Our beers have only four ingredients – water, malt, hops and yeast.
It’s very important to us that our beers are brewed using ingredients which are as fresh and natural as possible.
The water is untreated, Lakeland spring water, rising from the fells a few hundred yards from the brewery. It is filtered but otherwise untreated, and it is naturally very pure and soft.
We use only English malts, freshly kiln-dried and milled for us. We don’t use cheaper wheat, maize or rice products in our beers.
Our hops are whole-leaf, naturally dried hops – pelleted hops contain chemical residues from the manufacturing process. We’re often asked if we brew organic beers – the answer is ‘no’, we don’t, because we want to reduce our carbon footprint by using only English and European hops.
Our yeast is developed from one of the longest established English Ale Yeasts, and we harvest yeast from each fermentation to use in the next brew, maintaining the distinctive flavours.
Many keg beers – and some of the mass-produced cask beers – have a long list of chemicals added to preserve colour, flavour and aroma. These include
flavouring sugars such as protease, betaglucanase and amyloglucosidase; ammonia caramel to add colour and propylene glycol to add shelf life; rhoiso-alpha, tetrahydroiso-alpha and sulphuric acids to balance and enhance flavours and even silicone to aid pouring!
Our beers are fermented for a week, then carefully transferred to racking and conditioning vessels for up to six days, depending on the recipe. Finally we condition the beers for at least a week in our newly-built Cold Room, to ensure that it is bar-bright before leaving the brewery.
An amber bitter with a strong hop character and a crisp finish, Ennerdale Bitter is a classic ‘session’ beer, a popular choice with young and old alike.
A fruity, golden beer with a heady burst of floral hop aroma and a satisfying clean bitterness. Blonde was first brewed as a summer ‘special’, but it proved so popular that it is now one of our permanent beers. A blonde for bitter drinkers, it’s our best-seller.
Dark amber with a crisp finish, Copper has a smoky, dry flavour. First brewed as Ennerdale Autumn, it’s another seasonal special which we had to keep on brewing because it is so popular.
A dark bitter, it is a more potent brew than our other beers, but it remains remarkably quaffable. With a rich, velvety texture, a definite chocolate flavour and a creamy head, this beer has converted hundreds of ‘light beer’ drinkers to the ‘dark side’.
A Golden Mild with just enough hop balance to add a slight bite. Refreshing and light, it's the perfect thirst quencher.
Developed from one of our best-sellers, this bitter has a warm ginger undertone with hints of coriander and orange.
