Patrick Whittle – 00:00

Welcome to Spreading Hoppiness the Charles Faram Podcast. I’m Paddie and this episode comes to you from our Brewery Resource Roadshow, where brewers and suppliers are brought together for a day of seminars and networking. This year it is a little different as we welcome hop growers from across the world. We are joined by an amazing panel of international hop growers from New Zealand, USA, Slovenia and of course the UK and this is your chance to get to know them. Now I’m going to hand you over to Paul to kick start the session.

Paul Corbett – 00:31

All right, great stuff. Thank you everybody for coming along today. We are lucky enough to have a selection of growers from around the world, I know they’re all very modest and are going to start blushing, but this is fantastic for us. You don’t ever get this many growers in all-in-one room at the same time, apart from an international hop growers’ meetings but brewers aren’t invited to those. So, we are going to talk about everyone’s owns, and what hops they grow. Some of you may know the hops that they grow and most of you will have used hops that have come from these farms, today is really about getting to know the farms. So getting right into the meat of this, we’ve got our growers along the front here and we’ve got Will, who’s there to prompt me, just in case in my old age I forget anything. Thanks, Will and he’s the eye candy, of course. So let’s start on this end, we’ve got Boštjan here from Slovenia. Boštjan, can you explain a little bit about where you live, what you do in Slovenia, your area and the farm that you and your brother work on?

Boštjan Tanish – 01:55

Hello, everyone. my name is Boštjan Taish and I come from Slovenia. We have a really huge traditional of growing hops, we are fifth generation hop growers and started growing hops 150 years ago. I was born and raised on a hop farm, and my brother stays on and run the farms, and I run the company Slohops where we buy and purchase hops for Paul at Charles Faram, and we help them select the best possible varieties.

Paul Corbett – 02:33

The importance of Boštjan for us came about in 2007. At the time we were buying hops from the only supplier of Slovenian hops in the country called Mesad. Mesad were basically taking contracts off farms and giving them to suppliers around the world. When there was a short crop in 2007, we panicked because we were only promised 10 to 15% of those hops which had been contracted by brewers, so we had to look for an alternative, we met Boštjan and he offered to help. The hops were a bit more expensive than the contracts we had at the time, but Boštjan said, we could help you out and ever since then we have continued to work with Boštjan. He’s been very good at getting the hops that we need and also very trustworthy, which is a massive part of what we do with Slovenia. When people have a contract with you and lose it due to lack of supply, they will get another contract elsewhere. So when we got in touch with somebody like Boštjan who can work with us and really support us, it was a big part of what we do here. So Boštjan, what is the makeup of varieties? What do you grow variety wise?

Boštjan Tanish – 03:55

My brother has 35 to 40 acres of hops. He grows varieties such as Styrian Goldings, Bobek, Aurora and more intense flavour varieties including Styrian Dragon, Styrian Wolf™, but yes, like I said, we also resource from other growers. We represent about 10% of the entire Slovenian crop about 2500 to 3000 metric tons annually. So, yes it’s nothing comparing to the rest of the producers that are sitting here, but it’s a niche thing within a small industry.

Paul Corbett – 04:37

But important flavours. Those of you who’ve tasted the Wye Valley HPA that has Styrian Celeia within it. I know Ben produces a SIBA gold and gold winning, with Celeia and Savinjski Golding in it as well. Boštjan anything else you wish to say before we move on?

Boštjan Taish – 05:01

Just to add, we are also working on improving our sustainability efforts, which includes trying to reduce pesticide use and control the process using drip irrigation and installing different kinds of new technology, including solar panels. Sometimes people believe are far away from sustainability, where hops are involved but we are doing a lot of different things to improve.

Paul Corbett – 05:36

Very good. Thank you Boštjan. 

Boštjan Taish – 05:37

It’s always a pleasure for me to come here and be a part of the events like this.

Paul Corbett – 05:42

Thank you, and Slovenia it really is a beautiful country. Has anybody been to Slovenia? It is a great country, just incredible. 2.2 million people, a small area, snuggled in between Austria, Italy and Croatia.

So beautiful. We’ll come back to you in a second Boštjan. Thank you. So now we’ve got, Richie Phillips. Rich, do you want to give us a bit of a lowdown on what you do and where you are from in the country?

Richie Phillips – 06:22

Hi, everybody. I’m Richie Phillips. I farm in Herefordshire, within the Frome Valley. our farm is called Lower Milton Court. My family have been farming in Herefordshire since 1850. I am a fifth generation hop farmer. I have two sons in their 20s and they are going to be sixth generation growers. I’ve been working with Paul for many years now. I’ll go into that later. On the farm at the minute we grow, Admiral, Bramling Cross, Fuggles, Goldings, Harlequin®, Jester® and Pilgrim.

Paul Corbett – 06:55

He also helps us out because he is chairman of Charles Faram Farms. Rich can you want to explain a little bit about Charles Faram Farms?

Richie Philips – 07:02

So, Charles Faram Farms is a farm cooperative and we have 16 growers at present. We have growers in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Sussex, Kent and Surrey. I think by next year we will have 19 members with three new ones joining.

Paul Corbett – 07:19

Yeah, and which is really interesting because when Rich came to us in 2021 he asked if we would be interested in joining up with what was called the All Brand Group, there was 12 members. So, we decided that we would like to be more involved within our growers and have a bit more of a say so, so Will and I joined the board. We don’t own Charles Faram Farms, it is a grower owned cooperative, where they all have a single pound share, so it is all their own company. We work with them to advise on crops that we want to grow, the quantity and the quality.

