Welcome to The Pellicle Mixtape, a brand-new feature, which we’ll be running on the last Friday of every month.

In this feature, I (Pellicle Co-Founder Jonathan Hamilton) will be asking 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.

In this, the second in the series, I’m very happy to feature my good friend and former colleague Kamilla Hannibal Kristensen.

Volume 2 — Yeastie Boys Marketing & Communications Manager Kamilla Hannibal Kristensen

Kamilla and I for a long time worked together at Beavertown Brewery in London, but in very different parts of the industrial estate. It was only after her leaving that we got to know each other properly.

Originally hailing from Sweden via Denmark, before joining the team at Beavertown as Media Manager in late 2015, she was responsible for Events and Communications at Mikkeller in Copenhagen during the opening of Warpigs, its collaborative brewpub with 3 Floyds. Her experience in the industry has earned her a reputation for her refreshing approach to Social Media and Marketing. She has featured as a panel guest at talks around the country including the Brewers Congress, and the first Women in Beer festival in Edinburgh.

Now heading up Marking and Communications as part of a small team for Yeastie Boys in the UK, she is an inspiration for many, including myself, for her approach to having a great work-life balance. Kamilla is an important and vital part of our industry, but she doesn’t let her job define who she is, and has one of the longest lists of extracurricular activities of anyone I know.

If she’s not frequenting her favourite E5 Bakehouse in her neighbourhood of London Fields, she is out running, or trying out a new gruelling form of exercise which sends shivers down my spine. This passion of trying new things out led to Kamilla taking up skateboarding this year, which as her skate nerd friend gave me much joy.

Conveniently enough for this series, before moving into a career in the brewing industry Kamilla headed up her own record label—Good Tape Records—in Copenhagen, as well DJing in the city. Surely there couldn’t have been any better choice for our first proper guest for a mixtape.

Over to you Kamilla. Tack!

My first ever heartbreak was when I was 16 and was made to move from the north of Sweden where I grew up, to Denmark where my parents are from. It had always been on the cards that my parents wanted to move back to their home country at some point, but all of sudden it was time and I hated it and cried in our red Volvo all the way to the ferry.

Everything turned out fine in the end and I guess I am sort of Danish now. However, being surrounded by Swedish pop music from age 0 has made me always look for an Abba-esque hook in any music I listen to. Also, you can still detect a Swedish accent when I speak both Danish and English, which will most likely never disappear.

My playlist is a 30 minute energy injection filled with danceable Swedish electro-pop, indie pop, glam pop and 8-bit pop. Short and Swede.

This should give you the boost you need to get going, wherever you are heading.

Hejja Sverige!

What have you been drinking recently?

For someone who has worked in the drinks industry for years, I actually do not drink that much boozy stuff. I hate hangovers and two IPAs send me to soppy town. However, I do like light beers and a new favourite for me is Yeastie Boys White Noise. It’s a 4.4% white beer with lovely light floral notes and a finish just as dry as any Scandinavian’s sense of humour. Perfect for me.

As a true Dane, I love coffee and tend to always have 2-3 different freshly roasted beans on rotation in our flat. I am one of those nerds who buys beans from local roasters when I am out travelling. Recently I picked up some beans in Stockholm from Drop Coffee, they were excellent. I can also really recommend London based roaster, Dark Arts.

I promise you, I have not had one coffee that I did not like from them. (If you want to try it out and about they serve it at I Will Kill Again where they actually roast their beans). One of my all-time favourite coffees is “Ana Sora” with notes of Blueberry juice and Lemon zest from Hasbean Coffee. It’s Delicious. V60 is the way I have my poison and I am very anti-French press. We can chat about it some other time.

I am also trying to be an adult and drink water which I find weirdly difficult to remember to do. Work in progress.

Where/What have you been eating recently?

I love baked stuff, especially sweet baked stuff.

My local spot, which I visit several times a week, is E5 Bakehouse (in the arches under London Fields station). Their cakes are quite brilliant and they also do a soup & toastie lunch combo, which is perfect on a cold day. Last week I bought a focaccia home with me and I just ate it in silence thinking of how much I love gluten. E5 is a cool place overall and they do lots of projects giving back to society. Check them out. Speaking of the sweet joys of gluten, PASTA!

Sometimes I buy filled pasta from Burro e Salvia on Redchurch street to bring home and have with the magic left-wing pasta sauce (ask me for the recipe if you want to try it but you have to vote Labour to gain access). You can mix and match the pasta they have on and seriously, they look like little pieces of art.

One of my new favourite spots is Snackbar in Dalston. Snackbar is a Neighbourhood cafe, an urban farm and co-working space AND they make the best rice bowls. Go there! Also, the coffee is great.

I am very much devoted to Hackney and I love it here BUT...

Last weekend I went to Manchester and visited Siop Shop. It was GREAT (a dream come true after hours of Insta “research”). I had a veggie sausage breakfast muffin and a cinnamon swirl doughnut. I am quite obsessed with doughnuts and could probably write a whole article about it. (Let me know if you are interested Pellicle).

This doughnut had the perfect breadiness/fryiness (it’s a word now) balance in my opinion. 5/5 star-shaped doughnuts from this Danish jury. Seriously look at their Instagram, they have made doughy holes into an art form.

What have you been reading recently?

I have just deleted my twitter account for the 5th time this year. What can I say, it’s a long and messy breakup and we will probably end up together again. BUT it has freed up some space for reading <movie trailer voice> The Newspaper </movie trailer voice>. I am a very restless person with mild dyslexia so reading can be a bit of challenge for me sometimes, but getting The Guardian at the weekend and reading it bit by bit throughout the week feels good and healthy for the old nut. Also, it gives you a lot of “did you know” facts, apparently.

A book that I am truly enjoying at the moment is the cookbook Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For). A few weeks ago I was in a bookstore with my boyfriend and he picked up a copy of Midnight Chicken and told me the background story and I teared up. Then I read the intro while standing in the shop and a few tears fell out of my eyes.

Then I bought it and read some more in the overground on our way home and I started sobbing. Listen, it is a cookbook but it’s so much more than that as well. The author Ella Risbridger has written a beautiful collection of recipes to help you through the tough times that life sometimes throws at us. It’s lovely.

Thanks for listening/reading!

Cover photo by Jonathan Fisher.