Patrick Whittle  0:05 

Welcome to Spreading Ho ppiness. The Charles Faram podcast. On this week’s episode, we’re talking to Kara Hajdu, hop breeder from Wye hops, she’s filling us in about her day job and how important it is for creating the hop flavors of the future.

Mark Dredge  0:25 

So I’m Mark dredge. I’m a beer writer, and I’m here with well, you can explain. You can tell me who you are and what you do.

Klara Hajdu  0:31 

Hi everyone. My name is Klara Hajdu, and I am the hop breeder at Wye hops, and my job is to develop new varieties, new varieties for British hop growers and for the breweries.

Mark Dredge  0:42 

So where are you now? So are you at Wye hops at the moment?

Klara Hajdu  0:47 

Yeah, so I am actually not at Wye hops. I’m sitting in my old office East Malling Research and doing some work I have to wrap up. The way I get into hop breeding was doing a PhD in hop genetics. And this used to be my headquarter here, and this is where I did a lot of my genetics work that I’m using in Wye hops currently.

Mark Dredge  1:18 

Alright, let’s hear about this. So you’ve done a PhD in this, but go a little bit before that. So what was it that took you down to plant biology route?

Klara Hajdu  1:30 

So I started as a as an assistant Strawberry Breeder here in East malling in 2014 and then I got really interested in the genetics of plants and how you can make new crosses and how you can create new varieties. And in the same time, simultaneously, I got really interested in beer, and I got really drawn into the hop culture, and I just started really enjoying my local. And I met a few friends around here who were very interested in hops as well. And then they grew some hop plants in there allotments, and it kind of just led from there. So my love for plant breeding, plant genetics just kind of took me on a journey to become a hop breeder, which I was very fortunate to to be able to do. And yeah and the rest is history. It started with being fascinated with plants and the genetics of plants, and then beer, and then in the end, you just kind of find yourself combining all your interests and then realising your purpose, which is saving the world through beer, which we know is the answer to everything.

Mark Dredge  2:35 

I think that’s a pretty good purpose to have. Tell me about your your PhD because you were studying that while still whilst working at Wye hops, is that right?

Klara Hajdu  2:46 

Yes, I kind of started the same time. I started a PhD under the supervision of Dr Peter Darby, who, at the time, was close to retirement, and the whole purpose for training a new PhD student was to train a successor for him. So I took the opportunity when I started my studies to shadow him and then learn the techniques and learn all the good, interesting knowledge that really is the hop breeders job and so yes. So when I started my PhD, I also started working part time under Peter, and just started to understand what is it to be a hop breeder. So that was kind of around the same time, but it just now I finished my studies, and I’m just full time breeding and doing research.

Mark Dredge  3:35 

The so Peter Darby is a bit of a legend in hop breeding, isn’t he? I think if, if you understand hops and hop breeding, particularly British hops, you know Peter. So what was it like to work with him for a few years?

Klara Hajdu  3:50 

It was, it was very enlightening. I learned, yeah, you can’t not learn when you, when you spend time with him. He has a lexical knowledge about hops. Yeah, it’s kind of everybody agrees with that. I again, I just have to say I was very fortunate to be able his to be his student. It was quite full on, I must say, because during a full time PhD and trying to take over things that were fast, like everything was happening really fast. So he had a year to retire, and I had to learn all the things that were sufficient enough to just kind of continue with the breeding programme. So it was, yeah, I was thrown in the deep water, for sure, but I think this is how, this is how you learn. So that was a good experience. I still work with him today, so he never retired.

Mark Dredge  4:50 

Yeah, he’s I think he’s the sort of person that you know would camp out in the middle of a hop field if he had the choice. Because that’s become, his natural environment. He’s done this so long, and he knows so much about the hops, it’s just, it’s just him, isn’t it?

Klara Hajdu  5:05 

Yeah, certainly, if you have any questions about historical information, he will be very happy to answer it to you. Or if not, then he will find out the answer to your questions, because he just, he just knows,

Mark Dredge  5:20 

Actually talking about the history. So I think let’s go if we go backwards before we jump forwards, because Wye Hops is a fascinating place, because it has what do you call it? Is it the British hop archive? Is that what it’s known as?

Klara Hajdu  5:35 

Oh, it has many different names. Depends on how you want to call it. But, well, you could call it the national hop collection, or it’s a library of hop varieties that been collated and collected throughout the past century, over a century now, by the previous generation of hop breeders and it is very unique globally. I would, I would say that it is the most extensive hop collection. It’s called the germ pleasant collection, which sounds a bit like it’s something nasty, but it’s not germ . Just means DNA, so everything that we have historically old varieties, land races, varieties from across the globe, wild hops that were collected from various places around the world, that could contain very interesting genetic information, which we might be able to use, or might want to use, or might not want to use now, but later we might want to use. It’s just an archive that you can reach for in any case. So, yeah, that’s, that’s something that we have at at Wye hops, yes.

Mark Dredge  6:45 

I think anyone who’s not been might not understand what that looks like. We think of archives as libraries or, you know, cabinet drawers that you that you open. But what we’re talking about here is living plants. These are plants that are in the field. They grow every year. And it’s, is it two? Two plants per variety?

Klara Hajdu  7:07 

Yeah so you have seen it. I know because I was there when you were there too. This is actually, yes, it is a hop garden. In fact, you wouldn’t be able to tell that this is something more important than than a regular hop garden. The format is that we have copies of each of the varieties. Actually it’s four of them. We have four plants for each of the roughly, it’s about 1200 varieties that we have in total that are permanent. And from this we have around 500 which is even more. So the hop archive itself is just off the record. There’s about 500 plants, but the actual germplasm is about 1200 plants, which just all of them are unique. All of them are different. They all have different genetic backgrounds, but this is only part of what’s going on in the hop breeding programme. There are also seedlings, crosses that we produce every year, and those crosses, we call them families. So we cross two parents, we need a female parent and the male parent, because hops are just like humans. They have males and females, and you might be familiar with some of the female parents. They could be varieties that hop growers grow, or you use in your in your beer, like Fuggle or Goldings or Pilgrim, or some of the British varieties, or sometimes it’s not British varieties. And then the males are the ones that you never really see, because breweries just, you just don’t need them. But they are very important. They are they are useful blokes, and we really, really need them. So we cross them. We create these families, and from these families we select the best plants that have the best aroma, the best agronomy, the best resistance to diseases, and those are the ones that we’re promoting forward to become varieties that can end up in the permanent hop collection years down the line. But it’s a long process to select these best hop plants. So that’s a lot of different aspects for the breeding programme, but the the backbone of the whole thing is the is the hop collection, yes, which is just very unique.

