Pastore Brewing & Blending

Pastore is a small brewery headed by father and son team of Chris and Ben Shepherd. (Pastore – pronounced Pa-store-ay – means ‘Shepherd’ in Italian.) From their base in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, the two beer lovers produce some of the most respected mixed-fermentation sour and wild beers you can find from any UK brewery.

If you like your sours sour, then Pastore is the brewery for you.

On the one hand, there’s Pastore’s fruited Waterbeach Weisse series, that’s subtle enough to appeal to those dipping their toes in the sour beer pool. (And by the way, the series is top quality – Pastore is a classy brewery that exists solely to make brilliant, modern beer.) But this brewery also release experimental magic like Kveik and Lactobacillus fermented Sour IPAs. Beer nerds will recognise the quality on offer from that sentence alone.

In Pastore’s cellar series, Pastore raise the bar to yet another level. Here they use their own house Brettanomyces and lactic acid bacteria mother culture to ferment wild ales, often in rum, whiskey and wine barrels for months – or even years. While resting, the beers develop other-worldy complexity.

Both Ben and Chris Shepherd have been brewing together for years. Ben grew up home-brewing with his father then completed a master’s in brewing, writing a thesis on Brettanomyces ​fermentation while studying his craft. It’s little wonder this brewery’s output is so great.