John Innes Centenary Beer

To celebrate its centenary, Norwich’s John Innes Centre produced a beer to celebrate its legacy to plant and microbial science. The award-winning Thornbridge brewery has used barley grown in Norfolk coupled with a traditional brewing technique to produce an English style India Pale Ale, simply called John Innes 100.

The beer is brewed with Maris Otter barley, a variety developed in the 1960s by Dr G.D.H. Bell at the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI).  The PBI merged into what is now the John Innes Centre in 1987, but in its 75 year history PBI developed over 130 crop varieties and enabled the UK to become self-sufficient in wheat and barley.  PBI was based in Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, on a site on Maris Lane.  Hence, the Maris name being given to many varieties developed at the site over the years, including the famous Maris Piper potato. 

Maris Otter became the preferred barley variety because of its superior winter hardiness and went on to become one of the most enduring varieties in the history of modern cereal cultivation.  It wasn’t until 1985 that the PBI produced the variety Halcyon, which with its higher yields and better disease resistance, largely supplanted Maris Otter.  Maris Otter, however, still remains the barley of choice for many traditional craft brewers and for this reason was selected to make John Innes 100. 

John Innes 100 is described as a light copper English IPA with aromas of fruit and berries, a gentle maltiness in the mouth and a wonderful citrus, lemon-pith bitterness.

Rowland Biffen, the first Director of PBI, demonstrated that the principles of Mendelian genetics applied to barley and wheat.  Biffen worked with William Bateson, who coined the term ‘genetics’ and went on to become the first Director of the John Innes Horticultutal Institution at its inception, 100 years ago.  Much of our knowledge of what affects yield and quality comes from work carried out by PBI in the 1930s and 40s under Herbert Hunter, and later G. D. H. Bell.  Bell filled a need of farmers by producing the first winter-hardy malting barley (Pioneer), and in the following 10 years the winter barley breeding programme produced varieties that trebled production, and accounted for almost three quarters of the UK barley acreage. 

Bell made important breakthroughs in the study of vernalisation.  This is a period of cold weather needed to trigger germination.  UK winter barley has a requirement for vernalisation, but spring barley does not. These environmental cues are being studied by scientists today at the John Innes Centre, to help prepare farmers for the effects of climate change.  Warmer winters may mean that some varieties of winter barley may no longer receive the necessary required vernalisation period.   The flowering time of barley is tightly regulated by the plants ability to measure the length of the day.   Most UK varieties flower much later than counterparts in hotter, drier climates, so that they can fully utilise the long growing period.  If our summers become drier, earlier flowering may be advantageous to enable yield to be amassed more quickly.

Scientists are trying to understand the way barley responds to these environmental cues to see how this may provide adaptation to different farming environments and provide knowledge and resources that plant breeders can use to ensure the sustainability of production.   This reflects the John Innes Centre’s ongoing mission to enhance scientific knowledge, the quality of life and economic well -being  by conducting world-leading fundamental and strategic research relating to the understanding and exploitation of plants, and it is hoped that the John Innes 100 beer will epitomise how this has borne fruit over the last hundred years.