One of the things that the growers got quite upset with us in the first year was when we said to them about quality and how we would then grade them in a league table. This didn’t go down very well, especially with the guys at the bottom of the league table. We look at look at seeds, pest and disease, quality of fit, the amount of leaf and string in the sample. When we started to grade them and put them into a league table. This table caused growers to say things like, oh, if I’d only just put that cleaner in last year, that new cleaner, or if I’d only done this it would have improved the crop. Causing them to go ahead and get it sorted out. So those growers were near the bottom are now near the top by sharing best practice with us. It’s been fantastic because the growers at the top have given us great information about how they do things and what the best practices are. And this is raising the overall quality of the group and this has been very successful. We were 12 to start with, we’d be up to, I think, 21 in a couple of years time, which is incredible because in my 35 years in the industry we’ve only ever known, one grower changed from one group to another. Yet here we are, three years after Covid and we’ve got 12 to 21 is just incredible. There are only 45 growers in the UK in total. So, we are gaining more growers and working with them. The other thing I like about Charles Faram Farms as it is now, is the pooling system. Do you want to explain a bit about that?

Paul Richie – 09:35

Yes. So Paul, mentioned about quality and we’re raising the quality all the time. We’re working on benchmarking and with pooling you’re paid on the quality of that variety of hops. So, each of the members in our group of growers will have the same price as the other for the same quality of that variety. We think it’s the fairest system in the UK. So, we have growers who have got very good prices on their contracts, and you don’t get growers with very low prices. They will share the good work out. They also come to the board meetings so they can see exactly where all our costs and price structure is. So, everybody feels that they’re treated exactly the same as the others, and they can see us completely transparent.

Paul Corbett – 10:28

Fantastic. Thanks, Rich. Well, right around the world now, we’re very lucky to have Blair here. He was in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago at the Craft Brewers Conference, and he has flown over to be with us. Blair, you also have a system with a cooperative of growers that we’re just talking about with Rich, do you want to explain a little bit about the countryside, where you’re from? What sort of conditions you have in New Zealand and all the benefits of New Zealand hops?

Blair Stewart – 10:55

 Yeah, sure. I’ll just put a little disclaimer in there that I’m not a grower, but I represent our growers. I spend a lot of time with them on the road. We have 27 growers in our co-op and have done for a number of years. We were the only company in New Zealand and as we came through the craft beer phase, obviously there was an increase in demand for aromatic hops. And from this we saw a proliferation or an increase of growers as well. So New Zealand’s, two islands, South and North Island, with our hop growing region being at the top of the South Island, with new areas springing up. We are sort of testing the boundaries of where you can grow hops. Nelson is really the fruit bowl of New Zealand hops. It gets an amazing amount of sun with Nelson often claiming the title of the sunniest city in New Zealand, also gets a fair amount of rain about 1 meter with access to good irrigation. Nelson is where most of our 27 farms are, with one site slightly further down in North Canterbury.

Soil types, alluvial gravel close to rivers and we also a couple of areas with a sort of soil based clay, and clay based as well, so, that does add to the different flavour textures we get. Hops are not native to New Zealand, with the original ones coming out from the US and the UK. Over the years we crossed them, always driving to create hops with a difference, today we have 17 main varieties. Uh, most of you are familiar with the likes of Nelson Sauvin™, Motueka™, Nectaron®,  is some of our rising stars, Superdelic™ Riwaka™, Wai-iti™ Rakau™, Pacific Gem, Southern Cross™. We also have organic crops with two growers growing organic hops which is sent to Europe.

We’re also very proud of our research programme. A lot of effort goes into that, and today, we have got two new ones coming through that we’re really excited about NZ106 and the NZ 109. The feedback from the Customers has been fantastic, so we’re in a good place. We’re also doing a pretty, in pretty tough in the world. It’s a hard world out there at the moment, so a lot of our growers have had to pull back on our acreage, as we speak. But we are very excited and very proud of the hops we’ve produced. There’s a lot of effort that goes into quality, but we’d also we’d like a few more people to drink a bit more beer.

Paul Corbett – 13:46

Thanks, Blair. Just to explain how we first got involved with New Zealand hops. 1996, I think it was. A guy called Tom Inglis came to see us in 1996 on holiday, and he dropped in some pouches which had tea bags in them, but instead of tea in them, he’d had hop powder. And he said, would you like to try some of these? Did They are tea bags and they were for dry hopping in cask. So, once you open the bag, the flavours just went because the hops had been ground up and the powder would oxidize very, very quickly, they weren’t great. But he said to us, would you be interested in stocking New Zealand Hops? Yes we would. We did and we stocked some and nothing really moved for a couple of years. And then people started to get interested in these varieties. I think it was the older varieties that time Pacific Gem Green Bullet, Stickle Bract, all those varieties, but it didn’t really get going until Nelson Sauvin™ came on in 2006. We were the first people to buy into the UK, which was really exciting, and of course we’ve got the new varieties as well now, but that really opened up the doors and with Slovenia as well, it is being able to go to the farms and go to select the varieties and select the hops that we want to bring in for you guys to brew with.

When we weren’t going, no disrespect, but we were getting, what other people didn’t select rather than what we wanted to have. So going and do the selections has been quite a big part of it.