Mark Dredge  9:23 

How are you using the hop collection? Like, are you going back to it every year to kind of seek out different varieties? Are you looking well, yeah, no, just tell me how you how it’s being used.

Klara Hajdu  9:36 

So the hop collection is really the kind of Noah’s  Ark, which, if there is an apocalypse, you just need them to be to survive, because they just have they’re so important, but it’s one reason why you have them. You don’t really use it. You you review it every now and then, and you add new things to it. Sometimes you have to take things out from it. For example, that’s a revision going on in there. But how you use the this collection of material that we have is you select parents from them. So this is the breeders job. You say, I know that this male plant in the collection has resistance to disease, and it has a really, really interesting, good habit, for example. It has a nice structure, for example. And then this is this female, which we know it has high alpha acid. It’s also producing certain aromas that we would like to have in new plants. And we try to combine these. So the collection is really a selection of parent material. So how we use them? How we utilise them is we collect information about them. That’s very important. We have pedigree information, if you’re familiar with horse riding or something, it’s more used in animals or animal breeding or dogs or humans, actually. You know the parentage of these things, so you know what they expect, not down the line, but more like backwards in the history, but you also know a lot of things about them. Yes, it is a tall plant, as opposed to it’s a dwarf, because hops come in different heights, and it has various attributes that you’re interested in. So the collection is very important in knowing it’s a wealth of information that we know about each of these different plants, which we can select when we want to create a new plant, and then we can somehow deduce what we can expect. It’s kind of like expectations probability as well. You’re going to cross two things somewhere along the line in that generation, the children will have the good combination of the traits that we are interested in. So that’s the main use of them.

Mark Dredge  11:41 

Yeah. And it’s fascinating, because you just don’t know. You’ve got these probabilities, and you’ve got, hey, we know that this plant does this, and we know that this plant does that, and then it’s just like, hope, isn’t it? You bring them together and hope that something good comes out of it, and it grows well,

Klara Hajdu  11:58 

yeah, the hope is very important, actually. But it’s not just hope, because in some cases you can actually the probability is a real thing. So we know how these different traits will be passed down to the new generation. Some of them we understand really well. Some of them we have a lot less understanding about, because they’re very complicated. Unfortunately, one of these things is aroma, and that’s something that the brewers and then the growers are the most interested in. But aroma is a very complicated thing. It’s almost like magic. You have so many different things that influences it, so it’s harder to predict and harder to calculate the probability, but it’s just like in humans and just like in animals, if the mother has the aroma, you just think that, you know, the children will also have something similar. But it’s often, it’s just hope, yes,

Mark Dredge  12:54 

So at the moment, what are the breeding priorities that you’ve got?

Klara Hajdu  13:00 

Again, I would just say this one word, aroma. It is what drives the market. Obviously, because beer has just become, you know, it’s like the past couple of decades. This is your field. I’m not even going to say, but the consumer wants different flavours. They’re just interested in how the beer tastes. This is, this is hasn’t been the case always in the past, they just have to have a certain familiar taste. Nowadays, we’re moving away from there. So different aromas, interesting aromas, certain types of aromas, are probably the main drive for British hop breeding, which is a very interesting thing, and it’s quite a challenge as well, which I can talk a bit about later. Maybe how what are our chances to produce certain aromas? Is it something that you can’t in a certain environment, like in England, you just never be able to produce a plant that tastes and smells like a hop that was bred in America or in New Zealand. But there are trends, and we were trying to, it’s just something that drives the hop breeding, mostly. Unfortunately, you can’t just make a new variety that smells and tastes good, because if the grower can’t grow it, then it’s not going to be a success. So it’s always a balance. It has to be agronomy. Agronomy is the basis of everything, the foundation. If the new plant doesn’t have good agronomy, then it doesn’t matter how good the aroma is, some people would argue, but I believe, as a breeder, that you first have to tackle that, and then on top comes, how will it succeed in, you know, for the breweries or for the consumer? But yeah, aroma is the main thing. But with that comes. Agronomy. With that comes resistance to the changing environment, diseases, all these kind of things. So has to add it all in the end, no short answer,

Mark Dredge  15:12 

yeah, and it’s not a short process either, so maybe we can talk about that quickly. So you’ll pick your parents, you’ll bring them together, and from that, you create a family of loads of seeds. And then I suppose what happens over the next year or two?

Klara Hajdu  15:31 

So, yes, indeed, you start with seeds, and you sow the seeds, and then you raise seedlings. This is, this is how they are called. This is an alternative name for a variety that’s nothing. It’s just a seedling. And then you assess them for various different things. So when I said aroma is the main goal, but there is a bit of a box ticking before you get there, so you have to make sure that your seedling is ticking a few boxes. So we usually screen them for major diseases that the hop growers will have to fight. So we screen them for Powdery Mildue and Downy Mildrew when they are very small seedlings, and we only keep the plants that are resistant, or at least tolerant to these things, and then further down the line, when they become bigger plants, they become perennial plants. And then a few years down the line, we can screen them for Verticillium Wilt, which is a very important disease, very deadly as well. And when the plant that we think is going to be maybe going to be a new variety, we have confirmation that it’s tolerating diseases at least, then we can start assessing them. It’s a bit of a it happens simultaneously, sometimes, but generally, the first few years is about agronomy and checking these things that this plant will actually survive on the field, before you get too excited about it. Now, things are changing slightly when which is a great thing. I think, in my opinion, breweries get more involved, and they are getting more interested about new and upcoming varieties, and then they come and assess these plants early on in the breeding process. They would select them for the green aroma on the field, and then some things get fast tracked, because we just feel like, oh, there is a potential in that, so we’re going to fast track it. But in the end, you can’t avoid putting them through all the different assessments as well. So you can’t avoid it. Or maybe in the future, you will be able to shorten this process and make it more efficient if you start using the power of genetics, which is something that I’m working on, and I’m trying to just get rid of these very extensive assessments where you have to infect a lot of plants with disease just to see which one survives and, trust me, it’s not just a lot of potting up and then fiddling with compost and then getting scratched with hops. It’s a long process, and it has to be you have to have a lot of experience in running this test so it slows down the breeding process. But if we knew where these different traits, different interesting things, would line the genetics of the hop plants, we could just design clever lab based assays, and we can just test like a little leaf, and then we could tell whether this hop plant is seedling has Powdery Mildue resistance in its DNA or not. And then you don’t have to do anything. You just say, I keep these ones, I get rid of those ones, and I can only really focus on assessing the aroma, which is all here for

Mark Dredge  18:46 

And this is where your PhD research came from, wasn’t it?

Klara Hajdu  18:49 

Yeah, so my PhD was partly about training to learn the classic techniques to do breeding. But it was also just kind of bringing it to your next level, where you now start using modern breeding techniques. And yeah, markers genetic these genetic markers that I was talking about finding out the DNA that’s actually doing the thing it’s doing, the resistance to words or Downy Mildue, or the DNA, part of the DNA that makes the plants short or tall. You want to find these things, and if you found them, then you can actually select for them easier, but, it’s also a lot of different techniques that just, it’s just a lot of interesting things you can speed up the breeding cycle. For example, you can make the plants force to produce flowers sooner. It’s called Speed breeding, which is a very interesting concept. So all the combination of these things. So that was the idea of my PhD. Just leave her with some ideas, and then she will come up with something. But hopefully we’ll learn enough, so when I start doing my job, then I can start slowly incorporating these things. Because that’s where the world is going, so we don’t want to be behind the rest of the world. So yeah, that was part of my PhD. But my work is kind of like slowly getting these things into putting them into practice, and not just thinking about the Sci Fi. You know, it’s like, at the moment, it’s still early days.

Mark Dredge  20:23 

So in a practical sense, now that you’re in the role, how are you trying to use some of those? I know, is it genetic markers, the DNA? How are you trying to actually use those practically?

Klara Hajdu  20:38 

So one way, and we are actually getting to a point where we might have a few of these things that we will start using routinely, definitely on a kind of proof concept level. But the way you would do it, it will not replace the Breeder’s eye immediately. It will not replace the time that you spend on assessing your plants. But you can, in like clever times, you can say, Okay, I’m at this point of my breeding where I have you, let’s say you produce a lot of seedlings from seeds, and then you would need to screen them for Powdery Mildue instead of doing they just take a just pinch a bit of a leaf for everything. And then you just send them into a lab, and then they come back and say, these ones are the resistant ones. And so you just skipped a whole three months work of bulking up the Powdery Mildue pathogen. So then you can spray it onto your plants, or, like, infect them, and then, and then, and then do a lot of things. Another good example for using these markers already would be testing the sex of the hop plants, which is very important for us. I don’t know if you have seen like tiny hop seedlings, but even if they are out on the field, you can’t really tell whether they are male or female until a certain age. And we kind of want the females only in terms of varieties, because the males are interesting for breeding, but they’re not going to make you beer. So there’s another thing that you can do. You can use these sex markers, which are actually available, and other researchers have developed them, and you can just use them, and then you can pinch a leaf, and then just say this plant is a male or female. So you just you can make a decision at that point, whether you want to keep your males or separate them out from the females. It just makes things efficient, so you still have to plan them up and do things with them. But there are decision making points where you can apply these markers, and then you can say, okay, now I have extra information, so I can speed things up, or maybe I freed up some space, because I could get rid of a few 1000 plants, I can replace them with new plants. So it’s feeding in new blood in the system. So these are the kind of ways.

Mark Dredge  23:03 

yeah, it’s interesting, because when you do make the breeds and the, I guess, the first families of all those seedlings, you get so many seeds. And the reality is that very few of those will actually make it. Well, very few of those will succeed, certainly to the level of being in beer. So if you can just reduce all of those steps along the way, reduce all of those extra the extra time, the extra space to grow it up, this is what you’re talking about, isn’t it? Just speeding up, getting rid of the bad ones, or the ones that we don’t want, more efficiently. And with the DNA part. Do we know now the DNA markers for the you know, the sex, or for its resistance?

Klara Hajdu  23:51 

Yeah, so sex markers have been found. It is relatively recent, so we’re talking the last three, five years, soduring my PhD research, I was also looking for sex markers in my in my study population as well, and although they have already been found, but I found the same thing in my study, which is a confirmation, which is always very good, because we now know that these things actually really confer what we’re looking for. So, yeah, sex is something that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it would have been very difficult to have people were working on it, but it was very unreliable nowadays, because technology is so advanced now, and everything can be done on such a large scale, a lot of data can be generated. Everything kind of speeds up. So the sex markers that we have today, they were developed in in the US the USDA breeding program, they’re very reliable. So they can tell, I think it’s about 97 to 98% accuracy, whether you’re plant is a male or female, and it’s so it’s working. People are using it in some places, not everybody, because breedings, sometimes they just want to keep the males, sometimes it doesn’t make economical sense. You know, like you have to decide whether running a test in the lab is more expensive or it’s more hastle than keeping pots, for example. So it’s kind it depends. It doesn’t fit everybody’s needs, but it’s certainly there. It is usable. Markers for diseases are a bit more tricky, but we are we are also getting there too. Sex is an easier thing to decide about, because it’s just two things, and it’s a major thing. So finding out about the gender of a plant, it’s very similar system to humans actually, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Y and the X chromosomes. So females would have 2x chromosomes, and males would have a Y and the X chromosome. And that’s what makes you a male or female. So just finding the Y chromosome or the X chromosome can kind of give you the idea, okay, what is this? Diseases are a bit more complicated, but not as, not as complicated as aroma I would say that. But yeah, so there are markers for, I personally found some for the Powdery Mildue disease, for a certain variation of the disease of the pathogen, and this is currently being validated, and hopefully this will probably, could be the first market that we start using routinely in the UK breeding programme. But there are a lot of other things that we are still in search of, like finding out about and arguably more important things than poor Powdery Mildue, which I think is actually quite important, but especially here in the UK, we are very interested in things like  Verticillium Wilt and in recent years, it’s kind of resilience traits like drought, you know, heat stress, it’s just things that are becoming more and more pressing now. And I think if I was to say, what’s the focus of genetic breeding, our genetic informed breeding for us now, it’s certainly still wilt. Wilt would be the number one and now we are moving towards trying to find out these genes that can make your plant more resilient to, you know, hot summers, drought, like, you know, winter dormancy and this kind of thing, they will become very, very problematic they already are.

Mark Dredge  27:32 

So do you think we can find those genes?

Klara Hajdu  27:36 

If I think we can?

Mark Dredge  27:38 

yeah

Klara Hajdu  27:39 

Well we would like to think so yes, we are trying to do this. We have a project that just recently started, it’s actually, it’s quite a large project. It’s Defra funded, and we got some substantial amount of money to find these genes from our hop collection. So what I’m going to do in this study with together with my colleagues at Kent University and British Hop Association and NIAB, East Malling Research , where I’m actually sitting in an office and the Hop Club Company who are propagators, and there’s a company called LGC genomics, who are experts in like sequencing and genetic markers. So we are consulting, working on this topic right now. And the whole goal of this study is to use the hop collection, because we have these hundreds 1000s of plants we have so much information about, and we would like to find out whether they carry the genes that are helping plants to survive drought and heat and climate change. And once we identify these things, it’s like a large scale. We call it an association study. We just, we just sequence a lot of plants across, like a large panel, they are all diverse hop varieties or with different things. And then we find out about the DNA sequences, and we try to pinpoint where are their similarities. So we will test them for that. We will expose these plants to heat and water stress, and then we try to associate how they respond to that, all these different hop collection varieties with what’s in the DNA. And then from there, we can start thinking about, okay, there are some hot spots in the hop DNA. We seem to be responding to drought and heat stress, so that’s quite a nice study and I’m really hopeful that we will, we will find something, we will do the same thing with wilt as well in the same project. So, yeah.

Mark Dredge  29:43 

That’s really interesting. And it’s, this is about finding, I mean, all of this is about the future of hops, isn’t it? So it’s all about working out how we can continue to grow hops here, as well as how can we find new and exciting flavours and aromas.

Klara Hajdu  30:00 

So this is about future proofing British hops, really, because finding out the aromas and finding new varieties that are more marketable is also future proofing, because you have to, you have to move along with the trends. But if the world is changing, the environment is changing, we will have new challenges, and we are not prepared for it, and suddenly, the varieties that we are growing today, they’re not going to survive it, then we’re going to be in big trouble. So, yeah, it’s just, you know, it would be not very wise, if we could not be starting something about these things now. Yeah, so absolutely, we need to be, prepared for the challenges that are ahead of us. And, actually so.

Mark Dredge  30:52 

You know, that’s climate changes, and we’re talking about hops, many of these, something like Golding, came around, you know, what was it two more than 200 years ago? So that’s been grown for so long, and the world and the weather and the everything was very different then. So I guess it’s just that future proofing of that. But then these diseases that you’re talking about, like the wilt and mildews and things, can you just explain what they are? A little bit just, just so we know. Why? That’s a problem.

Klara Hajdu  31:29 

So hops are just like any other organism like us to we are susceptible to disease. And, yeah, it works a bit different in humans, because we have an immune system poor hop plants, they don’t but they do have mechanism to protect themselves. But there are these. These are called pathogens that are attacking the plant. So Powdery Mildew that we we refer to Powdery Mildew, is caused by a fungus that just attacks the plants and it causes a lot of damage. It creates this white powdery coating.  This is why it’s called Powdery Mildew, and it affects all parts of the plant, from the stem to the leaves. But the most problematic thing is when it starts getting onto the cones, and then the cones are forming, and they’re trying to grow and, like, ripe, then this disease really, like, aborts it, so you just end up with shrink little things, and then it’s just reducing the yield for the grower and affecting, potentially, the quality of the cone as well. And then Downy Mildew is another problem which is also caused by it’s not actually a fungus. So if I say that, I will probably told off by somebody at some point, it’s a fungal like organism that likes wet and moist weather, as opposed to Powdery Mildew, which actually thrives in dry conditions. And it’s just another thing that comes and causes a lot of damage and makes the plants grow stunted, and then it also affects the leaves and the overall health and the growth of the plant. Now the thing is that sometimes you can use certain chemicals to spray the plant, and it will kill the fungus and kill the problem. But some pathogens are very sturdy and they don’t really do anything with chemical treatments. So Verticillium Wilt is one of these things. They just don’t have any treatment available for it and this is why it’s it’s the number one problem, I would still say, because you can still use some sprays or chemicals or like something against the other things but wilt, you just simply can’t get rid of it. If you have it, you just have to put up with it, or try to manage it, but you just can’t get rid of it. So now, if you think about it, what is the best option for a grower to mitigate these problems? You can just buy a lot of spray products and just excessively spray, which is not really an option, because that isn’t really available for them anymore, it’s just getting less and less available. Or you can get plants who are naturally resistant, and then they just don’t get infected. And that’s very environmentally friendly, because you’re obviously not introducing nasty chemicals in your land and on your plants, and also it’s, it’s cheap, because you don’t really need to pay money for it. So, yeah, I mean, diseases are diseases. I think it’s, it doesn’t really require explanation. We know what the disease is. Plants get it to the trouble with changing climate, for example, that that will introduce new diseases. So, you know, nature is a beautiful thing, it is very much adapting to whatever is happening. So if you have, you know, like a dry year, you will have more of certain things. If you have a wet year, when climate is changing, the populations of these different pathogens, find the opportunity to expand or something so and there could be new things coming in as well. We don’t even know. Maybe there will be a new disease that is even worse than verticillium. We just don’t know. So I think what I’m trying to get is if you know how to find these genes, if you have the methods, if you figured out, then maybe today you find a DNA piece for verticillium, but when there will be a new problem coming along, you will know how to look for that as well, so you’re not going to be there clueless. You can just evolve with the problem and this is a struggle. It’s just gonna It’s never ending. You will just always have to work, work, work, make yourself more efficient.

