Pastore Sorbetto AF Sour

Pastore arrived during the point where British brewing finally stopped treating sour beer like an occasional novelty and started taking mixed fermentation seriously. Thankfully, they also avoided the trap of making every beer taste like melted ice lollies blended with vinegar.

Based in Cambridgeshire, the brewery focuses heavily on modern sour and wild ales, often using fruit, wine barrels and mixed fermentation to build layers of acidity and texture rather than sheer sharpness. The beers tend to feel bright and expressive without becoming exhausting, which is harder than it sounds once brewers start introducing bacteria into the conversation.

Fruit plays a major role in many releases, but usually with restraint. Raspberry, cherry, gooseberry and stone fruit show clearly while still allowing the base beer to matter. There is often a gentle funk and soft oak character underneath too, giving the beers more depth than straightforward kettle sours.

The visual identity leans clean and modern, but the brewing approach borrows heavily from older European traditions. Belgian lambic, farmhouse brewing and barrel ageing all influence the range, even if the final beers feel very contemporary in presentation.

British mixed fermentation brewing has improved enormously over the last decade, and Pastore are part of that newer generation proving the category can produce genuinely nuanced beer rather than just acidity for acidity’s sake. Some of the bottles sit surprisingly close to natural wine territory in terms of texture and complexity, which probably explains why they work so well in bottle shops rather than purely beer spaces.