Little Valley Brewery

Little Valley Brewery is situated in the Upper Calder Valley high above Cragg Vale in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Dutch-born owner and master brewer Wim van der Spek is a Bavarian-qualified Master Brewer and has an MSc in food technology. Wim met his English partner Sue Cooper during a cycling trip from Holland to Tibet. After the trip they settled in Hebden Bridge and founded Little Valley Brewery. For Wim this has fulfilled a lifetime ambition. He’s a serious contender in the world of connoisseur beers – he’s produced award-winning beers in his native Holland, Germany, England and the Scottish Highlands.

All organic, Little Valley beers are environmentally sound, from the quality of the ingredients through to delivery. They also taste fantastic – within days of the brewery’s official opening in 2005 its Stoodley Stout won the ‘Beer of the Festival’ award at Smithfield Beer Festival here in Manchester.

The beer is (mostly) made out of 4 ingredients, water, malt, hops and yeast, although in some brews other ingredients are added; such as organic coriander seeds and lemon peel in ‘Hebden’s Wheat’. Ingredients and suppliers are found as locally as possible – water comes from the nearby Withens reservoir, organic malt from Warminster Maltings in Wiltshire and Muntons Maltings in Suffolk. The hops, the most distinguished ingredient in beer, come from England, Belgium, Germany and New Zealand. Yeast, used to transform the sugars into alcohol (and for flavour) is a specific one obtained from Brew Lab in Sunderland. It’s this that gives Hebden’s Wheat its fruity and ‘banana-like’ flavour.

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