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The beer that may some day make Milan famous is quite unlike the usual watery Italian brew. On the autostrada running west out of Milan, the first German brewery to be built in Italy is now under construction. When it goes into production next spring, the Prinzen Brau brewery will produce 1,350,000 gallons of heady, German-style beer a year. The man behind Prinzen Braeu: West Germany's Rudolph-August Oetker, 46, a publicity-shunning tycoon who has built an inherited baking powder business into a 100-company complex with interests ranging from shipping to insurance.

After centuries of tippling almost exclusively on wine, Italians are now drinking beer in mounting quantities; since 1957, their per capita consumption of beer has increased to 1 1/2 gal. a year--not much, but enough to make a brewer's mouth water at the future prospects. To ensure a splashing welcome for his product, Oetker has prudently included a handful of leading Italian businessmen in his new venture. Prinzen Braeu's president is Dr. Giovanni Maria Vitelli, head of Turin's influential Chamber of Commerce, and among the members of the company's board is Count Piero Bonelli, a Fiat general director. The brewing will be done by German brewmasters, whose beer is more malty than Italian brews and also contains more alcohol (3.6%, v. 2.5% for most Italian beers).

Prinzen Braeu will sell for the same price as Italian beer--16-c- per bottle--and should benefit from an intensive advertising campaign already undertaken by the Italian beer industry. Until recently, the industry's favorite slogan was "Drink beer and you will live to be 100." But that was dropped after not one of the 30 centenarians rounded up by the beer barons for a much ballyhooed Roman banquet would testify that it was beer that had done the trick. The industry's new slogan is a little more ageless: "Beer is good for you and refreshing."

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