HB&B Blog — Sour

The Beer Lover's Table: Chai-Spiced Apple and Plum Crumble with Great Beyond Brewing Co The Raspberry Incident

Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen East London Great Beyond Brewing Co Sour

The Beer Lover's Table: Chai-Spiced Apple and Plum Crumble with Great Beyond Brewing Co The Raspberry Incident

I have a lot of feelings about apple crumble. It probably sounds funny, but as a child raised in the US – land of the apple pie à la mode – I thought apple crumble with custard was exotic. We had it only once every year or two, when we visited my grandparents in England. As a cook, my grandma’s repertoire didn’t extend much beyond roast chicken and boiled peas, but as a baker, she had an innate genius. I remember the rosy strata of a summer trifle, sticky wedges of treacle tart; a tartly puckering gooseberry fool, platters of coffee...

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Fundamentals #131 — Pastore Blood Peach Waterbeach Weisse

Cambridge Fundamentals Matthew Curtis Pastore Brewing & Blending Sour

Fundamentals #131 — Pastore Blood Peach Waterbeach Weisse

I confess, I don’t drink a lot of fruit sour beers. I do, however, enjoy the term “fruit sour” if you’ll allow me to explain. It’s been very enjoyable observing the return of some classic, near extinct central European styles over the past 10 years or so. If it wasn’t for experimentally-minded, plucky brewers digging through the history books, styles such as gose and Berliner weisse might have been consigned to history, and not the colourful cans that now adorn our bottle shop shelves. However, as brewers have increasingly sought to experiment with these styles by, for example, loading them with fruit, they have...

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Fundamentals #123 — Duckpond x Little Rain Guava Jelly Gose

Duckpond Fundamentals Matthew Curtis Sour Sweden

Fundamentals #123 — Duckpond x Little Rain Guava Jelly Gose

Every so often I encounter a beer that challenges my own logic. In my book, Modern British Beer, I devised a philosophy I call the Broad Spectrum of Joy in which I pose that all beers are valid, because someone, somewhere, enjoys them. Shitty macro lagers are valid. Hazy IPAs are valid. Funky geuzes are valid. Hell, even 15% pastry-stouts-that-taste-like-vape-juice are valid. The whole point of a beer existing is for enjoyment, so if someone enjoys it then you absolutely have no right to take that away from them. But here I am with a can of guava, mango, passion fruit, marshmallow and lactose beer...

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Fundamentals #119 - Holy Goat Dragonaut Tropical Sour

Brett Fundamentals Holy Goat Matthew Curtis Scotland Sour

Fundamentals #119 - Holy Goat Dragonaut Tropical Sour

Serious question: where have all the brett beers been hiding? Time was, about six or seven years ago, that you couldn’t move for small breweries releasing their latest bretted beer (whether this was intentionally so is anyone’s guess). More recently though, it feels like the yeast strain has fallen out of vogue, giving up its dwindling share of the limelight to more fashionable cultures, such as kveik. But what exactly is brett – or brettanomyces, to use its full name? Well, the clue begins in the name, with “brettano” meaning British and “myces” meaning yeast. According to various online resources...

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Fundamentals #118 — Lambiek Fabriek Juicy & Wild Muscar-Elle

Belgium Lambic Lambiek Fabriek Matthew Curtis Sour

Fundamentals #118 — Lambiek Fabriek Juicy & Wild Muscar-Elle

I got myself in a spot of bother on Twitter recently. It’s something that admittedly happens with a certain regularity, due to my acerbic sense of humour, and the fact I often forget that when you post something on the internet devoid of context, a lot of people won’t get the joke. “Beer and food pairing is a lie,” I stated, when asked for my own “cancellable beer take”. My hope that this would get lost amid the general business of the viral thread was misplaced. I could almost hear the tut-tuts as people hurriedly typed out their replies informing...

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