Over the past few months at Pellicle, we’ve worked tirelessly to shine a light on many of the positive things which have been happening within the world of food and drink. When we launched the website earlier this year, we made a conscious decision to focus on stories which showcase people, places and producers that inspire us, from the new and exciting to the storied and revered.

We’ve published features which have celebrated the last ten years in UK brewing, as told through 21 beers that defined the decade, reported on the British grape harvest of 2018—reported to be the greatest ever—and produced the first in a series of profiles of beers that, for us, stand alone as classics.

We’ve aspired to tell the stories of newer, smaller producers which we felt weren’t getting the attention they richly deserved. This has included profiles of Birmingham’s Burning Soul, Rivington Brew Co. in Chorley, and further afield to Branch & Bone in Ohio, and Broaden & Build in Copenhagen.

It’s been debated whether things are actually getting worse, or it’s just our pessimism which has grown over the years, making our outlook seem bleaker than it actually is. It could be argued that we’re burying our heads in the sand by turning down stories that stoke the fire of negativity burning beneath our industry and, indeed, our daily lives. Instead, however, we chose to publish comics about brewery cats, and monthly mixtapes.

But amongst stories of brewery buyouts, documentaries about unethical food trade practices, court cases, and crassly-named ciders, there are countless examples of positive acts—both within the UK and across the world—that are helping to make our culture a better place. There are plenty of amazing publications out there which will tell these stories, and these stories need to be told, but going into the new year, our ethos is staying true to what it has been from day one: to celebrate the joy found in our food and drink industry.

And so, to help end the year on a joyful note, we asked a few of our regular Pellicle contributors to share their most positive experiences of 2019, along with their food and drinks highlights for good measure. Enjoy!

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Matthew Curtis

I remember sitting in Knott Bar with some of my friends from Manchester’s Cloudwater Brew Co. after the first day of its debut Friends & Family & Beer festival. It had been a true celebration of great beer from many corners of the world, and I had been volunteering, so I felt a similar level of relief and exhaustion to those around me as we relaxed with a post-session pint.

I watched, curiously, as the team from Cloudwater left, one-by-one. Little did I know that they had been summoned by brewery founder Paul Jones to learn that, due to licensing issues, it was likely the festival would not continue into day two, letting thousands of ticket holders down in the process. I was expecting to witness a tragedy, but what I actually saw over the next 24 hours would be nothing short of miraculous.

Yes, mistakes had been made, but that didn’t matter to the breweries of Manchester. Today, they were here for one of their own, and they were going to make damn-well sure that this excellent beer festival would continue. Once the first session of day two was underway, Paul made a short and to-the-point speech, expressing that, legally or not, the show would go on, to rapturous applause.

I can still feel the goosebumps that ran down my arms as the cheers rang around the venue for what felt like several minutes. It was a true moment of triumph over adversity, and will forever be a symbol to me of how passionate and dedicated the brewing industry I know and love can be.

Drinks Highlight of the Year

I’ve had too many of these to mention, including Unity Brewing’s superb Collision IPA, endless pints of Best, be it Harvey’s in The Harp or Five Points’ in the Pembury Tavern, and more besides. Tillingham’s Peaux de Pomme Qvevri Cider knocked my cotton socks off, as did Marie-Pierre Chevassu-Fassenet’s Cotes du Jura Pinot Noir (so, so juicy.)

The highlight I’ve settled on, however, involves place and people as well as simply a great beer. Sitting in the warm, sky blue taproom of The Brewery of St. Mars of the Desert in Sheffield with great friends and some stunning beer—notably its Jack D’Or saison, crisp and taut in its magnificence—filled me with the kind of contentment I’ll spend the rest of next year searching for all over again. Perfection.