Mark Dredge  35:51 

We haven’t talked about flavour so much in terms of this stuff, but there are at the moment, correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t there’s no DNA for citrus aroma.

Klara Hajdu  36:05 

Well, there are markers there that biochemical markers. And then there are, we know what, roughly, you can do chemical profiling of hop cones of a certain varieties. And then you can get, like, a profile of, it’s got a lot of Geranium and it’s got, like, you know, ratios of things. But because there are hundreds of 1000s of these different chemicals, there are major things. And we have like, a, you know, it’s like a thumbprint or whatever, of a, I don’t know, Fuggle or a Citra® or whatever. And then you can definitely tell that there are different ratios of these different things in them. And then you can start looking for those parts of the DNA which are responsible for the biosynthesis, the synthesising, the creation of these metabolites, we call them, that are making the geranium or whatever so. But it, it turns out to be quite a difficult thing to do, because it’s sometimes it’s not just that one thing that you find. It’s not just geranium, it’s the ratio of things. It’s a lot of other things as well, and and the environment as well. So maybe, you know, even if your plant has a lot of that, maybe you plant it in a different place and it will have a lot less so, yeah, flavour is is a very interesting thing. And I would love to spend more time finding, like hunting for genes for flavour. I feel like once we have figured out how to breed for agronomy, well then the next thing is absolutely going to be cracking flavour, or maybe, you know, the same time together.

Mark Dredge  37:43 

Yeah, brilliant. This is fascinating, though. I love hearing about how I guess what’s happening in the field, or not even in the field, like in in labs and around it, just to try and understand how the beers we’re going to drink in 10, 20, 50, years time, you know, the stuff that we can do now that’s going to influence that to me, to me, that’s, it’s just really, it’s just a really fascinating topic, um, what, I guess, what’s next for you at the moment, like, what? What are your ongoing priorities?

Klara Hajdu  38:14 

Yeah, so my main job is,  I’m a hop breeder. So I’m working on getting new varieties out to hop growers and and that’s my, my priority. So I’ve taken over the breeding programme officially full time a year ago, but I have been working making crosses since 2021 and I’m still assessing some of Peter Darby’s varieties, really, that he made. In order to get a new varieties, you sometimes have to wait 8,10 years. So imagine he only retired a few years ago. Some of his last ones are still coming true. So it’s a lot of assessment of what’s already been there, what I inherited and then now it’s the exciting stuff is starting to be able to assess my process and see how, what comes out from those things and, yeah, it’s just really exciting, but it’s I’m getting a lot of distraction. And, you know, it takes some time to find your feet, but my main priority is really, just to put through these new upcoming varieties in some through some rigorous assessments, fair trials, yield trials, brewing trials, and then see if we can, if we can find something for the British hop grower, because it is a big need for new marketable, locally grown, locally bred varieties. So and then in the meantime, if I can develop techniques to speed this up, then obviously that will come in play as well. In recent years, a aroma/flavour was a major thing. So the first last few years crosses, since I. Started making them. Were all about flavor and aroma and combining, kind of like building up on the aromas that we already started. Like building up, it’s kind of like increasing this gain of like using flavor males, we call them, which are descendants of varieties, female varieties that have really good flavor, and then just start pyramiding this. And I think this year we’ll probably again, just putting another layer on that, just trying to increase the intensity of of the aromas and the flavors, because that’s what breweries seem to be interested in. But in the same time, I’m always doing so part of my efforts going to research and trying to build that wealth of data. So I’m testing new male lines against known female varieties, for example, to see the performance of them. Because in the end, what makes it into the permanent hop collection, what is the absolute, you know, backbone of everything is going to be, you know, it’s building the data, building the information, while you are doing your selections, and just pushing things out from the other end of the pipeline. So yeah, the answer is, I don’t know it’s going to be something to do with flavour and aroma, because that’s what I’ve been asked by my lovely British hop growers, British hop industry, and it’s probably going to be something to do with genetic research as well.

Mark Dredge  41:29 

Have you picked your female parents for this yet? No, like, Do you have a selection of different females that you’ll be using for this?

Klara Hajdu  41:39 

I do have a few females that I’ve been using a lot, but that and I also use new female varieties as well. There’s one, one of the interesting female parents that have been used in previous years as Ernest. And Ernest itself is known to be kind of like the flavour, quintessentially British variety. It’s not really quintessentially because it’s really a wild American descendant. But what we find is that the seedling of the children of Ernest are throwing really interesting, diverse flavours. So I’m using now is, you know, downstream generations of Earnest who have been assessed for aroma, and they can be now used so they were obviously crossed with more flavour. So we’re just like adding more and more flavour into the pedigree. And so, for example, this is one of the parents that I’m using. But there are other things in the hop collection just lying about that. That just had very interesting history and I use them. So, yeah, maybe I just shared some secret now, but I don’t think it’s a secret people use Cascade for for ages, because we know what is Cascade does the same thing. It just has a very interesting recombination of flavours in the new generation, so some varieties do that.

Mark Dredge  43:10 

Yeah, well, I hope that there’s lots of brewers that listen to this, and then they’ll remember in five or 10 years time, when they’ve got this amazing new British hop that, oh, I remember Klara talking about that a few years ago. So yeah, that’s exactly what you’re doing now. Is the sort of thing that we’re going to be tasting in a few years time I guess it’s in a way, as a drinker, and maybe for you, it’s frustrating because we want this stuff now, but also that potential of what’s comming is, I think what keeps us, what keeps me, really excited about beer. So yeah, I think this is really fascinating.

Klara Hajdu  43:41 

I think waiting sometimes pays off. I know that where we are now and what we want to have today is not going to be the same thing in 10 years time, but I think reflecting when in 10 years time, if we have the same podcast, we will not really feel the passing of time. We just be very happy to have what we have at that point. And you know, it’s a long process, but it’s worth a wait.

Mark Dredge  44:07 

Brilliant. Well, thank you so much. It’s been really interesting.

Klara Hajdu  44:10 

Merci beaucoup.

Five Minutes with Faram Segement

Patrick Whittle  44:17 

From the breeding of hops to the brewing with them. Let’s catch up with Teme Valley Brewer Chris on this week’s Five Minutes with Faram. So Hello everyone. I’m at Teme Valley brewery today to do our Five Minutes with Faram segment. I’m here with Chris. Chris, if you could just introduce yourself, a little bit about where we are, a little bit about yourself, and then we’ll start for a segment.

Chris Gooch  44:36 

So I’m Chris Gooch from the Teme Valley brewery. We’re here at the Tolbot Knightwick, which is where the brewery is based, in the Teme Valley, which ought to be obvious, sometimes the river behaves. Sometimes it misbehaves. But love it or leave it, that’s what we work with.

Patrick Whittle  44:56 

There we go. So the first question in our Five Minutes with Faram chat is what’s your favourite hop.

Chris Gooch  45:03 

So as you’re going to find, I find it very hard to tie down favourites. But certainly, when I started brewing in 1997 one of our beers featured Northdown as the single hop for bitterness and aroma. And because Northdown are not grown in the Midlands anymore, and we only use hops from Herefordshire and Worcestershire. I haven’t used Northdown for brewing for probably 20 years. So the longer it goes, the more it becomes my favourite. It’s the thing I can’t use in the brewery, at the moment we’ve really enjoyed using Godiva™. So we changed one of our core beers over to Godiva™ about this time last year, and it won a silver at the SIBA competition in Ludlow. And we really enjoy the fact that we can make a traditional beer with elements of sort of new hop character. I love Sovereign. Sovereign is so versatile and useful. You know, it’s got a very broad character of aroma that almost matches every hop variety you can think of. So if you use it 50/50, with something like Cascade, you almost lift the elements of Cascade above what you would normally expect. So yeah, those three. Where would I stop?

Patrick Whittle  46:18 

So what’s your favourite beer? Either one from your brewery that you brew yourself or?

Chris Gooch  46:24 

I haven’t got favourite beer, we’re going to go back to this. So before I was a brewer, when I think the idea of working in the brewing industry really grabbed me. I used to drink in the barrels in Hereford when the Wye Valley brewery was there, and if I had somebody driving me, then I would drink Supreme in there, and because it was a higher alcohol than I would normally drink. So the fact that Supreme isn’t around anymore, again, just makes you wish it was, doesn’t it? And they brewed it as a one off and and that was very nice, but I do miss it. And similarly, when I started brewing the Cannon Royal Brewery at Ombersley, Jim Wonders used to brew a mild fruit, or is mild, and I really miss that. You know, that was a delightful beer, and I was always very happy to see it on. But if, if I got to pick on one locally that I’ve been drinking for at least 27 years, then it would be Town Crier from Hobsons. You know, there’s a lot of competition, obviously, and I enjoy beer from so many people, but if I’ve been consistently drinking that for 27 years, then it manages to consistently be a traditional British beer, which is what I like drinking and what I like making. And then going further afield, if there’s De Melon Land beer on offer, I will grab it, whatever it is. I think they’re probably the best brewery in the world. I’ve never not enjoyed one of their beer, and most of the time, I’ve been delighted. And as anyone who spoke to me in the last five years will know, the, I think it’s called High Tide, so the Ramsgate brewery, GAADS brewery, the Kentish triple, there will not be a better beer in the world than that. You know, it manages to be so many different things at once. So it’s very, very traditional, featuring Kent Goldings. It is also very definitely a characteristic sort of Belgian style beer, lowland style beer, but it’s sophisticated and it’s rewarding and it’s dangerous, easily, dangerously easy to put down the glass when it’s empty and think I can’t quite believe it was that good and pour another one, and it’s very strong. So, you know those, those are in my top ranked beers.

Patrick Whittle  49:05 

I don’t know, then if you’re going to be able to answer my next question, because there’s another favourite question, but what’s your favorite beer and food pairing?

Chris Gooch  49:13 

I literally say to people, drink your favourite beer with whatever you’re eating if you are buying wine in a restaurant, it costs 50 pound a bottle. You want the sommelier there to tell you why you’re going to enjoy it so much. But I think it’s always been an advantage. It’s changed recently, but you know, beer is available, beer is affordable, and if you are eating a meal, why would you wander around the fridge picking out something that’s going to be a perfect match. You know, it’s a little bit narcissistic to want your meal to be perfect. You just want it to be very, very good. So, yeah, what? You know, drink your favorite beer

Patrick Whittle  49:52 

With your favourite food basically? Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. I think that question as well is a bit it’s so well for me, it’s very seasonal. I find because I eat very different food to the winter and the summer, and therefore I feel you pair different foods with different beers and that sort of stuff. So it sort of it can vary quite a lot that one. But I’ve just realised all these questions start off with, what’s your favourite? Well, go again. What’s your favourite pub in the world?

Chris Gooch  50:19 

So it won’t surprise you, I was with the family in London about three years ago, and I promised to take them to the Frog and Firkin just off Porterbello Road, which, when I lived down on Ladbroke Grove was an absolute favourite. You know, they used to drank so many pints of Dog Bolter in there, and Dog Bolter is still brewed by the Ramsgate brewery, which, you know, I mentioned earlier, but sadly, the Elizabeth line has flattened it, so that isn’t there anymore. And that’s where, yeah, that’s where they filmed part of ‘With Nail’ and I so the family was looking forward to seeing that as well, so that’s gone. I was always very happy as an undergraduate drinking in The Swan in Liverpool. And if anybody’s going to Beer X, it’s worth a little trip to The Swan on Wood Street if you want to capture the essence of, let’s say a 1970s biker pub. It still has that same ambience, a little stickiness on the floor jukebox, where you can easily conjure up two hours worth a classic rock from the 70s and 80s, and nicely, they have decorated it, but they’ve retained the slightly yellow stain of nicotine, just so that it doesn’t change too much. The beer is a bit varied, but there’s no other pub like it Liverpool. So if I am at Beer X, you’ll probably find me there one evening, and the Square and compass, manages to be like a quintessential perfect pub, while being quite odd as well. And you have to go there to understand what I mean. But you know, the service is perfect, but it’s archaic, it comes from a hatch. The garden has got wildlife and domestic wildfowl wandering around it, and it’s in a perfect place by the coast. So yeah. So there you go. Three, two you can visit. One you can’t

Patrick Whittle  52:12 

lovely stuff, so bringing it back to the brewery now. So what would you say there’s one item in the brewery that you couldn’t live without?

Chris Gooch  52:17 

Our brewery is very much back to basics. So we’ve got one pump on the product side, one pump on the liquor side, one pump for cold water. There is no fat around the brewery. Everything is needed and required. You can always rely on a measuring jug. Since 1997 we’ve gone through two measuring jugs so they have legs. They don’t let you down, there’s nothing can go wrong with that little line on it, whereas everything else can find a way to trip you up. So yeah, if you find me in there clutching a jug and talking to it, you know, the day hasn’t gone the way it was planned.

Patrick Whittle  52:56 

It’s amazing, actually, when we ask that question, everyone says something really basic, like you’ll get, like, pen and paper, someone said, like, a big stirring stick to sort of aggravate the tanks and that sort of stuff we don’t get. We did have one person that said they talked about some high tech computer system and all that sort of stuff, but most of the time it is real basic.

Chris Gooch  53:18 

In our brewery, you could bring any Brewer from the last 600 years in and when they saw the mash tun, they would recognise the form and function of it, and they would know they were in a brewery, even though, for some of them, electric lights and heat exchangers and pumps and the method of heating would be completely different, but they would know, you know, from the mash tun onwards, what was supposed to happen in there. And it’s, it’s just as well, really, because as brewing equipment changes, the nature of beer changes no matter how hard you try. So if you do want to make traditional British beer, you’re pretty much stuck with, like, fairly basic equipment. You can finesse it, you can make it more efficient, but it’s always going to be pretty straightforward.

Patrick Whittle  54:00 

And also, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Isn’t it that long? If you’ve had your jug since, was it the 70s?

Chris Gooch  54:08 

So we’re on the third jug since 1997

Patrick Whittle  54:11 

Oh, there we go. If it’s not broke don’t fix it. Do you have a favourite song, artists, podcast?

Chris Gooch  54:18 

So in the new brewery, we don’t have a PBS certificate, so we don’t play music,anywhere in the workplace, in the old brewery, I think we did. I can remember playing Toots and the Maytals towels, Hell in love, Motorhead, the again, we’d be here all day, if I really told you, you know what kind of music I like.

Patrick Whittle  54:41 

Give us the whole playlist from A to Z

Chris Gooch  54:43 

In an emergency for really driving and compelling music, you can’t be Earthless Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky. So going to have to have a look on YouTube for that. You’ll see what I mean to dig you out of a hole.

Patrick Whittle  54:55 

I think some of these songs might be a bit before my time.

Chris Gooch  55:02 

I can’t imagine what you mean.

Patrick Whittle  55:06 

Yeah, if you weren’t in the brewing industry, what would you be doing? Or what did you do before?

Chris Gooch  55:13 

So I got this job because I went to work at Lulsley Court looking after sheep and cattle, and then spotted the brewing equipment at the farm before it was installed here. And said, because I’d done biochemistry University, I’d seen around a few breweries, so I ended up with both jobs at the same time. So for a while, I was looking after the sheep and cattle and brewing. And the only thing anybody thought was odd about that was when I did brewery tours, people wanted to know if I used different thermometers on the farm to in the brewery. But then the farm was sold and it was possible to go full time running the brewery, it’s hard to know if I, if I would, would have remained in farming the sort of turn of the century 2000 was a time of very low morale, and we’re almost back in the same place where, if you were working with livestock, it was very hard for anybody to really make money off it and and it’s demoralising. So I think I’d already thought about a change of direction. But I don’t, I don’t really know. I have no idea. You know, you never know what’s around the corner, really, I don’t want to go back to working with hops. So during lockdown, I worked at Stocks Farm up at Suckley tying hops, which is a brutal re entry to farming for anyone in his 50s. Don’t want to go back to that. So, yeah, if I wasn’t working in brewing now, I have no idea.

Patrick Whittle  56:47 

Well there we go. So what would you say your your biggest inspiration in brewing is, who your biggest inspiration in brewing is?

Chris Gooch  56:53 

So it’s people who’ve managed to continue brewing traditional British beer, retain their market and not jump with both feet onto any bandwagon along the way. And it’s not just, I’m not just talking about craft beer, but also kegging and things like that. So we’ve still got, you know, Donnington and Arkells. We’ve still got hook Norton, and if I start the list, I realise I’m going to upset people by not mentioning them. But we’ve got a lot of well established breweries, like Wye valley down the road who are firmly committed to cask, traditional cask beer, and they’ve never felt the need to do more than expand what they do, rather than shift focus. So, you know, I like making traditional British beer. I like drinking traditional British beer, and as long as I’m not the only one doing that, then everybody else will continue to be an inspiration.

Patrick Whittle  57:53 

So I guess you take a little bit of inspiration from lots of different people,

Chris Gooch  57:56 

Knowing that if you stick to your guns, and you absolutely commit yourselves to carrying on doing that, when all the voices around is saying, cash beer is dying. Nobody wants traditional British hops anymore. You know, you don’t have to pay attention to that you can keep on doing what you do well, and there will always be a market for it.

Patrick Whittle  58:18 

Yeah, I think so many people drink beer, isn’t there? There’s always going to be different segments of it, and that’s very obvious, but there’s no reason why. If one segments growing slightly that the other segment, it disappears completely. There’s many people like yourself that enjoy traditional beer, and well, if no one makes it, and no one’s going to be able to drink it.

