Modern Sour Beers – Our Take on the best Sour Breweries Right Now

Sour beers were once the preserve of Belgian specialists and hardcore beer nerds only. Gloriously, in recent years, the style has burst into the mainstream – and it’s recruiting converts with commendable pace. With the sun threatening to shine once again this year, what better time to look at some of the best brewers of sour beers in existence right now?

Vault City

Like the name suggests, Vault City brews were once hard to come by – almost as if they were locked in crypts accessible only to beer-seekers armed with bumbags and tasting notes booklets. Fortunately, relatively recently, someone unlocked the gates: the Scottish sourmeisters are increasingly popping up in bottle shops and specialist online sites (including craftmetropolis.co.uk) with their weird and wonderful wares. One thing that should draw your attention towards Vault City is the brewery makes nothing other  than sour beers. Little wonder, then, that their sours always stand out. At the very heart of Vault City Brewing lies their house mixed-culture. A bit like a sourdough starter yeast, a sour beer’s culture is really its foundation. It needs to be relatively special to create something unique. 

Vault City use a blend of Kveik (a Norwegian yeast we’ve talked about before in this column) and Lactobacillus strains which impart delicious tropical esters and a tart acidity. The esters are added to the pulps of real fruit in whacky concoctions to make Vault City’s smoothie-like brews. “Straight up” versions like strawberry and apricot exist – as do amplified counterparts typically reaching 11% ABV. If you fancy something a little more wild, Vault City have dabbled with spiced pumpkin, tayberry (it’s a bit like a redcurrant, I’m told) and vanilla. Their latest fun releases include a Cheeky Vimto Sour and a Havana Special. 

I don’t think there’s anyone UK-based that’s better at using natural ingredients to invigorate sour beers. This is one Vault very much worth unlocking.

Maltgarden

I first stumbled across the Polish brewery Maltgarden when one of our customers rushed in in a frenzy to tell us all about the brewery’s rather special hoppy beers, a few of which he’d apparently managed to liberate on a recent specialist beer-swap night. Knowing our hero as a top-end beer nerd, I swiftly began pestering contacts and, eventually, sourced some Maltgarden to try. The oracle was not wrong; Maltgarden make some very special hoppy modern beers. I explored further and discovered the brewery’s dark beer range was even better – full of peanut adjuncts with lashings of coffee, toffee, banana and chocolate (there’s even a wax-topped can… but that’s another story). Criminally late I learned that Maltgarden make some outstanding sours too; sours that really push your palate’s limits. Maltgarden’s newest sours include combinations as unusual as dragonfruit, lime and mango. 

Maltgarden brewers like to play wizard so don’t be surprised to see odd juxtapositions of nuts, spices and sours that captivate and confuse your tastebuds in equal measure. If a warm can of Tyskie is your only experience of Polish beer, change that right now!

Pastore

Everything about Pastore Brewing and Blending hints at the exotic. The name itself conjures the image of a small Spanish village. The can artwork and font drag your thoughts over to a sleepy Moroccan fishing town. Perhaps disappointingly, Pastore are actually based on an industrial estate near Cambridge. Regardless, Pastore sours are outstanding. Where Vault City are likely the UK’s best makers of fun sours, Pastore are a refined and subtle compeer. The emphasis here is an accessible, modern take on mix-ferm brewing (that is, brewing using multiple yeasts, including wild strands) and Pastore deliver every time. 

Although the basis of all Pastore sours is old school sour brewing, novel ingredients and flavours make Pastore sours accessible to non-expert fans. The newest concoctions on the Craft Metropolis shelves are perfect examples of this. Torta Di Morello, for example, is a cherry pie pastry sour conditioned on morello cherry puree, cinnamon, vanilla and almond.

Pastore are a brewery we love supporting. Not only do they make some of the most well rounded sours about, they’re also a tiny operation, even by craft beer standards. Their story is made all the more sweet by the fact the brew team are the father and son combo of Ben and Chris Shepherd. Seek the brews out.

Pomona Island

Here at my bottle shop in South London, we get new Pomona Island beers delivered pretty much every week. And with good reason! Again Pomona Island are a brewery that seem able to nail all styles of modern beer in existence. It’s testament to their quality that I can wax lyrical about their sours just as I could their dark offerings or hoppy monsters in the same breath. It’s also testament to their brew quality that I tend to cherry-pick Pomona Island beers to include in the fifty or so new beers I get to try each week (yes it’s one of the world’s best jobs!).

Pomona’s sours catapulted the brewery to the relative mainstream. The sours here are tart-but-not-too-tart which, in sour context, is simply flavoursome. The brews are also out-there without being messy. Almost all are easy drinking. Combined, that’s an exacting set of  standards to live up to repeatedly but, somehow, the Pomona brewers manage it. Despite being a relatively small operation, Pomona seem to put out a new pale, IPA and, of course, a new sour each week, so there’s always something interesting to seek out here.