And with the farms we deal with, we have very close connections, and we know very well and the know the quality that they produce. So, from 1996 to today it’s been quite a long journey but growing all the time. I think we’ve had a little bit of a slowdown in the last couple of years in terms of the quantities, but it has been growing mostly throughout that period.

Blair Stewart – 15:42

And I think there’s a photo of you back in 1996 and Colin Oldham’s.

Paul Corbett – 15:46

I don’t think it was as far back as 96, I didn’t have hair then, but yeah, we were there with Donald who was predecessor to Blair. We were in the Colin Arms farm, and he took me into the kilns and said, Paul, what do you do you think of these hops? And I said they are fantastic, they are amazing. What are they? And he said, oh, these are Saaz’s B And I said, Saaz’s B? Why do you call them Saaz’s B? And it was because they were they were growing them to be a replacement for Saaz’s that I think Dominion Brewers were using at the time. And I said to him, I said, you’re never going to sell this in Europe if you’re going to call it Saaz’s B. We’re already got Saaz’s and we’ve got plenty of it. So, what do you want Saaz’s B for? I said, why don’t you call it something from New Zealand? And he said “I don’t know about that Paul” but I gave him Mouteka™ the name. And he said to me, well, we’ve got this other one. Saaz’s D what you think we should call that. So we’d just been into the Riwaka research station this morning. Why don’t we call it, Riwaka? And he said, oh, I don’t know about that. He said, I’ll take you back to the board and see what they think. And then the rest is history. So those varieties have been named on the back of that visit, which was 2007. We’re got a long history back with the farm.

Blair Stewart – 17:07

And to say one other thing, what Richie talked about, most of our farms are, fourth or fifth generation. So started back in the 1840s. So we have got a lot of that knowledge that has been passed down over the years.

Paul Corbett – 17:29

Thanks Blair. Just going back to Slovenia, because I sort didn’t really introduce how we got into Slovenian hops. When I first started at Farams in 1989, we sold three varieties, we had three varieties Challenger Fuggles and Goldings. And then somebody phoned me up in 93, I think, and said, Paul, can you get us some Styrian Goldings on it? Yeah, of course we can. No problem at all. I put the phone down. I thought no, where do I get these from? And that was the prompt to try and get some new varieties into the system, which then became part of our ongoing offering to breweries. I then told in touch with one of our competitors at the time and said, can you help us with some Styrian Goldings and I thought, hang on, we’ve got some really nice flavours, some nice varieties. At the time, craft brewers were just starting to come through and people were looking for different flavours. Not the best bitter flavours that you’ve been producing from the bigger brewers. They can’t compete with the bigger brewers. They wanted flavours which were slightly different. So those new varieties came in that first Styrian Golding flavour, which we had, this was the step on the ladder to getting more and more offerings, more and more flavours. And I think some of you may remember Michael Epps. Michael worked for us about 10 or 15 years ago, and he was the first one to go to Slovenia without a satnav, without a mobile telephone. And he tried to negotiate a way before the motorway had been built. And now you can get off a Ljubljana. Ljubljana airport. 45 minutes. You’re at Boštjan farm and just get off the motorway at the other end. In those days, it was wiggling all the way through the mountains and the woods and the trees trying to get through. So Michael Epps was our sort of our go to main man in those days for Slovenia hops, and then eventually we started to taking groups of people out to go and see the farms and actually get the hops established.

If you like salami, that’s the place you go. Bostjan takes his own stuff on the Farm. Beautiful stuff. Moving right along. So Angela is from VGF Farms. And some of you will know VGF from Darren. Darren Gamache who discovered Amarillo®. So do you want to tell us a bit about the farm, where it is, what the climate is like where it all, and how it grows over there? All that sort of stuff

Angela Wentz – 19:47

I don’t want to take all of Stacy’s thunder on that. So Virgin Gamache Farms started as Sunshine Ranch in 1913, and we grew the first hops there right before prohibition was ending. With the prohibition ending in the United States and we’ve been growing hops since 1933, and Amarillo® was discovered in a field that had nothing to do with Amarillo®.

It was just another aroma variety and the crew was going through and just doing the normal picking up vines, because during windstorms, when the twine breaks, they go pick up the vines and put them back up and they were like, hey, that smells different. So they went and told Bernard, Darren’s dad and you know, like the brothers that were all working and said that one, there’s like something that’s different in there. Should we take it out? Because normally rogue plants that you don’t want in there are removed and they said, no, let’s, let’s mark it.

And so, they had marked it and waited for harvest and it was harvested by hand. And they really liked the aroma that came off it. So then they decided to plant those, take those plants and plant them somewhere else. I believe it was in 1998, when this happened and the plant slowly grew from their. Darren was in college at the time and his brothers would pluck the Amarillo® by hand and then dry it. Darrenn would then send the hops to his home brew friends and say hey, you should brew with this. And as the craft industry started growing in the states, those home brewers became head brewers at breweries. So when they were looking for a new hop, they already had Amarillo®. So the growth started in that way.

In 2011, there was an expansion in amount grown, because we couldn’t grow all the Amarillo® that was needed, and we were being requested by a large brewery in the States to diversify and not to have every plant in one geographic location because what if something happened.  So in 2012, when I started working at the farm, I was in charge of making sure the crop got harvested and it got sent where it needed to go, based on where everything was sold and that same year, the farm in North Idaho actually has a 100 year flood and wiped out the whole crop, and it was terrible and my first experience of harvest.

And then since then we’ve gone through had great harvests and Covid hit. And that was, I feel like in the last 13 years it’s been a weird ride that now I feel like I’m a part of. So, it’s a fourth generation farm with Andy and Darren now running the farm. They own it, they bought it from their dad and uncles. And so they’re fourth generation on their dad’s side and fifth generation on their mom’s side. So they have  a whole history of growing hops in the valley and it is continuing on, we’re growing Amarillo®. That’s the largest variety that we grow, but we also have licensed other growers to Amarillo®. Just like Stacy and Diana, they both grow Amarillo®. We have nine different growers, in Washington, Idaho and Oregon and also grown in Germany.

Paul Corbett – 23:41

Thank you, that’s great. Our first experience of Amarillo® was through Stacy and Diana because obviously our first contact in the US was Stacy and Diana. But we’ve got to know Darren and Angela very well at VGF and we go to visit the farms out there and see the processes and how they’re picking and drying. It’s fascinating to see how the farmers come on over the last 20 years. Angela can you explain a little bit about the climate?

Angela Wentz – 24:10

We live in an irrigated desert. There’s a river that runs through and our water source comes from snowpack off the Cascade Mountains. It gets collected in reservoirs as it melts, and if we have a really warm spring, we will lose a lot of that water because the reservoirs have to be released in order to keep fish due to migration. So there’s always a balance of having enough water for the fish to migrate, but also to irrigate essentially the whole state. So when you look at Washington State, the Cascade Mountains create a wet and dry side and were we are is dry, so nothing grows ther  e without irrigation , whether it’s your yard or crops. Without water is is sagebrush. If you’ve never seen sagebrush, just imagine like the Old West pictures, if you’re watching something about cowboys and Indians.

Paul Corbett – 25:17

Yeah, yeah. When people first said it’s a desert to me, I thought it was going to be camels. But no, there’s no camels.

Angela Wentz – 25:22

We don’t have cactus. We have sagebrush. Sagebrush and Clint Eastwood and all the horses around. But not camels and the desert, but Clint Eastwood is coming through, you know, it’s like Blazing Saddles

Paul Corbett – 25:36

That is fantastic. Now, Stacy, Diana Puterbaugh. Can you explain how you first got introduced?

Diana Puterbaugh – 25:46

Well, farming was in the toilet and I was at the first Craft Brewers Conference in Atlanta in 1999. And I met Thomas Hawkins, and he was looking to branch out. Well, we really wanted to go direct to Brewers and to find a place for our crops because they were talking about selling acreage. I have two little kids married to a farmer, I was going to try and do something, and from then it snowballed.

 You sent me a fax before we even had the faxes and there was dial up, I think. Did we email? We text first? Yeah. And we as a farmers, it’s the same story, you’re putting out there. We had just a few varieties to offer, but we wanted to have something in the shops for our customers too. And, I would say that big merchants won’t name any names, they don’t want to come along and do our own independent merchandising. So the website got online, but I think that was it, wasn’t it?

Paul Corbett – 27:04

The website was a massive part of it, it’s difficult to imagine now. But the first time I went out to see Stacy and Diana, it was in 2002. No mobile phone, no, satnav. How do we ever get there? I have no idea. I mean, it took us three hours to get out of central Seattle. Eventually found the Almighty and made off over the mountains. And still. Then we had to find the farm, which we’ve got an address for on a map, which was quite incredible to try and find in the middle of the desert. It was great fun and was it was quite an adventure in those early days. But I think the first few hops we started with and over the Cascades, um, Centennial wasn’t around at that stage, we had cascade, Chinook, Galena, Nugget and those varieties. We brought over a few bales. All of a sudden people started saying, we love this. These are really nice, interesting hops. Can you get some more for us? So we started bringing a few more and a few more. And before we knew it, bringing several containers of hops over. So the business grew based on your hop input and the flavours that were coming over. And again, it’s the start of the sort of bringing in varieties that were unusual and different, which gave lots of flavour and taste to beers that weren’t really used to here in the UK. So quite an exciting time. The craft brewing industry was going up at the time as well. Well, actually 2002, it was more 2010/2011 it started to get going.

I went out with a guy called Jon Bryan from Oakham Ales, who’s a bit of a crazy guy. You probably know him because he brews Citra and Citra® was discovered when we were out there in 2009. But Jon had a bit of a reputation for being a bit of a crazy guy when he was at a party. He’d get up on tables and put chairs in his mouth and dance around. And so when I got back, the brewers at the brewery said, are you okay, Paul? And I said, yeah, I’m okay. And they said, are you sure you’re okay? Because you’ve been away for a week with Jon. And he’s a little bit of a strange guy, I said, no, we got on really well. And ever since then we’ve had a really good relationship with Jon and the brewery. And also, these guys have done a lot of hard work for us, growing the varieties that we’ve requested for.

Stace if you want to explain a little bit about the family and the boys and what’s coming through on the farm and how you how you get through and all that sort of stuff, how you get them through.

Stacey Puterbaugh – 29:30

My grandfather started in 1932, growing hops and we had two varieties, Light Cluster and another Cluster. And we went through that stage and then just things progressing. And then Cascade came along and we started farming that one and really enjoyed it and just the experience growing different hops and that has been fun. We’re now growing 19 different varieties of hops, on our farm today, and that’s been a challenge. But how we met Paul he explained that. He really helped our farm out because we were able to grow beautiful varieties and lots of different stuff.

Diana Puterbaugh – 30:21

And he’s a nice guy to work with and he does what he says.

