Podcasts

OZ97a — a great British hop

Hop flower Perhaps you saw an article in a recent BBC News magazine about how US craft beer is inspiring British brewers. The Americans say they’re not bound by tradition, with the clear implication that the Brits are. And yet it was insipid American beers — like making love in a canoe, we used to say — that triggered the rise of microbreweries and craft beers. Now very hoppy beers with all kinds of flavours are big there, and increasingly big in the UK, and one result has been a resurgence of interest in British-bred hops. One of these, OZ97a, is being hailed as a new star of British brewing, not least by Mark Dredge, an award-winning beer writer. I read about OZ97a at Pencil and Spoon, Mark’s blog. Of course I had to talk to him.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:00 — 4.5MB)

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS | More

The thing about OZ97a is that it isn’t a new variety. It was bred in the late 1940s or early 1950s, but when brewers first got a whiff of it, in 1960, they rejected it out of hand. Way too tasty, with all that fruitiness. Not what beer-drinkers want. But with the rise of intensely flavourful US beers, by 2012 OZ97a was ripe for a renaissance, and a couple of test batches confirmed it as a great hop. So how had it survived? In a field genebank, run by the British Hop Association.

It is quite common to hear that genebanks should be maintained as a source of breeding material to adapt to changing conditions. But this is the first time I’ve heard of the changing tastes of consumers being the conditions that need adapting to.

Notes

  1. Mark Dredge’s book Craft Beer World will be available at the end of April 2013.
  2. The Food Programme has reported on hops and on the rise of US craft beers
  3. Another genebank beer in the news is about to be launched. It was brewed from Chevalier, a century-old barley in the John Innes Centre’s genebank, re-evaluated because it is resistant to Fusarium wilt.
  4. Photo of a hop flower by Ronald Bunnik.
  5. Music by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com.

Engage

You might also like:

  1. How great Canadian wheat ruined industrial bread The cheaper the flour, the more profitable the bread George Weston created Garfield Weston, who created Allied Bakeries to improve British bread by selling more Canadian wheat. Then came the Chorleywood Bread Process....
  2. Knives: the new bling Bling, the Urban Dictionary tells me, is an onomatopoeic representation of light bouncing off a diamond. Or a Bob Kramer original hand-made chef’s knife, which goes for $2000 and up. Of course some people might be able to justify spending...
  3. Who owns whom in the food industry Made from concentrate The number of firms that own the food brands you see is much smaller than you think. That's not good for consumers or suppliers....
  4. A second helping of citrus in Italy Not a lemon, nominated for an award This episode is a repeat of one first published in October 2014, and the reason is that it has been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. I’m utterly thrilled by the news, and gratified that more people have downloaded...

One comment

  1. Pingback: New beer from old hops

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *