Ilkley Brewery and Charles Faram reveal new British Hop
A brand new British hop named Olicana, which was grown by Charles Faram & Co Hop Merchants, and test brewed by Ilkley Brewery, has been unveiled.
The Herefordshire-grown hop was revealed at the 2014 SIBA BeerX conference in Sheffield last week where thousands of brewers, licensees, hop growers, maltsters and craft beer fans gathered for this annual celebration of British beer.
The Olicana seed was originally sewn in 2009 and in 2013, after three years of agronomic assessment, Charles Faram and Ilkley Brewery teamed up to exclusively harvest and brew with this new hop, then, simply named 1391. Ilkley Brewery will brew exclusively with Olicana this season but it is hoped the hop will go into full scale production in 2015.
“Working with Charles Faram brings a fantastic opportunity to brew with a completely new hop that has wonderful citrus characteristics and challenges the convention that you need to source hops from the New World to brew hop-forward beers,” said Chris Ives, managing director of Ilkley Brewery.
“British breweries have been importing aromatic hops from countries like America and Australia for many years now but the knock-on effect is that British hop growers have taken a back seat. Creating different and exciting hops like Olicana, and growing them here in the UK, is vital for the British hop industry to stay alive,” added Chris.
Paul Corbett, managing director of Charles Faram and Co. Hop Merchants, continued: “We are delighted to have had the help and support of Ilkley Brewery with this, one of the first varieties from our new hop breeding programme. It gives us an excellent first-hand opportunity to assess the brewing potential of this new hop and we hope that it is well received.”
About Olicana
The name Olicana was chosen in honour of the Yorkshire spa town of Ilkley where the five year old brewery is based: Olicana being the name of the Roman fort from which the town grew.
The Olicana hop is a daughter of the US variety, Cascade, and an English male from the Charles Faram hop development programme. It boasts mango, grapefruit and passion fruit qualities. Charles Faram is working closely with their growers to get more Olicana plants propagated and planted this year. The new breeding programme has been established to compliment the great work that Peter Darby is doing at Wye Hops Ltd, giving a two-pronged attack to the search for more highly aromatic British hops.
To find out more about Ilkley Brewery, visit: www.ilkleybrewery.co.uk or follow Ilkley Brewery on Twitter @Ilkleybrewery and Facebook www.facebook.com/ilkley.brewery
For more information on Charles Faram, visit www.charlesfaram.co.uk