Food Highlight of the Year

This is an easy one. When the time came for my Pellicle-partner-in-crime Jonny Hamilton to leave London for pastures new in Edinburgh we decided to hit up a restaurant we’d both wanted to visit for ages: North London’s Black Axe Mangal. Joined by our close pal and Good Beer Hunting editor-in-chief, Claire Bullen, we experienced one of the best meals of our collective lives. It was also one of the most opulent, and later we would stagger out into the night, our souls and our bellies full, before making fools of ourselves over a glass of wine or two in P. Franco [we were grand—Ed]. It really was a send-off to remember.

Lily Waite

End of year round-ups always bemuse and befuddle me. I’m an exuberant being, one prone to hyperbole and proclamation, to effusiveness and excitement. I find myself often having the best beer, or cider, or meal I’ve ever enjoyed, such is the gusto with which I enjoy it. Picking a singular moment or event is, inevitably, difficult—even more so in a year filled with excitement. So, I won’t. As such, my particular highlight of 2019 is the fervour with which good has been done, across the industry, and across the world.

People always say that the best thing about the beer world is the people, and while I wholeheartedly agree that that is one of the best aspects, I’m beginning to get a sneaking suspicion that the best thing about the beer world is that which can be achieved through beer. The following are but a few examples of that good. In the summer, Craft Beer Cares, the community-minded beer festival led by Gautam Bhatnagar, smashed the takings from last years’ festival and raised over £15,000 for Hackney Winter Night Shelter.

At the beginning of the year, Heather Griffin and Michael Deakin launched Out and About, an organisation creating safe spaces for LGBTQ people in Sheffield’s pubs and bars. In Pittsburgh, Fresh Fest, America’s first Black brew festival, returned and took the beer world by storm, celebrating Black brewers and drinkers alike.

Breweries across the UK have supported their communities by offering cans and pints in return for food bank donations, such as Track and Drygate, and have increased support in the wake of the general election. In South London, Gipsy Hill launched the Social Brew Collective, pairing two other breweries with social enterprise breweries, brewing collaboration beers and shining a spotlight on the work they do.

Beer is fun, and sociable, and a good laugh. But beer can achieve so much, something I’m growing to learn more and more. Here’s to another year of beer doing good.

Drinks Highlight of the Year

Of late, I’ve picked up a new habit. It’ll be banal and boring to some, but I’ve rapidly become an enormous fan of shutting my eyes, stopping my thoughts, and staying stock still when I take a sip of something wonderful. It’s not really meditation, but it feels like it, to me, when I block out everything apart from the flavours, texture, and sensations in my mouth from a delicious glug of something.

I’ve found myself doing it with the delicious natural wines of which I’ve been challenging myself to drink more, like Cantine Rallo’s Baglio Bianco Catarratto, and with exquisite ciders like Ross-on-Wye’s Harry Masters Jersey. That which I’ve come to associate this moment of celebratory calm, however, is the beer I seemingly won’t shut up about: The Kernel’s Table Beer.

I’ve long loved this beer, but this year feels like the year it’s become my favourite beer: from joyously swigging it from the bottle straight out of my fridge, or relishing the first sip of a pint at a bar, I’ve found myself with numerous happy memories stuck to that famous brown label.

Food Highlight of the Year

I’ve probably eaten better this year than any other. My oldest friend and I vowed to explore more of London’s rich food scene, hitting places like Naughty Piglets in Brixton and Smoking Goat in Shoreditch, before promptly forgetting all about our culinary quest. I ate the best bowl of Ramen in my life at Ivan Ramen whilst in New York on a brewing trip, and I ate at the same Italian restaurant twice in one week—the exquisite Osteria Wolf in Stoke Newington.

I also visited one of my favourite spots on earth—think a dive bar but for breaded pork cutlets—Scheers Schnitzel just by the Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin. As wonderful as all of those experiences were, I don’t think anything quite tops the joy of going foraging with friends on Cornwall’s blustery coasts, before cooking up a fishy feast of epic proportions, washed down with various mixed fermentation goodies. Oh, for a glass of Tillingham Pet Nat and fresh oysters.

Katie Mather

The Independent Salford Beer Festival has been and continues to be, one of the highlights of my year. It only exists because an incredibly dedicated and hardworking team of beer lovers run themselves ragged to create a beer (and cider, and gin) festival full of heart and excitement.

