Fresh soft water is essential for brewing great lager. And no brewery in the world has a source as pristine and perfect as ours. Drawn from an Ice Age aquifer 300m underneath our brewery in České Budějovice, our water is absolutely pure and dates from a time before pollution or agriculture. Unlike other breweries, our natural water doesn’t need chlorinating or softening before brewing; it rises from our artesian wells clean, clear and ready for brewing.

We only ever brew using whole-cone Saaz hops, and we’re the only brewery of our size in the world that still does. Sourced from the 700-year-old hop fields around the town of Žatec, our Saaz hops are highly valued for their smooth bitterness, complex aromatics, and zesty, fresh, floral spice – and they still arrive at our brewery with a wax seal guaranteeing quality. Revered across the world as a ‘noble’ hop, we like to call them ‘green gold’.

The malt is the real soul of our beer, creating its golden colour, its sweetness, body and taste. And we source our malt from a place with real soul too: the Moravian region of Haná, where seven rivers meet to form a rich, fertile plain ideal for growing our single strain of highest quality pale malt. Perfected over centuries, this malting barley comes alive at our maltsters creating the ideal base for decoction mashing and a fuller flavour in our beer.

The unsung hero of brewing has to be yeast. It is essential for fermentation and creating the carbonation that gives our beer its clean, crisp finish. Budějovický Budvar’s brewing yeast is a heritage strain of lager yeast that we’ve carefully cultivated and safeguarded since the origin of our brewery in 1895. Designed to work at cooler temperatures and to be cellared for far longer, it is a homegrown ingredient that is vital in the slow, cold-conditioning of our beer.