape ale that we call RosèPA. The beer will use a thiolized yeast strain, hops high in grape character, mash hopping to add thiols, and lots of Pinot Noir juice to create a rose-colored and massively tropical thirst quencher and category blender.