This year, as well as a storming selection of beers on keg and cask from a list of breweries so long and impressive I’m not even going to try and recount (find the full list from the festival in this blog post), there was also a real cider bar run by Manchester Cider Club’s Cath Potter and Dick Withecombe.

With all the smiling and arm-waving and enthusiasm going on, as a guest it’s easy to forget that simply by enjoying yourself, you’re also doing a good deed. This year thanks to ticket sales and money spent behind the bars the Independent Salford Beer Festival pledge matched £300 to sponsor friends of ISBF running in aid of Lancashire Mind, and £11,300 was donated to Salford charity Start Inspiring Minds.

It’s hard to put into words how life-affirmingly positive I felt after an afternoon in Hemsley House with tunes from the Rebellious Jukebox blasting, pie and chips in one hand, ridiculous imperial stout in the other, surrounded by people who love beer, their community and each other. You’ll just have to come and experience it for yourself. Roll on ISBF7.

Drinks Highlight of the Year

While it might not be the most exciting answer on this list, I’ve drunk more Moorhouse’s Pride of Pendle than anything else. It really is tasting better than ever. I’ve also got to mention King Dragon by Fox Tale Fermentation Project, which I tried at Carnivale Brettanomyces in Amsterdam this year. It’s a sour saison made with homemade umeboshi and red shiso, and it was tart and rounded, sweet but bitter—it was about more than sourness. It had life in it.

Food Highlight of the Year

Eating at The Moorcock Inn at Norland Moor was everything I hoped it would be. It was a perfect autumnal feast, with flavours gathered from their kitchen gardens and moors all around the pub-restaurant. Each dish paired beautifully with a drinks menu full of great beer, natural wine, sake and teas. The best dish? Hard to choose, but the Hebridean mutton three ways cooked over a wood fire was unbelievable. The melting belly fat still makes me salivate whenever I think about it.

Alex Duell

I’ve been on the road for much of 2019. As well as inspiring me to put my writing hat back on, sipping beers in some rather unexpected places has gone a long way towards dispelling the widely-held view that some countries are “beer countries” and others aren’t.

The notion of a “quality gap” existing between countries with a history of producing globally-celebrated beer styles (e.g. Germany, Czechia, the USA and the UK) and those without a well-known brewing heritage still holds true for many beer enthusiasts.

From what I’ve experienced in 2019, however, a bunch of widely-regarded “lower-tier” beer nations have brewed beers, created communities and developed brands to rival many of the beer world’s elite. There’s been Carakale’s thirst-quenching Dead Sea Salt Gose in predominantly alcohol-dry Jordan and a nourishing, crunchy ESB by El Naufragio in Mexican hill country.

I stumbled upon West Coast IPA in all its resinous pomp at Dogma’s cavernous taproom in Serbia, while chaotic downtown Bogotá served up an immaculately clean Kölsch at Galeria Hopulus’ brewpub-come-art gallery. There’s even been a glass of chocolate-tinged silkiness at the foot of a Guatemalan volcano in the form of Antigua Cerveza’s nitro stout. Serve me any of these brews in the world’s most lauded taprooms (yep, even the ones with queues snaking around the block for the latest hype-cans), and I genuinely don’t think I’d taste the difference.

Drinks Highlight of the Year

I’ve been greedy and chosen two highlights: one for wine, the other for beer.

First, my mind is often transported back to a wonderful evening spent being blown away by the British Columbian natural wine scene in Vancouver’s Salt Tasting Room; reds, whites, and oranges from a variety of BC vineyards were all unexpectedly brilliant, and I now feel I’ve been let into the inner circle of perhaps the wine world’s best kept secret.

