“You can only make a good thing out of good products; therefore, stick to the motto that the best ingredient is not too good for our beer.”

- Adolphus Busch; June 11, 1901

From selecting the finest ingredients, to tasting the packaged beer, a rigorous quality assurance program is followed by every brewmaster at every Anheuser-Busch brewery.  This assures each bottle, can or keg is the highest-quality beer possible, with precise consistency from one batch to another.

Malt is known as the “soul” of beer.  It is made by soaking barley kernels in water, germinating the seeds and then drying them in a kiln.  This process begins to convert the grain’s starch into the sugars that will provide nutrition for the yeast used in brewing.  Anheuser-Busch barley experts have visited more than 2,000 barley fields, which are primarily found in Montana and Idaho, to hand-select barley used in the brewing process.

Hops are known as the “spice” of beer, adding to beer’s aromas and bitterness to balance the sweet malt flavors.  Clusters of cones from this perennial climbing vine are hand-selected by our brewmasters from the world’s finest fields in locations such as the Pacific Northwest and Europe , including our company’s own hop farms in Bonners Ferry, Idaho and the Hallertau region of Germany.

Rice contributes to a beer’s crisp, clean taste.  Although more costly than brewing with all malt, Adolphus Busch added rice to Budweiser to set it apart from other lagers.  Anheuser-Busch is the largest buyer of rice in the United States and we even mill some of our supply at a company-owned facility in Jonesboro, Ark.

Yeast is a very important and often under-estimated contributor to the flavor of beer.  The yeast used in brewing Budweiser is proprietary to Anheuser-Busch and is directly descended from the original Budweiser yeast culture first used by Adolphus Busch in 1876.

Water undergoes a multi-stage filtration process to assure purity, quality, and consistency.  In addition to tasting all incoming ingredients, as well as the beer at each stage of the brewing process, our brewmasters taste almost as much water as they do finished beer to confirm our quality standards are met.

Click here for more information about brewing ingredients.