Cambridgeshire-based Pastore Brewing and Blending are celebrating their fifth anniversary with the release of five very special beers.
A few weeks ago they welcomed Amundsen, from Norway, to their brewery, and collaborated on Bomba (7.5% ABV), a berry layer cake sour with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cinnamon, coconut, and vanilla.
“We think this is our most impressive pastry sour yet,” say Pastore’s brewers. “Using Amundsen’s expertise, we layered the beer with cinnamon and coconut to achieve more depth of pastry flavour. Plus, we added an obscene amount of fruit.”
Not long after, Manchester haze-specialists Sureshot visited and helped to create Kiwi Crush (6% ABV), a hazy sour dry-hopped with Motueka and conditioned on kiwi, lime, and white grapes.
The third beer in can is Classico (5% ABV), an Italian-style pilsner dry-hopped with Saphir.
There are also two 750ml bottled beers, created with Arizona meadery Superstition. “We tasted through a whole load of our barrel stock and settled on a three-way blend from Cabernet Franc, Rioja, and Sauternes barrels,” says Pastore.
“Inoculated with our funky mother culture, these blends were then split into two batches. Both underwent an addition of local Cambridgeshire honey, then one was conditioned on local strawberries and raspberries, and the other on not-so-local prickly pears.”
The results are two Desert Blends (7% ABV), but stocks are limited!