Hop pioneer

Citra pioneer

When John Bryan discovered a new hop in the United States, he brought a batch home and changed the course of British brewing. Now, as he retires after 20 years of brewing, he looks back on his career, with Roger Protz

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY C FRENCH

John Bryan bowed out from Oakham

Ales in style. He took to the skies in a World War II Spitfire and performed a barrel roll over the Cambridgeshire countryside. It had to be a barrel roll – he’s the former head brewer.

John sat behind the pilot and was allowed to take over the controls for a few moments. The pilot said he was impressed by John’s ability, without any training, to steer the plane. But he was talking about the man who, singlehandedly and without a co-pilot, changed the face of British beer.

For it was John who discovered a new American hop, brought it back home and brewed a beer that entranced drinkers and went on to win many awards. The hop and the beer are called Citra. Drinkers were introduced to the flavours of citrus fruits, markedly different to the grassy, spicy, peppery and blackcurrant character of English varieties.

So why, having achieved so much, has John decided to step down from Oakham at the early age of 50?

“It was the opportunity, after 27 years at Oakham, to do something else,” he says. There was also sadness involved. “Eight people I knew well, including close friends like Roger Ryman [St Austell head brewer] died – and that was before Covid. My girlfriend had had a stroke and I decided to stop working eight days a week and live a quieter life.”

As well as the main plant at Woodston, John, as brewing director, was also in charge of beer production at the city-centre Brewery Tap. He was further devastated when his head brewer, Alex Kean, was killed in an accident in December 2021. It was time for a break.

“I’d achieved everything I wanted to,” he says. “And expansion at Woodston had been put on hold because of Covid.”

John is from farming stock in Cambridgeshire. He says he never took to the farming life and when his father decided to sell the business, he knew he had to look for another career. As a hobby, he’d brewed at home using kits, then moved to full mash.

“I also knew about crops,” he says, “so I understood the basics of making beer. I met a few brewers, including John Wood, the founder of Oakham. I offered to lend him a hand and helped with brewing. When John said he was leaving in 1995, Paul Hook, the new owner, kept me on and promoted me to head brewer.”

John went on a short course to improve his brewing skills, then took over the 35-barrel brewery Paul had installed in a former Labour Exchange in Peterborough’s Westgate in 1998. It’s designed along the lines of an American brewery taproom and was called the biggest brewpub in Europe.

“For the first six months, I was never fully in control of brewing,” John admits. “But there were no calamities and I muddled through.” The main beer was JHB (3.8 per cent ABV), which put Oakham on the map when it won the Champion Beer of Britain competition in 2001. Bishops Farewell (4.6 per cent), first brewed for Peterborough beer festival to mark the retirement of Bishop William Westwood from the city’s cathedral, was brought back as a regular brew.

“There weren’t many hoppy beers

around in my early drinking days,” John says. “Cains FA [5 per cent] was good and I discovered Exmoor Ale [3.8 per cent] and Hop Back Summer Lightning [5 per cent]. When I first tasted Sierra Nevada Pale Ale [5.6 per cent] in the US, I thought it was insane and it encouraged me to increase the hop rate of JHB.”

He had the good fortune to meet Paul Corbett, MD of hop merchant Charles Faram. In 2002, Paul took John to the US hop fields to see the varieties available. Other brewers joined the annual trips but they dropped out in 2009, which proved a fateful year. John went alone with Paul and they drove thousands of miles between farms in Oregon and Washington State.

And then came epiphany. “One farmer said he had a new experimental hop. Sierra Nevada had used it in Torpedo IPA [7.2 per cent] and the farmer

had a small amount left over. When I rubbed it and sniffed it, my hair stood on end. I knew it was special, with gooseberry and lychee aromas. The farmer said it was called Citra and I bought a chunk and arranged to have it flown back to Britain rather than send it by sea.

“I swear it ripened on the flight! I wanted to brew a strong IPA, but a session beer was a better commercial option. So the day after the batch arrived, I brewed a 4.2 per cent beer and called it Citra. It was the first sensible commercial decision I took at Oakham.”

It was an instant success. There was one brew in 2009 and six in 2010 before joining the core range in 2011 when John could get sufficient supplies of the hop: four tonnes at first, then increasing every year until he was using 20 a year.

“By 2016, Citra was outselling JHB,” he says. “It’s the only hop that does the complete job as a single hop, with lychees and tropical fruit aroma and palate, with a good level of bitterness in the finish. It’s both soft and sharp.”

What makes Citra special? It’s a cross between a German Hallertau Mittelfrüh and the American version of Tettnang. German ‘noble’ hops are renowned for their floral and spicy character, whereas Citra booms with citrus fruit.

Left: John is looking for a quieter life, but will still be involved with Oakham

The difference is caused by what

wine makers call terroir – climate, soil, sunshine and rain. Citra was produced by the Hop Breeding Company in the US and it benefits, John says, from volcanic soil, pure snow-capped mountain water and superb growing conditions.

Citra’s success was capped when it won the Golden Ales category in CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain competition in 2014 and 2019. In 2011, John achieved his ambition of brewing a strong IPA with Citra. Green Devil (6 per cent) went on to win the title of World Champion Cask Beer in the prestigious International Brewing Awards in both 2013 and 2015. The brewery had also notched up further commercial success with the launch in 2008 of the golden ale Inferno (4 per cent).

John and his team were brewing seven days a week at the Brewery Tap and a bigger plant was essential.

“The original brewery in Oakham used Rutland water and we had to stay with that,” John says. A new site was found at Woodston in 2003, but it took three years to get it up and running, with secondhand kit such as mash tun, hop whirlpool and conditioning tanks from the closed Redruth and Mansfield breweries, and additional vessels from the confectionery and dairy industries.

“By October 2006, we had a brewery with a 75-barrel brew length,” John says. “But then came the financial crunch. It was tough, but we struggled through.”

Expansion continued. When Thwaites in Lancashire closed its large brewery to downsize, Oakham bought fermenting vessels and conditioning tanks from the old Blackburn plant that enables it to brew a proper lager.

Then came Covid-19 and lockdown. Woodston can brew 35,000 barrels a year with room to grow to 75,000, but expansion is on hold while the industry recovers. Brewing is currently suspended at the Brewery Tap, but there were plans to restart by the end of 2022.

John says beer sales are slowly picking up, but the industry is hit by rising prices for fuel and raw materials. Oakham uses the finest malting barley, Maris Otter, that’s on course to cost £1,000 a tonne.

“Nobody is getting rich at the moment,” John says. “The current climate is not good for crops. Winters are wet and that’s not good for winter barleys like Maris Otter.”

But he’s confident about the future for cask beer, with Oakham supplying around 350 outlets plus its four pubs.

John plans a new life, but he is not leaving brewing completely. He will remain a partner at Oakham and will continue to explore the American hop scene every year.

“I’ve made so many friends in the US over the years, it would be remiss of me not to pester them for a few more,” he laughs. Does he think the success of Citra may have one downside – that many brewers now produce beers that are opaque and taste like alcoholic fruit juice?

John won’t be drawn but says, enigmatically, as he sips a pint of crystal-clear Citra: “I like beer that looks like beer and tastes like beer.”

Definitely worth a barrel roll in a Spitfire.

“I brewed a 4.2 per cent beer and called it Citra. It was the first sensible commercial decision I took at Oakham”