Meet Vocation Brewery

Vocation Brewery: From a Yorkshire Chicken Shed to a Craft Beer Icon

Vocation Brewery was born out of a desire to trade spreadsheets for brewing paddles. Founder John Hickling quit a comfortable, stable corporate career in IT because he wanted to create something real, tangible, and full of flavour. Moving away from the uninspiring, mass-produced lagers dominating British pubs, John set up Vocation in 2015 high up in the hills of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire—initially brewing from a converted chicken shed.

The blueprint was beautifully simple: brew bold, unapologetically hop-forward beers that the team themselves wanted to drink. What started as a tiny lifestyle operation quickly exploded into a national craft beer success story, driving a relentless wave of independent brewing excellence across the United Kingdom.

Where is Vocation Brewery located?

Vocation Brewery is proudly based and brewed in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, England. The independent company operates from its dedicated brewing facility in Cragg Vale, where they control every stage of production.

What makes Vocation a hop-forward brewery?

Vocation is famous for its masterful, dense use of premium American and global hops (such as Citra, Mosaic, and Amarillo). Rather than masking flavour with cheap starches, they heavily load their brews during the whirlpool and dry-hopping stages to ensure vibrant tropical fruit, citrus, and resinous aromatics.

Is Vocation Heart & Soul gluten-free?

Yes, Vocation’s flagship Heart & Soul Session IPA is officially certified gluten-free. The brewers meticulously break down the gluten protein chains during fermentation to under 20ppm, allowing coeliacs and gluten-sensitive drinkers to enjoy a world-class, punchy pale ale safely.

What is Vocation’s signature flagship beer?

The brewery’s ultimate signature icon is Vocation Life & Death, a 6.5% American-style IPA. It is famous across the UK craft beer community for its heavy, complex layers of tropical fruit flavors balanced by a crisp, lingering, and resinous bitter finish.

What Makes Vocation Brewery Different?

Vocation has carved out a towering reputation in a highly competitive market by adhering to a few unbreakable principles:

• Obsessive, Unfiltered Flavour Consistency: Many craft breweries struggle with variance between batches, but Vocation pairs an edgy artisan mindset with state-of-the-art laboratory testing. Every can delivers the exact same punchy hop profile, whether it’s drunk at a festival or out of a retail fridge.
• Craft Beer for the Many, Not the Few: While some microbreweries cultivate a strictly elitist, gatekeeping culture, Vocation explicitly believes world-class craft beer should be highly accessible. They combine accessible pricing with bold, complex flavour scaling that welcomes both casual drinkers and hardcore hop-heads.
• Striking, Typographic Visual Identity: Working alongside top independent design agencies, Vocation pioneered a iconic, bold, typographic can aesthetic. Their clean, monochromatic, and heavy-contrast labeling skips classic brewery illustrations for a modern look that screams main-character energy on shelves.

Meet the Legendary Flavour Lineup

By allowing the exceptional quality of their malt bases and premium hop combinations to lead the way, Vocation offers a stellar core range. Stock your bar, store, or home fridge with these wholesale cases:

• Vocation Life & Death (6.5%): A multi-award-winning, heavy-hitting American IPA. Packed with deep tropical fruit notes and a complex, resinous bite that defines the modern UK IPA market.
• Vocation Heart & Soul (4.4%): A crisp, ultra-refreshing session IPA that delivers the full-throttle tropical aroma of a larger beer while staying sessionable and completely gluten-free.
• Vocation Crush Hour (4.6%): A hazy, velvety, and smooth pale ale bursting with juicy, low-bitterness fruit character—the ultimate afternoon thirst quencher.