Happy new year and welcome back to The Pellicle Podcast. This year we’re planning to publish more episodes than ever before, giving the show some proper momentum at last. We’re starting by publishing the panel talks we recorded during FyneFest 2022—the annual festival organised by Fyne Ales—kicking off with an in-depth discussion with the brewery’s managing director Jamie Delap. We’ll be publishing these talks in their entirety this January.

Fynefest is one of the most special brewery-organised events in the UK, and perhaps our favourite. We’re biased, of course, because since 2019 we’ve had the fortune of hosting its Meet the Brewer panel discussions. Taking place in the top barn, the talks give attendees a chance to take a break from drinking pints of Jarl, relaxing in the glen and dancing to live music to get geeky about beer for an hour or two. Although the pandemic prevented us from hosting them for a couple of years, we returned with aplomb in 2022.

We’re pleased to say we’ll be back at FyneFest in 2023, with a whole new host of guests and topics to discuss. Tickets are available now from FyneFest.com, and trust us when we say this is an event you don’t want to miss. We look forward to seeing you in the Glen later this year. Special thanks to Fyne Ales for hosting us at the event, and for being one of our pro-tier Patreon supporters.

Ep35 — In Conversation with Fyne Ales’ Jamie Delap

Throughout this month we’ll be bringing you our panel discussions from FyneFest 2022, kicking off with a fantastic, in-depth conversation with Fyne Ale's managing director, Jamie Delap. Founded in 2001 by his parents Jonny and Tuggy Delap, the day-to-day running of the brewery passed on to Jamie when his father passed away in 2009.

The following year, Fyne Ales held a small gathering for a few hundred people on the family farm within Glen Fyne, where the brewery is located. They even brewed a special beer for the event at 3.8% ABV, hopped with a new variety of hops from North America called Citra. The event was a huge success, and today FyneFest sees over 3000 people travel from all over Europe (and even from the US) to attend. The beer didn’t go down too badly either, and was eventually given the name Jarl. It now accounts for well over half of the brewery's total production volume.

In this conversation Jamie and I discuss everything, from these origins, to how the pandemic affected the brewery, to how it's looking at taking on challenges such as the cost of living crisis, and the means of making the brewery more sustainable. Jamie is undoubtedly one of the keenest minds within the UK brewing industry, and it was a true privilege to have such an open and honest discussion about these issues during the business of the festival.

Ep36 — The Beer All and End All — On Mental Health in the Brewing Industry

Mental health is a seldom talked about subject within the brewing industry. Perhaps this is because the demographic working within brewing skews highly male, and men are infamous for often being unable to discuss this topic adequately. Thankfully, in more recent times, the discussion is becoming more open and more frequent—valuable indeed, considering how tumultuous the past couple of years have been on our minds, as well as our bodies.

In this discussion recorded at FyneFest 2022, host Matthew Curtis is joined by Miranda Hudson of Duration Brewing, Vik Stronge of Magic Rock, and Dominic Driscoll of Thornbridge. The panel discusses a range of points within the subject of mental health, from setting boundaries within the workplace, to managing the mental health of our colleagues, employees and friends, as we try to make the beer industry a safer, friendlier place to work.

CW: Topics discussed include depression and alcoholism. If you’re struggling with your mental health we urge you not to suffer alone, and recommend contacting an organisation such as The Drinks Trust or The Samaritans for support.

Ep37 — More Foeders More Problems — Has the Barrel Ageing Bubble Burst?

Over the past couple of decades barrel aged beers have become increasingly popular among craft beer enthusiasts. From intensely flavourful spirit barrel aged strong stouts, to more nuanced and complex sour and wild ales matured in former wine casks, the range of barrel aged beers is as breathtaking as some of the beers which eventually emerge from the barrels themselves.

But as the market has become saturated with these often costly beers, and the post-pandemic, cost of living crisis driven drinker looks towards simpler, less wallet-intensive beverages, what does the future look like for this subgenre within the beer category? Who’s actually buying them? And perhaps more importantly: how are breweries making any profit from a project that takes an immense amount of time and space to produce, and is largely driven by passion?

For this panel we put together a group of brewers making (in our opinion) some of the best barrel aged beers in the UK: Toby McKenzie of Macclesfield’s RedWillow Brewery, Dave McHardy of Fierce Beer in Aberdeen, and Lee Grabham of York’s appropriately named Brew York. The trio discuss everything from the processes behind their barrel aged beers, to what they think the future of the market looks like for them.

Ep38 — The Bitter End — Are Traditional Cask Beer Styles Back for Good?

If you've been on Beer Twitter at all recently you’ll have likely noticed our podcast host Matthew Curtis harping on about bitter and mild. Cask beer is something we love at Pellicle and so we were always going to dedicate one of our panel discussions at FyneFest 2022 to this much debated category.

Joined by an expert panel including Mark Welsby of Stockport’s Runaway Brewery, Laura Rangeley of Sheffield’s Abbeydale Brewery, and Malcolm Downie of our hosts Fyne Ales, we attempt to get serious about the discussion around cask. We start by asking whether or not the resurgence in traditional styles such as bitter and mild is here to stay, or if it's merely a flash in the pan. (Or, indeed, consider if it never went away in the first place.)

We also dig into some more serious topics. With statistics indicating that the cask ale category is ailing, we ask if premiumisation is the answer to sparking a true resurgence, and debate the much talked over discussion point that is the price of a pint.

It’s been a thrill, as always, to host these discussions, and we hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as we have. We’ll be back for more at FyneFest 2023, so make sure you grab your tickets now so you can join us there. And don’t forget to subscribe to Pellicle via Patreon if you’re able to support our website and podcast with a monthly, or yearly donation.