--- Let’s begin the description of this episode with a mea culpa. In February 2025 I visited the Trading Route, a new venue from the people behind Manchester Union Brewery, and Manchester restaurants Trof, and Stow. One of the main reasons I was excited to go was because Manchester Union co-founder Will Evans had appeared in an Instagram video advertising slow poured versions of their lager, complete with voluminous creamy heads. Slow poured lager—like that offered at Denver’s Bierstadt...| Pellicle
*** Huge thanks to our pal Dave who’s been our resident cartoonist for two years. We’re able to commission him each month thanks to the support of our Patreon subscribers, and if you’d like to join them you can do so by clicking here.| Pellicle
It’s a Sunday, nearly midnight, and I’m in 8 Ball–a dilapidated yet bustling pool hall above the Scotia, an out-of-the-way folk bar in Glasgow city centre. Occasionally a buzzer sounds, signalling someone at the door—it’s the kind of place where the staff need to keep a handle on exactly who gets in, and when. The Dixie Chicks are on the jukebox for the third time tonight. Depending on how friendly the burly, silver-haired barman is feeling, there might be time to get one more round...| Pellicle
There is a theory I’m working on, born from over a decade of hospitality work, that the things a society pays the least attention to often have the most to say. To be discarded and dismissed, yet to exist and to be negotiated with regardless, can tell us something about the way habits, tastes, and s| Pellicle
After dark, the Woolwich foot tunnel is a chilling prospect. For half a kilometre you hurry through a clinical, white-tiled tube under the Thames with no way of escape before emerging south-of-the-river. That was the night I ate my first curry straight after drinking my first pints of Bass in a nea| Pellicle
On 15 July 2009, Stephen Clinch landed in Salzburg, tired and confused, after jetting from Dublin to Sioux Falls, Minneapolis, back to Dublin, and finally, to Munich. He’d been buying equipment for his new brewery Trouble Brewing, and he’d hightailed it back to Europe because his beloved Bohemian F.C (‘Bohs’) were playing Red Bull Salzburg in a blockbuster Champions League qualifier. “There’s no greater joy than a European football trip with a load of lunatics,” Stephen tells ...| Pellicle
--- One of the best things about making a yearly trip to Fyne Ales for FyneFest is that I get to check in on the brewery’s Origins side project. It’s the vehicle for its wild beers, typically produced using mixed or spontaneously fermented and then barrel-matured beer, and often showing locally grown fruit, or foraged herbs. These beers are a long way from cherished Fyne Ale classics like Jarl or Highlander, but they arguably show an even greater ‘sense of place’ than the cask beers...| Pellicle
With its magnificent green tiled exterior blending with the restored ironmongers and sweet shop in the recreated village at St. Fagans Museum in Cardiff, the Vulcan Hotel appears unchanged since 1915.| Pellicle
It’s at least 20 minutes before opening time and a queue has already formed outside The Hope. Although an occasional red London bus zooms past, this isn’t a bustling high street. Here, at the Sutton/Surrey borders, is one of the sleepiest corners of the capital, where daffodils, scorched in the sun, droop lazily as spring turns to summer. I take a walk to avoid waiting around in the queue. On a nearby wall someone has scrawled: ‘No to ULEZ’ despite Carshalton’s traffic congestion en...| Pellicle
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They should be here but they aren't. This is the third place where I’ve tried to find them and failed. The packet of Brets beer and cheddar flavour crisps I’m searching for is nowhere to be found, and I frown at the thought of that cheesy, yet strangely bitter delicacy getting away from me. I surrender to the obvious by grabbing a pack of my favourite flavour, salted butter, instead, all for just €1.29 (£1.00.) Brets isn’t even the prettiest crisp packet on the aisle. The packaging l...| Pellicle
About 10 years ago I was roaming along Red Bank in a part of Manchester city centre I was hopelessly unfamiliar with. On either side of me were tall stone walls topped with railway bridges, boxing me in and hiding the sun from view. Not another soul was to be seen. I sincerely hoped I was in the rig| Pellicle
St. Petersburg feels like it could have been squeezed out of a soft serve ice cream machine. The Florida-city’s postcard perfect holiday energy is infectious, exuding a soft-focus quality of easy, playful ambiance that has been attracting tourists for generations. The 97-year-old Don CeSar Hotel—its Barbie-pink, fondant fancy exterior writ large—encapsulates its chintzy-meets-cool essence. Today, St. Petersburg—colloquially known as St. Pete—has a reputation as being the Austin, Tex...| Pellicle
I’m here to convince you that an artificial human blood substitute manufactured exclusively for consumption by vampires is, remarkably, a good candidate for a homebrew beer recipe. True Blood is a horror fantasy TV series originally released in 2008, based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by author Charlaine Harris. For seven seasons it followed the eponymous Miss Stackhouse, a small town Louisiana girl with the ability to read minds, navigating adventures involving werewolves, witches, fair...| Pellicle
The River Derwent meets the village of Ambergate at a glide. Coursing down from its source in the peat-covered Howden Moors at the northern end of the Peak District, by the time it reaches this sleepy corner of Derbyshire it feels calm and collected. Almost statesmanlike.| Pellicle
Tom Fozard is frustrated. I’m sitting with Tom and his identical twin brother Oliver (Ol for short) in an office that overlooks Roosters, the brewery they bought with their dad, Ian, in 2011. Founded in 1993 by Sean Franklin—a man who could ostensibly be described as one of modern British| Pellicle
Reports that tell us we should be drinking less often bear striking similarities. Take, for example, the photograph used for article headers. This is so often a stock image of someone drinking beer, usually in a pub, sometimes without regard of which alcoholic beverage is being discussed within the| Pellicle
By the edge of Puerto de la Cruz’s tiny harbour in northern Tenerife, a seafood grill operates out of a converted shipping container. Boys fish from the harbour walls, and girls jump into the choppy water, screaming—it’s mid-March, and only 20° Celsius outside. In front of me is a basket of wrinkled, charcoal-grey potatoes, served with pots of freshly made mojo rojo and verde. My beer is a Cruzcampo, brewed in Seville by Heineken—you can’t even get Canarian-brewed (and AB InBev-own...| Pellicle
Should we scrap the pint measure? Or is the very notion of doing so rooted in prejudices like classism? These were the questions I asked following the September 2024 publication of a study led by researchers at the University of Cambridge. Back then my focus was singular: why indeed did such a st| Pellicle
*** We’re able to hire and pay our incredibly talented contributors like David Bailey, Will Hawkes, Rachel Hendry, Claire Bullen, Pete Brown, David Jesudason, Ruvani de Silva and many, many more only thanks to the support of our subscribers. If you want to help us support their work, then please c| Pellicle
It’s a fresh, sunny afternoon in Amsterdam. The wind sweeps over the river IJ, and tiny droplets hit my cheeks as they’re blown up from the rocky river waves. Like Brits, the Dutch need only a hint of sunshine to take to the terrace of their kroeg —classic Dutch pubs—en masse, even if the foam from| Pellicle
Traditional coffee is natural fermentation. It is a saison or wild beer. It is real cider or perry. It is low-intervention winemaking. Post-harvest, coffee cherries are allowed to ferment in controlled conditions during the drying process and this fermentation is influenced primarily by the wild ye| Pellicle
I’ll never forget the first time I had a Velvet Hammer. The Anvil in Dallas, now sadly closed, was a Texas approximation of an “English-style” pub, which in practice meant dark wood interiors and an absence of the American kitsch that usually adorns the walls of dive bars on this side of the ocean. Before moving to the US in my mid-twenties, I thought beer was fine—a lubricant for hanging out and getting drunk, rather than a thing of pure beauty. But the US beer scene and the beer s...| Pellicle
January was a busy month for Felix Bollen. The co-owner of German Kraft Brewery spent new year’s eve in Austria before heading to Berlin, where he lives, a week later. Two weeks on, he took a bus to London, the birthplace of German Kraft (his car —“a piece of shit,” he says, with a smile—broke down en route) before flying back to the German capital for a few days. He ended the month back in Vienna. Such is Felix’s life now. German Kraft, which he founded alongside pals Michele Tie...| Pellicle
Coffee and beer are, when you think about it, strange bedfellows. One gets you out of bed in the morning, provides stimulation and impetus, while the other (hopefully) tells you that it’s time to slow down and kick back. Perhaps it's the inherent balance this creates which is why I can’t do without| Pellicle
We’re a magazine and podcast devoted to exploring beer, wine, cider, food and travel, and the joy we find within these cultures.| Pellicle
We’re a magazine and podcast devoted to exploring beer, wine, cider, food and travel, and the joy we find within these cultures.| Pellicle
Content Warning: This article makes frequent and detailed references to suicide and severe depression, therefore reader discretion is advised. No one should struggle with their mental health alone. If you are in the UK there are several charities you can reach out for support including Mind| Pellicle
When I walk into a near-empty Persevere on a drizzly Leith weekday, its vastness swallows me up like a whale. Moments later, when I gingerly take my pint of Newbarns Pale Ale to the table and sit in one of the half-boothed banquettes, a feeling of tranquility comes over me. My initial fear of being| Pellicle
A Place To Be is a brand new zine and the first work published in print by Pellicle Magazine. Written and designed by Pellicle’s deputy editor Katie Mather, A Place To Be is a collection of found spaces and places-within-places to step inside, escape the real world and enjoy a little drink. “Th| Pellicle
Seamus O’Hara never intended to brew a cult beer, but it doesn’t really work like that. It’s a status achieved organically, through a confluence of circumstance, serendipity, and time. The canny brewer might, with a couple of judicious decisions, nudge things in the right direction. The b| Pellicle
I. “I’m told you serve the best pint of Landlord in Sheffield,” I say to the person behind the bar of The Sportsman on Benty Lane. “Well we definitely serve enough of it,” they reply with a smirk and a shrug as they hand me my copper-hued pint.| Pellicle
“Whatever your normal is—and I don’t give a fuck what your normal is—you don’t have to justify yourself,” James Loveday, one of the five founders of Mash Gang, tells me. “Your morals are for you, and your routines, and your relationship to alcohol, it’s for you,” he says. “If that means you can hav| Pellicle
There isn’t a commercial brewery out there that doesn’t, on some level, have a passion for the beer they produce, the ingredients they use, or the techniques they employ. Why, then, when it comes to packaging, are an increasing number of businesses adopting the often soulless output of modern genera| Pellicle
In Britain, we’re wasteful with our national history. There’s so much of it just lying around, getting in the way, and we persist in thinking of it as boring. It’s old rocks; dead white men in powdered wigs; lists of boring dates and names. Instead, we fetishize the new, always looking to be the fir| Pellicle