Stacey Puterbaugh – 30:26

The experience that he brought, bringing new brewers was a good one for the farm because you guys have as much passion for hops as we do.

Diana Puterbaugh – 30:41

He saved the farm.

Stacey Puterbaugh – 30:52

Keep doing what you’re doing. We’re going through some rough times, but we’re doing it together and it will get better.

Paul Corbett – 31:09

Thanks mate, you’ll got me feeling emotional now. You know, we’ve known each other a long time and it’s been a really good relationship. They looked after us in difficult times and when the farm has been doing well we’ve benefitted from that!. But this is what it’s all about, and this is why these guys are here because it’s teamwork. You know, selling these hops isn’t just a switch them on and they come, there’s a lot of work that goes on in between that, getting them to grow along the way!

I was going to say when I was with John in the first year, he decided that he was going to take, ten pairs of jockey shorts in his suitcase. This is probably a story I shouldn’t tell, but he had ten pairs of pants and put my name in the back of every single pair. And when we got to a hotel or stayed with Diana and Stacy, he left a pair there with my name in the bed.  And they were massive! So when I got back after the first trip, Diana said to me, did you leave anything at the farm? I said, no, I don’t think so and I remember seeing John come out with a sort of look on his face, and I thought, I wonder what he’s done. We spoke again three weeks later and I said to Diana, what did you find? And she said, oh, what did you call them Stacey? Whitey Tighties. She said he left the pair. Whitey Tighties in the bed with my name and I said, what! Went to John what did you do?

So it was quite a story that and over the years we’ve had some great trips out there. It is fun, but there’s a lot of work that goes into it. And I think with all the growers here, the thing that we value most is relationships, you can hops and get them cheaper but at the end of the day, it’s the farm connect and the reliability you get, year after year and making sure we get the correct quality and delivered on time when you need them. And I think that is where we’ve got this strong link back to the farms. These are just a selection of our of our grower friends. We’ve got lots of friends and growers right throughout the world, and it makes a huge difference to us to be able to work with these guys on a relationship basis where we can actually see the whites of their eyes and tell them, this is a problem we’ve got.

A couple of years ago, we had a problem with the EU clamping down on pesticide residues. We’re constantly checking for residues and pesticides. American growers have to abide by the pesticide residues of the EU and now the GP, authorities. So we have to work together on that to make sure we all get the right pesticide residues coming in, we don’t want hops that have got problems in them, so there’s a lot of work that goes on. I haven’t come to you [Will Rogers] as the glamour boy of the afternoon, but is there anything that you like to add to this because you get involved a lot with this as well on this.

Will Rogers – 34:29

Yeah, I think what we really wanted to show today was to introduce you to this fantastic group of people. When you do buy a batch of hops from us, you are very welcome to  please do ask what farm it came from. We have traceability on every single batch of hops you buy from us and we’re very, very happy to share that information. When you’re buying from fCharles Faram, you’re not you’re not buying from a faceless corporation, you’re buying from these growers sitting here and many more that we’ve got within in the groups. And what we want to do is show you the passion alongside it, and we work with people we love, maintain those long term relationships. And, you know, it’s beautiful what Diana and Stacey said about the history with our company and in particular with Paul and but we have that same attitude to you guys. We want to be working with you in 25, 30, 50 years time if we can. We’re all about long term relationships. So if we can do something to help you ask, we’re there to help. Any questions?

Audience Member 1 – 35:48

I’m intrigued by your views and opinions on how the hop products are developing over the years, from raw hops and pelletised through to enriched through cryo and now on to liquid hop products and hop derived products. How does this affect you guys? As long as hops are being used are you not really bothered? Do you really hold a lot of passion for the raw hop products

Blair Stewart – 36:30

As this market matures and we have a very large number of hops, it’s quite natural that you also look at a  proliferation of different formats and styles. And I think at the end of the day, the ones that succeed are there because they serve your beer best. And you’ve got the options here to choose between a T-90 and T45 and oils. And, just so you know, I’m a believer that there’s probably too many in the world at the moment. I don’t know how would make your choices, because there’s a heck of a lot of them, but the best ones always rise to the top, and they’ll be there for a long time. There’ll be new ones come through as well, because they serve a purpose for you and ultimately the consumer, because that’s ultimately what it’s about. And something I you know, I’m always curious. And having come from the bottom of the world, I spent three weeks traveling, talking to as many brewers as possible, seeking to understand your motivation and consumer motivations. And probably one I heard it summed up quite nicely last week by a brewer who said to me with choice of oil at the end of the day, we have a label and on that label, we make an obligation to the consumer what it might be stone fruit or passion fruit, because at the end of the day, we’re brewing with nature and nature each year will serve up something slightly different. I thought that was a good way. That’s the way I saw it, that helped me understand, the position some of the formats that are there today.

Paul Corbett – 38:30

Yeah, I think you can’t stop progress and some of these things, if we don’t do them, somebody else is going to do them. So, I think you’re the people that have got to decide whether they work for you, in the beers or not. We’ve got to offer you what we can to make everything work. And the market will go swinging away dependent on that, we’d like to sell you more raw hops leaf hops, for sure. But, you know, you’ve got to be realistic about this, pressure is hard on the breweries, the costs are high. So, if you can save money by putting in an oil which will save you a few pounds on each pint can you produce. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to look at it, especially in varied climates. So, these products will always have always have their use and the brewer has to decide if it right for them.

