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It’s fair to say that without the existence of Good Beer Hunting—the Chicago-based beer magazine that ran from 2009 to July 2024—Pellicle would look and feel very different. Honestly? It probably wouldn’t exist at all.

I was plucked from obscurity as a virtually unknown, hobbyist beer blogger by its founder Michael Kiser in May 2015. I remember the day well because it began with me having a panic attack faced with the enormity of it all, and it ended with a face to face conversation with my partner over dinner about maybe, just maybe, having a genuine crack at becoming a professional writer full-time.

And that’s exactly what I did. The money I was offered up front by Good Beer Hunting (GBH) was far more than I’d ever been offered before as a writer. It meant more than a number in my bank account, too. Crucially, it taught me my own worth as a creative, and the value inherent to the work that I was producing. Quite simply, I would not be doing what I’m doing now if Michael had never reached out and offered me that opportunity, and it's one I’ll always be thankful for.

My relationship with Michael and GBH today is somewhat strained after I cut my ties with it in October 2018. I threw every part of myself into the work I did there—perhaps, in retrospect, a little too much. Although I eventually parted ways with the publication after three-and-a-half very intense years, I have slowly come to realise how much I took away with me when I did.

While I had no intention of launching my own publication when I quit, things kind of snowballed not long after the dust whipped up by that separation had begun to settle. A few weeks later, all at sea with my lot and my career, I bumped into our co-founder, Jonny Hamilton. Over beers he told me his idea to do a handmade zine about his beer travels called Pellicle, and in the process lit something within me. I bought the URL the next day, and started working on our business plan a week later.

And that last point really brings into focus what I took from my time and experience at GBH. During my time there I worked with some exceptional editors who taught me the value of producing clean, context-rich copy, along with designers and photographers who brought stories to life, helping the written word to leap off the page. I also learned what is perhaps my most valuable lesson thanks to the establishment of its Fervent Few subscriber community; people were willing and able to pay for beer writing if it met their standards for doing so.

It’s that high standard that really set GBH apart, even now as it enters what it calls a ‘hiatus.’ The quality of its content really was second-to-none within beer media. You could feel the care and effort its writers and editors put into every feature it produced, and I admit that I continued to read each new article it published, even after my own time there had ended.

GBH had an uncanny knack for inspiring contributors to work harder and dig deeper and produce stories of great worth, and this was largely down to its editors: Austin Ray, Claire Bullen, Bryan Roth, and Michael himself. What it has published over 15 years will undoubtedly come to be recognised as an invaluable collection of reference material published in what felt like a period within beer history that was as frenetic as it was exciting. Pieces that have a true legacy. It’s not surprising to me that GBH went on to be nominated for six James Beard Foundation awards, winning three. More importantly, this is proof concrete that beer writing can and should compete in the highest echelons of food writing, because beer writing is food writing.

That’s the simple philosophy I took from GBH when I started Pellicle. We intentionally made a few changes to give ourselves the space we felt our publication required to make its own mark within beer media. We wanted to produce something that was snappier, with shorter, more digestible articles you could easily read on a lunch break or commute, and something that was wholly consumer orientated. Without my experience from GBH however, I wouldn’t have been able to make those decisions, or understand what I wanted to achieve with my own publication, which further underlines its influence and importance.

““GBH had an uncanny knack for inspiring contributors to work harder and dig deeper and produce stories of great worth.””

I was deeply saddened, and somewhat shocked to read of Michael’s decision to pull the shutters down on the project last week. It triggered a lot of nostalgia and soul searching. Mainly, however, I have spent most of the time since considering that if a publication like GBH can’t generate enough revenue to sustain itself, how the hell was I going to do the same with Pellicle?

Well, the good news is we have a plan, and it’s working. Our reader/subscriber model is the cornerstone of how we keep Pellicle alive, which is why ‘Reader Supported, Always Free To Read’ has become our tagline. As I write this, we’ve reached our highest level of paying subscribers: 440, which is incredible.

In the interests of transparency, which is how we like to do things here, let me break that down for you, and how it funds us. 36 of those subscribers are businesses who have chosen one of our ‘pro’ tiers at either £40 or £80 a month. Essentially this means one pro subscriber is equivalent to about 10 or 20 regular subs. That means that we currently have 404 individuals supporting us, and that accounts for 60% of our revenue. We also receive an annual chunk of cash from what we like to call our headline sponsor, Loughran Brewers Select. They contribute 10% of our overall turnover, which last year saved us from what was, on reflection, not a great financial situation. But thanks to subscriptions growing this year it means that cash will fund special projects including new merchandise, and our first two print zines, which we’re incredibly excited about.

As Boak & Bailey said in their recent newsletter about GBH’s demise: “...supporting Pellicle feels like a no-brainer, if you enjoy reading it.” Every new subscriber, regardless of the amount, gives us more flexibility, more resources, and most importantly a greater ability to support our contributors, and our editorial team.

I’m proud to have been running Pellicle for over five years now, and to have brought in Lily Waite and Katie Mather as collaborators, and to see our own contributors—plus the magazine itself—pick up several prestigious awards and nominations, following in the extremely large footsteps that GBH has left its wake.

We’ve grown in ambition too, tackling bigger stories and spicier topics. Now we’ve a slightly larger budget than when we started, we’ve begun to give our contributors the space to go long, and give the topics they’re most interested in the time and space they deserve. And we’re not done yet.

The news that Good Beer Hunting has ceased operating should shock you. It’s the most successful beer publication of the past decade, and it doesn’t have the funding to meet where its ambitions are currently. There are so many losers from this situation, including the writers, artists and photographers who’ve lost yet another valuable, well paying outlet for whom to work for. Moreso, the real victims are the readers, who deserve to have regular access to entertaining, informative, exciting articles about beer culture, and they’ve just lost one of the biggest contributors within that space.

With every new Pellicle subscriber, we believe we have a greater capacity to help bring people closer to beer, to pubs, and whatever else we love in food and drink we enjoy that we think you will too. That’s Pellicle in a nutshell, and by joining us you are helping to support that.

In fact I’ll make you a promise right now. As soon as we hit 500 subscribers, I will raise our rates for everything commissioned from that date onwards with immediate effect. And when (not if) we hit milestones after that, I will continue to raise our rates to ensure we’re one of the best paying publications around, while also lending better financial support to our hardworking editorial team.

But we wouldn’t be here making those decisions, or supporting those contributors without the legacy a hugely important publication has left, permanently, on beer writing. Thank you, Good Beer Hunting, we’ll miss you.

Support Pellicle and become a subscriber now by visiting our Patreon page here.