Welcome to The Pellicle Mixtape, a brand-new feature, which we’ll be running on the last Friday of every month, with occasional bonus volumes like this one!

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.

In this, the third in the series, we have a very special bonus mixtape from our good friends (and, full disclosure, sponsors) Hop Burns & Black, to launch our Pellicle x Hop Burns & Black Mix Pack of beer, wine and cider! Mixtape, Mix Case, get it? It’s obvious. Well obvious enough for us to make it a reality at least.

Presenting the Pellicle x Hop Burns & Back Mix Pack

At Pellicle we’re humbled to count independent retailer Hop Burns & Black as our biggest sponsor. Their support has enabled us to survive through our first six months of existence and we were thrilled when they extended their sponsorship last month. This means that whenever you order some tasty beer, wine, cider or hot sauce from our friends in South London, you’re supporting us too!

To celebrate both their support and our friendship, we’ve put together the Pellicle x Hop Burns & Black Mix Pack: a selection of three sumptuously tasty big bottles. At Pellicle we venerate the holy trinity of beer, wine and cider, and feel the selection within this box represents one of each of these things at its pinnacle.

What’s even better is that buying this box saves you a pretty penny or two (5% compared to the individual bottle prices). Even better than that is there’s a further 10% discount available for our wonderful Patreon subscribers on or above our $10/month tier. Both new and existing subscribers will receive their discount code via email.

If you’d like to support us on Patreon and get your hands on that discount code, then you can sign up by clicking here. There’s also a range of other perks we give our supporters, including limited edition pin badges, stickers and further discounts on merchandise and event tickets. We’re about to drop our first t-shirts for example, and our subscribers will always get first dibs on things like these.

These are the delights you’ll get in the first Pellicle x Hop Burns & Black Mix Pack. Be warned that stock is very limited, so click here to secure yours now.

Oh, and as an added treat we’ve also asked our pals Jen and Glenn to make us a Pellicle mixtape. Check in at the end of this playlist to listen to their selection of “bangerz.”

Beer — Burning Sky Saison Anniversaire 2019

I know there is now a great deal of clamour over Burning Sky’s more limited releases (and rightly so) such as its Four Friends blend, magnums of Assemblage, or its 100% spontaneously fermented Coolship beer. And while these are wonderful beers, in my opinion, they still pale in comparison to its annually released Saison Anniversaire.

This beer takes a lightly spiced, rustic saison as its base. Then, instead of ageing in large, ex-wine foeders as is the norm at Burning Sky (in their core range Saison à la Provision for example), it’s instead entirely fermented and matured in ex-Chardonnay barriques with a blend of the brewery’s house saison yeast along with a blend of wild yeast strains. The result is a beer with notes of citrus fruit and elderflower, with a perfectly nuanced amount of dryness and acidity. It might just be Burning Sky’s best beer—and believe me, that’s really saying something.

Wine — Marie-Pierre Chevassu-Fassenet Cotes du Jura Pinot Noir 2018

When my Pellicle co-founder Jonny and I sat down to record the first episode of our forthcoming podcast, we decided to open a few nice bottles in my collection. One was a bottle of this exceptional Pinot Noir from France’s Jura region.

What we found inside the bottle was one of the freshest, juiciest and most exciting wines we’ve both tried all year. It’s a riot of overripe cherry juice, with an exciting prickle of carbonation at the end of the first few sips, which eventually dissipates. This is a great wine for hardened Pinot Noir lovers and those wanting to explore more natural wines alike. It’s also a great example at demonstrating that natural wine isn’t just about funkier, acid forward wines, but it can feature plenty of French grace and bombast too.

Cider — Oliver’s The Mayflower #3

It goes without saying that Tom Oliver is the don of modern British cider. His artful, delicious blends have captured the hearts and palates of many—and not just cider drinkers—his deft skill is helping bring wine and beer lovers into the wide world of cider too. It’s also helping to expose the myriad range of talented UK cider producers, as the beverage begins to experience the start of a renaissance. No mean feat.

The Mayflower, now in its third iteration, is a truly indulgent cider. It combines a blend of ciders made from both bittersweet and bittersharp Herefordshire apple varieties and is fortified with ice cider. The latter adds both sweetness and boozy warmth to this incredibly complex yet easy to enjoy cider, which has structured tannins and subtle acidity. It’s also perfect when paid with most food, especially very strong blue cheeses and cured meats.

So what are you waiting for, click here and order your case today and don’t forget to subscribe to our Patreon while you’re at it. By doing so you’re helping to support the great writing, photography and illustration we publish each week!

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Volume 3 — Hop Burns & Black Owners Jen Ferguson and Glenn Williams

Glenn and I have both been playing music at people since ages ago. When I was a kid, I used to make my sister and friends sit on an old mat in my room I called the Music Appreciation Rug while I played them tunes taped off the radio (I'm so old I made mixtapes on actual tape) and Glenn loved broadcasting music so much he set up his own university radio station, then spent nearly a decade as a breakfast host on New Zealand music stations.

We always make sure we're surrounded by good music at both stores and occasionally sneak away to play music to people as our disco alter ego, Hop Burns & Boogie. We each have quite different tastes, not to mention formats (I'm stupidly still ruining my back lugging around vinyl while Glenn is mostly digital), but when we play out, it seems to work, although not without a bit of dodgy mixing and some famously robust "discussions" behind the decks...My bag is usually loads of chuggy funk and soul and vaguely poignant disco, whereas Glenn prefers to swoop in at peak time with appropriate bangers.

We don't get to play out too often these days, but the highlight of every year is playing a five-hour set for New Year's Eve at our local, the Old Nun's Head. 2019 will be our fourth year and as is now tradition, it always ends with the whole pub—staff and customers—dancing on the tables to the Psychemagik edit of Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere.

This playlist is like the Pellicle x HB&B Mix Pack—a little taste of various kinds of good stuff. It's what you'd hear if you came round to ours for drinks, properly laidback kitchen party grooves. It starts out slow with some old favourites, gets its funk on just as the first glass or two loosens people's feet, heads off on a spacey, swoony disco trip for a bit, before everyone's suddenly got their hands in the air singing along to Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes.

Then we send you off with Chris Rea.

Never underestimate the power of Chris Rea.