Angela Wentz – 39:18

From the standpoint of in the US, there’s an oversupply of hops and having these other downstream products, whether it’s an oil or it’s, you know, a global extract or whatever dust. It is hard to say but at the farm, we’re trying to get it to a bale and trying to make it the best product we can, but we’re in over supply so we need another outlet.

Where does that go. Whether it’s a whether it’s non brewing and there’s things that we do we put it in extract. So, it goes into non brewing, at least it’s not getting composted or any of those. So, I think there’s always need. But with hops main use being for brewing. If you’re not if the brewer can’t use it in the form it

if we can get it into another product that makes it more stable, that can last a little longer. I think that’s always good for hops and beer. Right. Anybody got any other comments before we wrap up?

Stacey Puterbuagh – 40:19

Change is hard, but we all got to do it. It’s just change. You know, you got to go with what the customer wants and it’s all. It’s using hops so that is a good thing.

Audience Member 2 – 40:32

I remember talking to Will a few years ago who was telling me at the time that Fuggles were a big problem for a lot of the growers and many were planting other things, I think there’s a couple of that to replace it, but I noticed Richie is saying that he’s growing that. So I’m just wondering, how did you get around that if you provide more wilt resistant lines or what’s happened?

Richie Phillips – 40:54

So from the wide range of Programme, there’s been a wilt resistant Fuggle release, so that’s through breeding and genetics. So we’ve managed to overcome that.

Will Rogers – 41:06

 There is also a Faram’s Fuggle. Yes, we have some of that in the ground and we have some of the wild Fuggle we’re also doing some work on, with the agronomy of hops that might allow us to a grow more wilt sensitive varieties in wilt affected soil. But, we only have a short amount of time, and I could bore you for hours on that. But suffice to say, if we can improve the soil health, then we stand a chance of growing some traditionally more sensitive varieties, in the heavier soils that we’ve got in the UK.

Audience Member 3 – 41::47

I started my career with Avian. Then over the years have gotten smaller and it’s been quite incredible from a group perspective last five, ten years in some of the technology that’s now is so cost effective, you know, from yields or sustainability or whatever. Maybe it’s just applicable to small and medium sized brewers. I’d just be really interested to hear if there’s any examples of technology from picking through to bailing on a small to medium sized growers that that that have become more cost effective or that you’ve been motivated by other reasons to introduce to the farms at that sort of scale also?

Angela Wentz – 42:20

In 2016, we put in front ends at our farm. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the different type of styles of machines, but we in 1993, we put in the newest and greatest, which was a Dauenhauer machine, and we ran that until 2016. We put that in and what that would do is reduce labour, and that was the efficiency that we were gaining, so we could actually lower our costs for harvest by having something that we used a telehandler to unload the vines right onto a bed that went through and, sliced the hops and the vine essentially into 18 inch chunks. And then it would process instead of having somebody hanging it, and we could actually ramp up our production and harvest more efficiently, harvesting more acres in a short period of time so that we could keep the quality where it needed to be.

For as long as they’ve been growing hops, we have always consistently tried to do something to improve the efficiency, whether it was how many vines you could get through the machine. How many less people you could use, or how could you use that piece of equipment like three times versus just for one purpose? And I think that that’s like the normal like trend is like how to improve what you have to make it better.

Stacey Puterbaugh – 44:09

Yeah. I agree with what Angela said, our biggest expense is labour. So, any place we can try to cut labour, we would try. But it’s as you guys know in the brewing game, it is the same thing. If it takes a long time and you got to do a lot of different stuff to find it. But one thing we did is, we ended up putting a pellet mill on our farm to pelletise our hops. When we first started and started to sell to the smaller breweries, we were always the last to get our pelletising done. So, we went ahead, put one in, and we were able to get hops sooner to the market. And that helped also.

Paul Corbett – 44:55

 Yeah I think Boštjan, you’ve got a good example about your tractors, can you take a little bit about that?

Boštjan Tanish – 45:05

Yes, I can explain a bit about that. What I was trying to say also, we have a National Institute for corporate research and brewing. They are collecting a lot of information and data and putting into systems for simulations. So we are going through the production codes, and going through the environments effects, CO2 and carbon footprint. So, as you mentioned we are implementing different kind of new technologies in the system and processes. One of them are robotisation and modernisation for the production things. So you don’t want to go too many times into the field, so we have a different kind of new installations for cultivation front to back. So it’s quite a cost efficiency.

Paul Corbett – 46:03

Robotics is something that is down the line a little bit. I think it’s used a little bit on fruit at the minute, but particularly as Stacey said, the labour is a very expensive. And Stacey has explained to me over the weekend that, traditionally there was a flat rate for all workers from start of harvest to picking to finish. And now at the weekends, they have to pay time and a half to the grower, to the people there as well. So, the cost of labour has gone up even in the last couple of years. It might go up again. So it’s quite a challenge for us to get hops picked these days. Your son is engulfed a little bit with robotics. Isn’t he Rich?

Richie Phillips – 46:52

 Yeah, so my son is more interested in artificial intelligence side of things, and that he’s helped finance his friends who have done some robotic harvesting with vegetables. So, I’m hoping he’s going to come up with some ideas for our hop farm and I’m looking forward to that. The world has changed very quickly.

Paul Corbett – 47:13

 So, we’re going to we’re going to show up to next harvest with robot hop. Great. Any more questions? Anybody got anything else I want to add? Any questions?

Stacey Puterbuagh – 47:26

Paul puts on a hop walk, and you’re going to be showcasing some of your newer varieties. So if you’re interested in that, he showed me some behind the scenes stuff. Will did it. Tt’s worth taking a look at.