Secondly, a trip to AleSmith Brewing on the outskirts of San Diego was weirdly emotional. I vividly remember taking part in my first international beer trade with a lovely American bloke in 2011, in order to get my hands on the world-renowned Speedway Stout (a feat practically unheard of in Dublin, where I was living at the time). Sitting at AleSmith’s taproom bar with a tasting flight of seven (!) different variants of Speedway felt wonderfully poetic. I think I even raised a misty-eyed toast to “2011 Alex.”

Food Highlight of the Year

After many previous visits to Austin, Texas, this year I finally managed to get to Franklin Barbecue (with only a short—by their standards—queue of 2 hours). It was more than worth it and I think it might be physically impossible to do barbecue any better, but I’m drawn to something slightly less bucket list for my true highlight.

After a day trekking around jaw-droppingly beautiful Mayan ruins in the jungle near Palenque, Mexico, we stopped into a brightly lit taco joint, beautifully named Tropi Tacos. Furious reggaeton music videos blared at us from massive wall-mounted TVs as we dined on the best quesadillas and tacos of our lives, before leaving with change from a fiver. We proceeded to Tropi Taco (it’s a verb in our house now) for each of our remaining Palenque meals.

Nicci Peet

Beer brings people together. The pub, or wherever you choose to drink, is somewhere to meet friends and talk about your problems, to commiserate, to celebrate, to meet new people, for every eventuality of life. But sometimes beer isn’t the answer. Sometimes it exacerbates the problem.

This year has been a tough year for the country politically and me personally. It has also been the year I found running and if “Beer Twitter” is anything to go by, so did a lot of other people. On the toughest of days when I knew beer wasn’t the answer, going for a run gave me an escape. It gave me a sense of achievement and time to clear my head. And on the best runs, it made me feel determined. And for those reasons it makes my heart full seeing running clubs pop up all over the beer scene.

Mikkeller Running Club has chapters across the UK and many breweries and bars have also set up their own clubs. In Bristol, we have LHG Running Club from Left Handed Giant brewery. It began this August with the first run featuring 17 people. Over the weeks it has expanded, and now on a single night there can be up to 40+ runners in attendance. People of all abilities run every Tuesday night with a beginners class on a Monday.

Everyone is welcome, no one is left behind, everyone is cheered over the finish line and the reward is a pint. It’s a place to meet new people, a place for women that don’t feel safe running alone at night, a place for people to get into running but aren’t sure how and a place for people to get into beer. Running clubs are another example of just how supportive the beer industry can be.

Drinks Highlight of the Year

This beer was my beer of IndyManBeerCon (my first IMBC actually). I was serving on the [BrewDog] OverWorks Bar right next to the Track Bar and this was the beer I kept going back to, the beer I kept pouring into my glass. It was Uzon, the Track/Zagovor Brewery collaboration. This triple fruited imperial gose was full to the brim with tropical fruits; thick, extravagant but unbelievably drinkable. A celebratory beer—I’ve saved a can for Christmas morning.

Food Highlight of the Year

I’d been at the pub with a friend and came home after a couple of pints. It was around 9pm on a weeknight and we, my partner and I decided last minute to go out and see a friend’s band. But we were hungry and 9pm on a weeknight doesn’t leave you with many options. On a recommendation, we stopped in at Real Habesha, a small Ethiopian restaurant in Easton, Bristol.

We were served a large injera—an almost pancake-like flatbread—with four different curries and stews in the centre. I devoured each in torn off pieces of injera. No need for forks, this is comfort food you eat with your hands. And oh boy was it comforting, delicious and the flavours, oh the flavours!

Eoghan Walsh

We say that there’s no one right way to make beer. There are industrial giants who make great beer, just as there are independent and small breweries who brew dreck [trash/rubbish].

But it’s all bollocks really, isn’t it? There is a right way to brew beer, and it’s when a brewer has an inclusive clarity of vision, executes it honestly and precisely, and is rewarded with superb beer. When you find a brewery like this, it thrills the heart of any romantic beer writer. I saw this twice in 2019.

