A new brewhouse selling craft beer and on a mission to help the planet opens today in Twickenham.

CTZN Brew's bar is on York Street in the old Chicago Rib Shack restaurant, and will have its own microbrewery for small-batch 'experimental beer' as well as serving Rugby Coffee, kombucha from KalmBucha, and food.

CTZN (pronounced "citizen") makes its beers in its brewery over in East Sheen, in the old Kew Brewery site. It is brewed by ex-Brewdog and Beavertown brewer Hugh O'Neil.

Owners and joint-CEOs Jon Sumner and Jana Gray bought the brewery about two and a half years ago but the site isn't big enough for a taproom or bar, so they set off on a journey to find themselves a 'brewhouse' where they could serve beer.

Sumner said: "We found this place in Twickenham and we fell in love.

"We wanted to create a really cool space where people could come and drink great beer and come to events."

The bar has 12 craft beer tap lines, half of them CTZN (with four on offer this week and the rest TBC) and the other half guest beers including the likes of Strawberry Hill's Jawbone Brewing.

They describe the food offering as "gourmet stadium food". Gray is Canadian and her influence is clear as the menu encompasses classic Quebec dish poutine alongside loaded hot dogs, and buttery popcorn.

Although the couple bought the brewery back in 2018, Sumner said that lockdown gave them time to reflect on what they really wanted with the business.

He said: "We closed down because of the pandemic but it gave us time to think about what we really wanted to do.

"We took the time to think hard about what we were doing.

"We felt we didn't really fully own it (the old Kew Brewery), it wasn't 'us', so we took the opportunity to rethink everything."

Before the pandemic Sumner worked full time for a satellite data company, on the Accord project in Kenya and his time in Africa has greatly influenced his work at the brewery.

In his old role he used satellite technology to help smallholder coffee farmers deal with the impacts of climate change.

He said: "I realised that the people most impacted by the climate crisis were the smallholder farmers.

"Crops like coffee are getting harder and harder to grow."

"It was transformational for me and I got passionate about what small business can do to help people."

One crop that he learned was particularly efficient to grow due to its low water requirements is millet.

He had come across a few breweries in India and Southern Africa (like the Okavango Brewery) brewing with millet as well as sorghum – beer has long been brewed with millet there but it is less commonly seen here in the UK.

Sumner said: "Craft brewing is a very creative thing.

"I thought 'why can't we start brewing a craft beer made with millet?'.

"It's a new frontier for craft beer in the UK."

Going forward CTZN Brew will be making some African-inspired small-batch experimental beers in its Twickenham brewkit, using things like millet and baobab.

But making new beers is about more than putting a new product on the shelves for Jon and Jana. The whole brewery's ethos is about supporting small farmers and making a positive mark on the world – hence its slogan, #DrinkLocalThinkGlobal.

"What I learned with coffee is that the value chain doesn't work for the farmers, it's loaded in favour of the drinker at the other end," Sumner said.

"We can create a new value chain that goes right the way back to the farmers.

"We thought, 'let's put sustainability right at the heart of our brand'.

"It's an exercise in collective action.

"The simple act of buying a beer from us can help in the fight against the climate crisis.

"We can't wait to shine a spotlight on smallholder farmers across the world."

Sumner has a real sense of urgency about the climate crisis and wanted to do something more than writing the business's green credentials on its website or pledging to reduce the mark they make.

The logo in itself is a symbol of that ethos; the fingerprint represents their desire to move one step further than considering our footprint on the world.

The goal is to be carbon neutral, if not carbon negative within five years.

"We can only achieve so much as a small business, but if we can achieve something that is what we think companies should look like in the future."

Find the brewhouse at:

Twickenham