Cory’s Top 20 – #10 Hope Brewery

Rank: #10

Location: Pokolbin, NSW

Favourite Beers: DIPA, Imperial Mango Sour, Sunny Boy Sour

Previous Blog Appearances: Imperial Mango Sour, Sunny Boy Sour, Imperial Blueberry Tart Sour

The first brewery off the rank as we enter the top 10 comes from the heart of wine country in the Hunter Valley.  It’s Cory’s Top 20 – #10 Hope Brewery.

I first tried Hope a few years back and really enjoyed their DIPA in particular.  I also loved the novelty of a brewery from a wine region (the brewery itself is even part of a winery) producing a really good, really hoppy DIPA.

But something happened maybe a year or so ago.  Hope apparently just decided ‘Hey, let’s just be super awesome at sours’.  And they certainly took that philosophy and ran with it.  The range of imperial sours Hope puts out is exceptional.  Three of them have already been featured on this blog (see links above).  I still think that the Imperial Mango Sour may be my favourite sour beer I’ve even had, full stop.  And the Sunny Boy Sour is neck and neck with (and potentially slightly ahead of) Little Bang’s Face Inverter for the sourest beer I’ve ever had.

All up they’ve got something like 8 imperial sours in the range.  I think I’ve had all of them at some point and I have yet to have one that isn’t excellent.  Plus they’ve got plenty of standard strength sours that are also great.

Hope’s hoppy offerings are genuinely delicious.  But it’s hard to argue that they don’t get overshadowed by the quality and extent of their sour range.  They’re that good.