There are four key ingredients when it comes to making quality beer – water, malted barley, hops and yeast. Other items can be added along the way to help enhance or impart other desired flavours in a beer, but these core ingredients are all as important as one another when it comes to brewing.

Soft Yorkshire water provides the ideal start to our process, as it contains very few salts, which allows us to treat it according to the style of beer we want to brew. The addition of various salts to the water varies and plays an important part in how a beer tastes.

Malted barley is primarily used to obtain the sugars that are eventually converted into alcohol during fermentation, but, depending on how long it’s been roasted for at the Maltsters, it can also impart a plethora of other flavours and colours that help to shape the style of beer being brewed.

Hops – where would we be without hops? Famed for our pale ales, the aromas and bitterness you’ll find in many of our beers are mostly derived from the hops we use. Whilst there are some interesting hops grown in the UK, we predominantly use varieties from North America and New Zealand, as well as a few others from Europe. Based on a rigorous process of ‘rubbing and sniffing’, these hops are selected with quality in mind, so that the fruity and floral aromas and flavours they impart on our beers are as good as possible.

The yeast we use is a well guarded secret and is integral to the overall Rooster’s flavour. When combined with the other ingredients mentioned above, it helps create a unique range of beers that have won countless awards, both at home and abroad.