Beer and brewing

Tenth in the list stands le unità di amaro, the bitterness units, and the word amaro is worth following out of the brewery. As an adjective it does exactly what « bitter » does in English: una birra amara, un caffè amaro, un sapore amaro. But both languages have taken that adjective, made a noun of it, and arrived at two drinks that have nothing to do with each other. Un amaro, plural gli amari, is the dark herbal digestif poured at the end of a meal, and prendiamo un amaro closes a long lunch rather than ordering anything with hops in it. « A bitter » in English is a pale cask ale, and « a pint of bitter » asks for beer and nothing else. English then keeps a third helping in the plural: « bitters » is the concentrated aromatic flavouring that goes into a cocktail by the drop, which is the closest thing to the Italian noun and is still not it. Three drinks, one adjective — and on this list amaro is none of them. Here it is only the taste, counted in units.