Chris Gooch  58:35 

You only have to look at the relish with which you know brewers from other countries come to this country, and can’t wait to try, you know, to see how much it’s valued abroad, if not always, well valued here.

Patrick Whittle  58:48 

Yeah no, definitely. So have you got any favourite sort of beer festivals that you’ve been to, or when you’ve been to recently, or?

Chris Gooch  58:55 

So I work at so many it’s not always. It’s not always what I want to do with my spare time that I worked at the Worcester CAMRA beer festival for a lot of years. I don’t have time to do that anymore, but I do like the way it’s run and the way it’s presented. I went to the Zythos beer festival in Holland that was fantastic, that went by the blur, though, for a number of reasons, I don’t know. I’m not a natural big beer festival go where I don’t like the noise and the queues and things like that. So anyway, where a pub got 12 beers on, I’m very happy to do that.

Patrick Whittle  59:35 

That’s almost a beer festival to you.

Chris Gooch  59:39 

So especially if they made the effort to put it together, but we, you know, we run two beer festivals a year here, and I can see that people aren’t necessarily after novelty. They just want good beers all at the same time so they can have a choice. And then that’s, that’s, you know, that’s pretty much it for me. I don’t necessarily. So we want novelty, things I’ve never had before. I just want to be able to have a good choice on the day.

Patrick Whittle  1:00:04 

Yeah, variety is such a big thing, isn’t it? Keeps the palate alive, doesn’t it? So outside of brewing, do you have any sort of hobbies or interests?

Chris Gooch  1:00:26 

I mean around here, cycling, hill walking,

Patrick Whittle  1:00:33 

Well you’re in such a beautiful place for all of that.

Chris Gooch  1:00:37 

Yeah, since lockdown, Kate and I walked a lot of the Riverside paths around here. I do go to gigs. I go to gigs a lot. I wish the quality of beer was a bit better, although, if you go down to Bristol, you know, More Beer have done a terrific job of getting into gig venues, so you can usually rely on a nice beer when you get in there. I don’t have a lot of time for anything else, you know. I do quite a lot of volunteering when when I’m not at work. So hobbies are on hold until I get to retirement age, which, is not that far around the corner for me.

Patrick Whittle  1:01:12 

Lovely stuff. So just a few quick fire questions, just to sort of finish up the segment that we normally do. So what was the last beer that you brewed?

Chris Gooch  1:01:20 

Last beer that we brewed is is going to be called Man of Straw. It’s 3.9% so we’ve got Brambling cross in it, which you know, absolutely one of my favourites. It has got a characteristic aroma, but it varies from year to year, not in quality. The quality is always good, but just how that aromas expressed. So I’m looking forward to seeing, you know, just how that come across is comes across in the beer. So we’ve never brewed that one before. That’s a new recipe.

Patrick Whittle  1:01:53 

Oh, there we go. So how would you, how did you go about creating that recipe then?

Chris Gooch  1:01:59 

So if I’m honest, we look back at the last few seasonal beers we done and went, we haven’t done a pale beer under 4% for a long time. And then, and then you’ve got a pallet of malts you can use to come up with a pale beer. I know the way I want it to taste is refreshing and lightly bitter. So that sets all the parameters. And then the two of us put our heads together and just come up with what it’s going to come out.

Patrick Whittle  1:02:26 

Do you have a pilot kit at all, or is it the first time it’s a big batch?

Chris Gooch  1:02:31 

So we’ve got 27 years of brewing records to look back on, and Mark and I can look back on the 10 years of working together.

Patrick Whittle  1:02:40 

What  you plan does come out, yeah, in the in the brew, very nice. So Fuggles or Golding,

Chris Gooch  1:02:48 

We don’t use Fuggles anymore, because in the long run, unfortunately, you know, the future for Fuggles is, is uncertain. You know, it won’t. I’ve used Faram’s Fuggle, which is, which is very nice. And you know, when the time comes, we’ll use that, but, yeah, but I’ve dropped fuggle in favour of Sovereign, probably 12 years ago. I think so it’s Golding. Goldings all day.

Patrick Whittle  1:03:19 

Goldings the winner. And final question, what’s next for you in the industry and next for the brewery?

Chris Gooch  1:03:26 

Christ, I wish I knew the I know next week I’m on holiday. After that, it’s all, it’s all a bit gray. It’s gone beyond being dynamic, hasn’t it, in the last five years. It’s  become very unpredictable. There are a lot of people who aren’t brewing anymore, you would thought would be around for decades. So, yes, I don’t know maybe, maybe Brut IPAs will come back. Maybe you know, some of the things in the cycle and churn of innovation that have dropped by the wayside, maybe people will find ways of finessing them and making them more consistent and more appealing to everybody. The worrying thing is that, although beer prices have gone up, the amount of money people have to spend on beer is more or less standing, staying the same, so they’re drinking less and hopefully making decisions about how to enjoy that better. But no, it’s unreadable. It’s unknowable,

Patrick Whittle  1:04:31 

I guess. Yeah, like you said, it is. It’s a very open ended question that and you do find, you might find some trends 20 years ago, might come back in, might make flavours and change. We sort of all on a big circle, aren’t we, so sort of things that were popular maybe 20/25, years ago might start coming back in. So I guess you as a brewery, it’s sort of looking at those and seeing if you want to adapt and start brewing, but like you said, you like to be traditional.

Chris Gooch  1:04:54 

So exactly, brewers can be incredibly fickle. I don’t know. How the hop supply side of the industry really bares it. You know, where for years and years and years they demand one thing, everything is geared up to provide that, and then suddenly, overnight, they want something else. It just drives me nuts. I don’t know how hop growers cope with it. So let’s just hope for a bit of stability, a bit of getting our feet back on the ground and seeing where we go from there.

Patrick Whittle  1:05:24 

Lovely stuff. Well, that brings you to the end of our questions. So thank you very much.

Chris Gooch  1:05:29 

You’re welcome.