In early summer I walked with Tom Jacobs through his back garden orchards and vineyards. Jacobs spoke of the importance of self-sufficient living, the value of growing everything he consumed, and uncoupling from the grind of late-stage capitalism. This lifestyle change led him inexorably to making his own wine, cider, and beer. Antidoot, the commercial brewery that emerged from his philosophy, is now making some of the best and most interesting beer/wine/cider hybrids in Europe, and he can barely bottle it fast enough.

2019 also was the year that Yvan De Baets was rewarded for his central role in reviving brewing in Brussels, with a brand new brewhouse. In the years since he and Bernard Leboucq opened Brasserie de la Senne in 2010, De Baets has shaped a generation of Brussels’ brewers, bartenders and drinkers. And in November 2019 de la Senne’s purpose-built, brewery came online for the first time. And De Baets celebrated as only he could—by brewing a fantastically bitter pils.

Here’s to the next decade of de la Senne dominance. Sometimes the good guys get their rewards.

Food/Drink Highlight of the Year

I couldn’t separate these two, because they came together: a frothy Mlíko Pour of Pilsner Urquell—which feels like both the most touristy and most local thing you can do in Prague—served with a steaming plate of goulash and potato dumplings at Lokál’s restaurant at the foot of Prague Castle.

Claire Bullen

True to name, time is Duration Brewing's theme. The brewery has been in the works for so long, it's hard to believe it's really here. For a while, it played in the back of founders Miranda Hudson's and Derek Bates' minds; two and a half years ago, they finally received planning permissions to build their farmhouse brewery in the wilds of western Norfolk.

Now—thanks in part to a ferocious work ethic, plus funds from grants and local investors—Duration Brewing is complete. Housed in a formerly derelict barn, the brewery is equipped with wastewater-treatment technology and outfitted with a top-of-the-line, 20-hectolitre kit. Duration gleams with newness, though it stands in the shadow of a crumbled, medieval priory. From a future-tense perspective, the brewery also boasts a coolship room, and foeders shipped in from America. They're spotless now, but soon will incubate mixed-fermentation beers over the course of months and years.

As the brewery slowly came into being, Hudson ably built anticipation with its busy social media presence and event schedule. Duration appeared at festivals like this year's Friends & Family & Beer in Manchester and collaborated with breweries the likes of Cloudwater and DEYA, Verdant and Burning Sky.

On December 12, it unveiled a three-beer core line-up of its own: You End Up Where You Were (a table beer); Strong Opinions, Held Lightly (an IPA); and Turtles All The Way Down (an American pale ale, and the brewery's flagship). All are exemplary, exacting and joyous and reflective of Bates' considerable brewing talents.

And so Duration manages its feats of time travel; its brewery unites the centuries-old and the ultra-modern in one neat space. The arc of its vision, those foeder-aged beers, will only be fully visible in years to come. It has only just arrived but is already a brewery with history.

Drinks Highlight of the Year

If I remember 2019 for anything, it'll be as the year I fully embraced lager. As a younger craft beer drinker, I never had much interest in it—even the good stuff seemed indistinguishable from the frozen cans of Coors Light I chugged in college. My mind began to change a few years back, when I had Pilsner Urquell straight from the tank for the first time. By 2019, my aversion had lapsed into curiosity.

And so, I drank Braybrooke's perfect Keller Lager at the London Craft Beer Festival, and came back for more. During a trip to Bristol, I visited Lost and Grounded and supped my fill of its Keller Pils. Donzoko's Northern Helles became one of my go-to’s. I went to Oktoberfest in Germany and gulped lager by the litre. A recent trip to the Czech Republic's historic, countryside breweries with other beer writers cemented lager's romance for me. Now, I'm delighted to report that I am a bona fide lager devotee. #TeamMlíkoPour

Food Highlight of the Year

This has been a big year in food for me. I was lucky enough to travel (and dine) widely for work and pleasure. I joined Matt and Jonny for that exceptional Black Axe Mangal meal and added a new range of London restaurants to my favourites list (including Scully, Bao Borough Market, and Jolene). I even published my first cookbook [called The Beer Lover’s Table, in collaboration with our friend, and sponsor Jen Ferguson from Hop Burns & Black—Ed].