Paul Corbett – 47:47

Yeah, I know quite a few have already been to the HopWalk®. We’re going to do the same thing this year over three days, and then another three days in the second week. So, one coach load of  people each day.. There will be different farms this year, and we’ll go back to Sarah Hawkins and see the new kilns, which you saw the new machine last year, which we’re going to the new kilns this year, but also we’ll look at new varieties that are coming through the programme and a chance to pick those off on the vine and actually see the flavours in the field. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I know you guys travel a long way to be with us today. Rich. All the way from Herefordshire? To the you guys from the States, it’s just amazing to see you all here. If I look back, 1989, when I started, I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of this. You have such a fantastic array of people here, in front of me, working with us at Charles Faram. So, thank you so much for coming along.

Patrick Whittle – 48:55

It’s Five Minutes with Faram time, and this week, Maddie is heading over to Peterborough to catch up with Head Brewer Ed from Oakham Ales. Over to you guys.

Maddie Lewis – 49:03

If you can just start by introducing yourself and what brewery you are from.

Ed Sharman – 49:07

So I’m at Ed Sharman and I’m the head brewer at Oakham Ales.

Maddie Lewis – 49:11

So, Ed what is your favourite hop?

Ed Sharman – 49:14

That’s a good question. I’d say my favorite hop is probably, well, if I’m allowed to American, I’d probably say Summit™ and then British. I’d probably say Olicana®.

Maddie Lewis – 49:25

I thought you were going to go for Citra, to be honest.

Ed Sharman – 49:27

Well, that’s the obvious. That is the obvious answer. But yeah and I love Citra® and I think Summit™ is fantastic and underrated.

Maddie Lewis – 49:35

Great. Love that, so what is your favourite beer?

Ed Sharman – 49:39

Good question. So I would say, yeah, my favourite beer of ours is Scarlet Macaw. It’s usually one of our core beers. That’s an American pale ale with some Caramalt and Summit™ and Amarillo®, which is very nice.

Maddie Lewis – 49:55

And favourite other beer?

Ed Sharman – 49:57

I’d probably say, Lush, which is a Citra® IPA by Fremont Brewery. Which I tired on my first US trip with Charles Faram

Maddie Lewis – 50:08

Wow, sentimental that’s lovely, so what’s your favourite food and beer pairing? Do you have one?

Ed Sharman – 50:15

I think probably what I really like, and I sort of grew up sort of drinking. I grew up drinking sort of Oakham ales before I worked here. But there’s a relationship between the owner of the brewery and his partner’s Thai. So, in some of the pubs in Peterborough, there’s Oakham Ales paired with Thai food, which is a really nice.

So, a nice hoppy IPAs and Thai food works really well.

Maddie Lewis – 50:43

I love Thai food, definitely my favourite as well. Do you have a favourite beer destination? Do you get to go to many?

Ed Sharman – 50:50

Yeah, I really like Manchester. My wife and I started exploring there over the last few years. Lots of good beer there. But I think my trips over to Washington and Seattle go without saying really, really good quality beer.

Maddie Lewis – 51:06

What’s one item in the brewery that you couldn’t live without?

Ed Sharman – 51:10

There are many. I think the main, my favourite bit of kit in the brewery is probably the kettle. The way that’s set up and the quality of the boil that we get, it really makes a difference in our beers. Yeah, so definitely can’t do without that.

Maddie Lewis – 51:27

What would be your favourite song or album that you like to play? Can you play music aloud in the brewery?

Ed Sharman – 51:35

We can we have portal speakers. I don’t generally listen to music when I’m brewing, and I’ve also got really awful taste in music. It would either be some sort of early noughties pop or, I don’t know, classical music. Yeah, it wouldn’t be very popular.

Maddie Lewis – 51:54

No. Fair enough. If you weren’t in the brewing industry, what would you be doing?

Ed Sharman – 52:00

I think I’ve always liked doing sort of manual, physical jobs. So, I and also like the creativity that brewing brings. So at one point I was considering getting into working kitchens and becoming a chef, so I’d probably say that.

Maddie Lewis – 52:23

Oh, cool. You like cooking now?

Ed Sharman – 52:25

I love cooking, yeah. I always like cooking and playing around with ingredients, which I suppose lends itself to brewing.

Maddie Lewis – 52:32

So, do you have an inspiration in brewing or somebody that inspires you?

Ed Sharman – 52:38

Probably an easy answer, it’s probably a bit too simple, but I think Jon Brion. He’s one of the owners and he’s our old head brewer. I think his vision for the beer, certainly for hops, it’s sort of world leading. I know I might be biased in saying that, obviously, but I think certainly the beers that we produce and a lot of the recipes that we produce are the ones he created. I mean, he’s absolutely mad, but he knows hops and he knows beer.

Maddie Lewis – 53:09

Great. Does he have much involvement still now?

Ed Sharman – 53:09

He’s not. So I went out. So in 2023 was my first US trip with you guys, and it was John’s last trip. So John basically had been going out for 20 plus years. So that was really special because it was sort a handover, which is why we both had been on the trip. Yeah, it was great, but yeah, he’s not involved too much day to day anymore. But he has a lasting impact. Yeah, he’s officially retired, but he does occasionally pop his head in and make sure things are all right.

Maddie Lewis – 53:48

What got you into brewing? What’s the story behind that?

