Welcome to The Pellicle Mixtape, a regular feature where I (Pellicle co-founder Jonathan Hamilton) ask people from across the food and drink industry to create a playlist set to a theme of their choosing.

The hope is to gain a small insight into that person and their place of work through not only their song choices but also the thought process and level of obsessiveness they put into their mixtape. I’ll also be asking them what they’ve been enjoying eating and drinking recently, and finding out what else has been exciting them in the world of food and drink.

This week, on the—I’m gonna stop counting them now actually, I think I’ve established that this will be a long-standing feature of the mag—we have the wonderful Em Sauter. You may know Em from her long-running Pints and Panels project, but if you’re a reader of Pellicle you will probably know her for The Adventures of Nelson and Goldy comics.

I sadly have never had the chance to hang out with Em [I have, Em is great!—Ed] having missed her on visits to the UK, but I’m sure we will rectify that situation one day. However, I have followed Em’s work for years. Back when I was just getting into beer in a serious way, around 2011, I was working in Stevenage for a large pharmaceutical company for my Chemistry degree. The plan then had been to do this year in industry, and then get a job in big pharma, earn a nice salary and live a comfortable and easy life. That was the plan at least.

Unfortunately, despite a love of science and previously thinking that this was my only real career prospect I realised within a few days that working in a large lab was not for me. The people were great, the work they were doing was important, but the moral conundrum of working for a company like that didn’t sit well with me, and the work was often repetitive and took months, if not years to realise that it didn’t work. Thankfully at the time, I had started to get more and more into homebrewing and between that and trips to London to buy bottles from The Kernel a plan had hatched to move into the field of brewing.

Now that I was convinced I was going to go into brewing, I—to my shame—spent a lot of my time at work distracted and found myself for lack of a better word, skiving. The taps on my work computer at the time would religiously contain the following: Good Beer Hunting, The Mad Fermentationist, various blogs by people like Mark Dredge, some guy called Matthew Curtis, and Pints and Panels.

The beer scene in the UK at the time was much different than it is today. Living in a town like Stevenage in 2011 meant getting good beer was a trip to London or an online order from BrewDog’s online shop. But it was still a young scene (as far as the modern “craft beer” scene goes) and we were miles behind the US in terms of styles. In fact, a lot of the interesting beers I was drinking at the time were still US imports like Racer 5 from Bear Republic.

By reading the comics Em was making for Pints and Panels I had an insight into the sort of beers that were coming out across the water, and would be so excited and intrigued to hear about beers like saisons or Cantillon Gueuze that I would try and hunt them down in London. In fact, I’m pretty sure reading about Lambic on Pints and Panels is what led me to get my first bottles from Boon, 3 Fonteinen and Cantillon from Kris Wines in London. I still remember my first experience with a 250mL bottle of Boon Gueuze in my living room in Stevenage and it changing my perception of beer instantly. Not necessarily in a good way, and I remember my first bottle of Cantillon Gueuze and saying it was like salad dressing, but it changed me regardless.

So, Em, you might not know this, but your comics had a large impact on my career path and led me down a road that ultimately led us here, and now you have your own comic on our website and we are stoked to have you here.

Now, over to Em with not one, but two mixes for you all. Enjoy!

The Pellicle Mixtape Volume 14 — Em Sauter of Pints and Panels/Pellicle Mag

On first glance this looks like a heavy playlist, and it is. This is a semi-sombre playlist (or songs that feel sombre to me even though they are upbeat) and has been built to be played in that regard. I've been gravitating towards these songs recently. For some reason, sombre music makes me connected to why I'm sad and in a weird irony, it makes me feel better. It's called "I Miss That Feeling" because I realise there's a lot to miss right now. I miss people. I miss experiences. I miss the feeling that we're going to be okay.

I wanted to highlight bands I really love that people may not know but then also feature some of my guilty pleasures like the band Keane or Scott Walker or Frank Sinatra (whose slow songs hit at a gut level). Every song reminds me of something; memories I could write chapters in a book to. That's the infinite point of music though.

I want to dedicate this playlist to my Master Cicerone study friends Robyn, Max and Shane, who I miss more now more than ever. I would give anything to drink a pint with them right now but with half of us in Connecticut and the other half in the UK, I'm not sure when we'll get to do that.

I've also created a supplemental playlist of classical music entitled Lacrimosa. Lacrimosa ("weeping" in Latin) is an integral part of the Requiem mass. So if you haven't figured it out yet, these aren't the most upbeat tunes; but fuck are they beautiful.

When I was ten, I started playing the cello. It was a highlight of my young life to play (I played until I graduated from college). I was the kid in middle school with headphones in listening to Rimsky-Korsakov. My friends from the local youth orchestra and I had a quintet which would meet weekly to play Schubert. Like any high school band, we bickered, we weren't very good and we would secretly drink after rehearsals.

These pieces are the most beautiful things ears can listen to. The Lacrimosa section from Britten's War Requiem (sung by Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya—who was handpicked by Britten to sing the Requiem) is music you need to crank to 11. My favourite classical piece of all time is Greig's Piano Concerto in A Minor. The 2nd movement is, without a doubt, the best piece of music ever written.

I recommend listening to this playlist on a rainy Sunday as loud as you can.

What have you been drinking recently?

I live near B. United's headquarters in Oxford, CT. They import such European brands as De Dolle, Schenkerla, De Glazen Toren, Uneticke, Hitachino, etc as well as OEC, their own brewery on the property which makes some really unique beers.

Because of the pandemic, they have been canning a lot of different brands that usually go into keg from tankers sent to them by the breweries themselves. Getting to pick up fresh Schlenkerla and De Glazen Toren cans—what a luxury.

Where/What have you been eating recently?

Since it's gotten hot here in New England, we've been firing up the backyard grill. We eat a lot of cheeseburgers and hot dogs (don't judge) and I make excellent oven fries. My husband is growing vegetables in our garden for the first time although a woodchuck and their adorable baby have destroyed our lettuce crop. We have been getting takeout from our favourite spots such as J. Timothy's Taverne (their buffalo wing sauce was named best in America) and Frank Pepe's Pizza for New Haven-style pizza which is oval-shaped, kinda burnt, with a sweet tomato sauce. It's delicious and the best pizza ever.

What have you been reading recently?

I am chipping away at the Modern Library's top 100 books of the 20th century, something I've been doing for almost 15 years and quarantine was a great time to restart that task (28 books left!). I'm currently listening to "The Magus" by John Fowles on audiobook. Holy shit that book is a trip (would make a great HBO miniseries—lots of sex, manipulation, and deceit). I also have been reading "The Naked and The Dead" by Norman Mailer, his WW2 epic. Now that's a heavy book. At night before bed, I read "Of Human Bonage" by W. Somerset Maugham. I am enjoying how listless the main character is—for a book written in 1915, the main character's desire to be liked but also feel a connection to his purpose on earth seems a more contemporary notion.

I took a break from the Modern Library list to read "Let me be Frank with you" by Richard Ford recently, whose book "Independence Day" is my favourite book of all time. The book's protagonist is the same as Independence Day but now Frank Bascombe's friends are all dying of old age and diseases like Parkinson's or cancer and the world has changed due to Hurricane Sandy; so many people are struggling with the grief of losing everything. It was a weird book to read now given the times we live in. Enjoy things while you still can.