Hop Back started in 1986 in the cellar and yard of the Wyndham Arms, a street-corner pub in Salisbury that John Gilbert bought with the money from selling his house in London. The beer outgrew the pub: a twenty-barrel plant at Downton, a few miles south of Salisbury, started brewing in June 1992, and that is where it is made now.
Summer Lightning is the one everybody knows, and the brewery has been collecting awards since it was named Champion New Brewery in 1989.