Ed Sharman – 53:53

So my part time jobs when I was sort of 17, 18 was in pubs, bars, and when I was working in one pub, I started looking after the cellar and in cellar management. And at the time, this particular part, they didn’t have anyone looking after the cask beer, so I did some research in that, and took it upon myself really. I liked drinking also. I found out there was a job going here, I got in touch and the rest is history.

Maddie Lewis – 54:22

And how old were you when you did that?

Ed Sharman – 54:24

I started here in 2011 and I was 21.

Maddie Lewis – 54:30

Cool. So you pretty much your entire brewing career has been here?

Ed Sharman – 54:35

Entirely. Yeah, I’ve never worked anywhere else.

Maddie Lewis – 54:41

Do you have a favourite beer festival?

Ed Sharman – 54:44

So, we used to go to O’Connell’s and, me and my wife and friends used to go to Leeds International Festival quite a lot. Fantastic festival. They used Leeds Town Hall. I think it’s moved now, but that’s great. Also Peterborough Beer Festival, I’ve been going since I worked at the Brewery. We’ve been there each year now, and that’s an enormous festival as well as being a local one. So, yeah, that’s right on the doorstep.

Maddie Lewis – 55:14

Yeah. Gorgeous. Is that a summer festival?

Ed Sharman – 55:16

Yes. It’s the week leading up to the August bank holiday. Hopefully you get some nice weather this year. Summer wasn’t great last year, but it was actually pretty good come the festivals.

Maddie Lewis – 55:29

What’s your favourite interest or hobby outside of brewing? Also, you mentioned you like cooking. Is there anything else or.

Ed Sharman – 55:35

I’d say probably at this point, cooking. I used to play quite a lot of sports. I used to play tennis quite a lot. I don’t know whether it was just working here and, finding time for everything else. But yeah, I really like cooking. So spending a weekend in the kitchen is definitely mine.

Maddie Lewis – 55:53

What’s your go to dish? Do you have a staple?

Ed Sharman – 55:58

I like making lasagna, but like, you know, from scratch. I have arguments with some of the team here who I won’t name, about how to make lasagna, but, yeah, spending the whole afternoon from scratch making lasagna is. Yeah, very nice. Calming, lovely.

Maddie Lewis – 56:12

And then what are you pairing that with?

Ed Sharman – 56:15

Oh, yeah. That’s a good question. From our core range, I think probably the Green Devil, it’s 6% and it’s a really nice IPA. So lovely.

Maddie Lewis – 56:31

What is the last beer you brewed?

Ed Sharman – 55:58

Ed Sharman – 56:33

The last beer I brewed. The last beer I brewed was a batch of JHP

Maddie Lewis – 56:40

Are you doing any specials at the moment?

Ed Sharman – 56:42

We’ve quite a lot coming up and we’re releasing on our sort of craft beers at least two new seasonals a month. Then in our Cascade Range, there’s quite a few new beers coming through there as well. So, yeah, we’re just specials.

Maddie Lewis – 56:58

Obviously, you’ve got your core range, but you obviously do quite a lot of specials. Do you gather feedback from them? And if you find that one has gone really well and the feedback has good. Do you ever look at doing them again? Or do you tend not too?  

Ed Sharman – 57:18

We work with our sales team and they sort of say, you know the seasonal beers that we did last year, this one was really good. The feedback from, either the publicans themselves or, the people who comment on social media or just generally sort of word of mouth. So, as I say, in the last couple of years, we’ve started doing two seasonals a month. They’re not always two new beers, occasionally we will bring beers back from last year or the years before. So but as you say, yeah, it largely depends on how well they’ve gone and the feedback we get. How do you come up with your recipe development for them? So, we work within certainly for the sort of the normal monthly cask seasonals we’re working generally within an ABV sort of range that, you know, the sales team, think will work well for each particular month. Then after that it’s down to us as brewers, how we want to do it. You know, if there’s a particular blend of hops we want to use or whether we want to sort of spotlight specifically a single hop variety beer or use your creativity. When it comes to that, we have freedom to do that. Yeah, and ultimately, I find it very refreshing we’re not sort of dictated to as to. It’s a case of we’ll design a recipe and then be creative, see what works, and what doesn’t.

Maddie Lewis – 58:44

So Fuggles or Goldings?

Ed Sharman – 58:46

Well, there’s one in tank actually, which you can try. We’ve just brewed a new stamp which is 5050 Fuggles and Goldings. So honestly on the fence on that one, that’s.

Maddie Lewis – 59:00

Okay, so final question. What is next for you in the industry?

Ed Sharman – 59:04

Well, so I took over as head brewer in January of this year. So obviously I’m a few months in. It’s more time in this office, behind the desk than, than I used to have brewing, which goes with the territory. So, it’s important I’d still get out and do some brewing, obviously, just so I don’t completely sort of lose track of how it all works. But yeah, it definitely presents different challenges, certainly with regards to ongoing things regarding energy and costings and yeah, sort of looking more at the sort of the wider sort of picture as opposed to sort of just day to day brewing. So yeah, I’m enjoying it.

Maddie Lewis – 59:40

Cool. And anything new for the brewery that’s coming up?

Ed Sharman – 59:43

So, we are we’re in the process of trailing kegging on a small scale, which is something that we’ve not really done before, which is good. And also, we’ve got at the Brewery Tap, which is a pub in the centre of Peterborough. We’ve got a six-barrel kit that’s been out of action for quite a while, so we’re in the process of getting that up and running to brew sort of weird and wonderful beers on that, hopefully.