But if there's a meal that stands out in my mind, it was one I enjoyed all the way back in January, in Venice. One evening my friend Sharona and I wandered into a shabby little restaurant near our Airbnb, nearly empty in the off-season, which had been recommended in some online guide or other.

I ordered spaghetti, which came in a pool of burrata, just liquid enough to qualify as a sauce, and was topped with raw prawns—small, pink, sweet, gleaming as raw gems. I can't tell you the serotonin sparks each mouthful set off in my brain; eventually, Sharona had to shush me, because I was "mmm"-ing so audibly.

Forget this year—it may well go down as one of the food highlights of my life.

Jonathan Hamilton

This year has been a great one for a several reasons. On a personal level, as a brewer, there has been a noticeable shift in quality in the beer industry, with breweries investing in new equipment, lab equipment, sensory training, and quality control.

There has also been a great uptake in lager production in the craft (for lack of a better word) beer world, with new kid on the scene Donzoko being a perfect example of what can happen when passion, hard word and technical know-how combine to make incredible lager (his upcoming release is essentially a celebration of foam stability in beer, and what’s not to love about that).

But, more importantly—and because they didn’t big themselves up in their own submissions—this year has seen some incredible projects seeking to highlight the diversity within the beer industry. Lily Waite and her Queer Brewing Project launched at the very beginning of the year and has taken her around the world brewing collaboration beers with 8 different breweries, with part of the proceeds going to support LGBTQ-focussed charities.

Another of our regular contributors, photographer Nicci Peet, launched her inspirational photography project Diversity in Beer: an ongoing project which documents the diverse range of women working within the UK beer industry.

Finally, in October, the organisation Beer Without Beards held its first Women In Beer festival in Edinburgh. It brought together women from across the UK for panels, tap takeovers, and workshops, including one to educate people on how to handle sexual harassment in the workplace.

At Pellicle (run by two cis, white, straight males), we had set diversity as a key part of our ethos from the beginning, and while I like to think we have done a good job this year, we have much to improve on. We will continue to work on this in 2020, taking into account all of the excellent work that has been done by our friends and industry peers. If you are a writer, illustrator, or photographer and want to contribute to Pellicle in 2020, and feel that you’re not being represented, you can contact us here. We would love to hear from you.

Food/Drink Highlight of the Year

I too am going to combine my food and drink highlights as it all took place over one indulgent weekend in March in Copenhagen with some of my closest friends.

The thing about working in the beer industry is you can often find yourself ruining a nice time by complaining about things not being perfect. After arriving in Copenhagen and discussing how our hazy IPAs were riddled with diacetyl, and realising the chat was becoming abysmal, the decision was taken by my friend Gordon to buy a whole load of Tuborg cans. And so, knowing what we were expecting, we shut up, chilled out and enjoyed our weekend, and came away loving Tuborg.

The second day of the holiday goes down as one of the most indulgent days of eating and drinking ever. The day started at with a filter coffee at Coffee Collective, then a quick bite (custard tart, bread and cheese, mortadella sandwich, more coffee) at Hart Bageri before heading to the indoor market, Toverhallerne, for a tasting platter of oysters and a can of Gamma Brewing's Aquaelicium.

Then it was onto Manfreds for one of the best lunches of the year (yes, we did the tartare, and it was everything you could want and more) and a few bottles including a delightful wine from Jean-Yves Péron which was 9.5% and aged in amphora, and slightly reductive, but full of life. From there it was back to the Airbnb for Tuborgs and crosswords before cycling to Broaden & Build for dinner, beers, and of course, a tour of the site, and next-door Empirical Spirits.

The evening continued with a cycle via The Corner for another bottle of wine outside in the dark, before re-joining the group, along with old friends I’d not seen in a long time, at the infamous Cafe Viking where it was all about cheap bottles of Thy Pilsner and lots of laughter.

It was the best day of 2019.

Header illustration by Grace Helmer.

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