The main ingredients in our beers are water, hops, barley and yeast. We go to great lengths to make sure all our ingredients are of the finest quality. Great beer begins with the very best water. It’s pure, for sure, but it also has the perfect mineral content for the very best lagers and ales. Hops are the green, cone-shaped flowers of vines that grow especially well in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. They add spicy aroma and different flavors to our beers. For some beers, we import special varieties of hops from New Zealand and Germany. Hops also act as a natural preservative. Malted barley is the soul of beer, lending color, body and flavor. MillerCoors primarily uses special varieties of barley with excellent consistency for brewing purposes. Other cereal grains—corn, wheat or rice—can be used with barley as “adjuncts.” Corn, for example, gives beer a milder, lighter-bodied flavor. Yeast is the critical ingredient that transforms other ingredients into beer. In the process of converting simple sugars and starches from grain into alcohol, the yeast also imparts distinct flavors. This is how we get different beer styles. More than 150 years ago, Frederick Miller hand-carried a unique strain of prized lager yeast from Germany to Milwaukee. That strain has been carefully nurtured and refined ever since. It’s still used in many MillerCoors beers today.