Hello, we’re Pellicle
We’re your favourite drinks magazine and podcast, all about beer, cider, wine, pubs and more. Reader supported, proudly free to read.
We’re your favourite drinks magazine and podcast, all about beer, cider, wine, pubs and more. Reader supported, proudly free to read.
Before you pitch: Please note that we are a small, independent publication that receives far more pitches than we presently have the means to commission. To ensure your pitch is considered, please read this guide thoroughly. Pitches that don’t follow these guidelines will be (politely) rejected.
Third parties are not authorised to share this pitching guide without seeking prior permission. Calls for pitches will only ever come directly from Pellicle.
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At Pellicle, our objective has always been to produce joyful, uplifting, narrative-driven stories that celebrate the drinks, food and places we love. But as we’ve grown and our focus has evolved, our needs have changed slightly. This updated version of our pitching guide reflects this evolution.
We’ve also moved to a more streamlined set of rates, and now work to fixed fees based on the type of feature commissioned rather than specific word count. Our aim is to make the pitching process as simple as possible, so prospective contributors can clearly understand the kinds of features we’re interested in. The best advice we can give you if you’re hoping to write for us is to spend as much time reading through our back catalogue as possible. We’ve linked to some of our favourite stories below.
Pellicle is primarily (but not exclusively) a UK-based, consumer drinks publication. Our main focus is on beer and pubs, and the majority of what we commission will reflect this. But we are also interested in cider, wine, spirits, sake, coffee, soft and non-alcoholic drinks, and more besides. Basically, if you have a drinks-based story that you think our audience will love, we could very well provide a home for it. We also, to a more limited extent, cover food, especially stories that also connect to drink in some way. We are not interested in travel stories that are in no way linked to food or drink.
We are seeking stories about the people, places, history and culture of our favourite drinks, from the joyful to the critical to the curious. Above all, we are interested in what people are drinking, and why they are drinking it. Successful pitches should reflect this baseline.
We are based in the UK, and so are the majority of our readers. As a result, we are mainly interested in stories that focus on UK drinks and hospitality culture. We do take on stories with an international focus—in particular from the US, which is home to our second-largest readership—but they must have an angle that is still relevant to our core UK audience.
We are not interested in stories based on press releases or any press trips that you are lucky enough to have been sent on. We don’t publish guides, listicles or anything that is, or feels like, advertorial, and we are not interested in ideas or topics that have been covered extensively by other publications. We also expect pitches to be fully fleshed out, and include details of your angle, your sources, and why you think your idea is relevant to our audience specifically. A quick “are you interested in this” or a collection of rough ideas will not earn a commission.
If you have not pitched us before, we require examples of previous work, either for other publications or self-published via a platform such as a blog or newsletter. If you are looking to start out as a writer, we strongly encourage you to begin by self-publishing before you reach out to us with a pitch. Our editorial process is stringent, and while we are open to working with first-time writers, we hold every draft to the same standards—those of our readers, who expect a quality feature every week. The amount of time and effort we expect our writers to put into a piece is a reflection of this.
Please note that we only accept pitches sent via the email contacts listed below. We politely ask that you don’t send them via DM, phone call, in the back of a taxi, or down the pub when we’re not on duty. Please respect our editors’ time and boundaries, and save that idea for when you’re back at your desk.
Lastly, a reminder that we are a very small publication, and receive far more pitches than we have the resources to commission. Therefore, we ask that you don’t feel too disappointed if you get a rejection—but we also want to encourage you to send that pitch, because if you don’t send it, well, you’ll never know!
Stories about beer, brewing and pubs are our bread and butter, and profile pieces have formed the cornerstone of Pellicle since its founding in 2019. Stories about exceptional people, producers, pubs, and even individual beers with fascinating backstories have been some of the most popular features we’ve ever published.
As we’ve grown, we’ve also expanded our remit, publishing pieces that challenge the status quo or go a little further than a typical beer feature. Such stories might examine and expose racism in beer, challenge cultural taboos such as women breastfeeding in pubs, or dig into the forgotten history of people who have had a profound influence on beer as we know it. Our beer stories can be as complicated as a long-read that requires multiple sources and boots-on-the-ground reporting, or they can be as simple as a short write-up of a beer that makes you feel happy. Finding the balance between these extremes is where we’re at now, and is reflected in some of our favourite examples:
I Want To See Mountains Again — The Banked Beers of Teesside, North East England — Reece Hugill
Everything in its Right Place — The Brewery of St. Mars of the Desert, Sheffield — Matthew Curtis
The Spice of Life — How Bundobust Emerged from Bradford’s Rich Cultural Heritage — Will Hawkes
Go To The Place Where You've Finally Found — The Laurieston Bar, Glasgow — Robbie Armstrong
Please Don’t Take Me Home — How Black Country Desi Pub Culture Made Football More Diverse — David Jesudason
When Pellicle first got started, we commissioned several profiles of well-known cider and wine producers, but we are now looking to move away from that approach to some extent. We are most interested in wine and cider stories that examine the culture of both beverages within the context of drinkers and drinking within the UK. These could be stories about a mainstream wine or cider product and its place in British drinking culture, features about an exceptional bar, or profiles of a small producer that is doing things differently and deserves to be better-known. We are looking for stories outside of the (bag in) box. Here are a few of our recent favourites:
Young and Beautiful — The Rise and Fall of the Babycham Girl — Rachel Hendry
Such Great Heights — Ascension Cider in Etchingham, East Sussex — Mark Dredge
You Can’t Help Noticing — On Wine & Succession — Rachel Hendry
We are primarily a drinks publication, but we sometimes find a home for food stories that might not fit with other publications, especially if the food in question is connected to drink (particularly to beer or pubs). We are also, tentatively, expanding our remit to other beverages, including spirits and other brewed beverages like sake and mead. Non-alcoholic drinks, including soft drinks, tea, and coffee are also of interest to us. It is important to note that we have limited capacity for stories outside of beer, pubs, wine and cider, and so they must be particularly unique or exceptional ideas for us to take them on. Here are a few of our favourites so far:
Bun! A Taxonomy of the British Bread Roll — Katie Mather
Kōji, Culture, and Community, Part 2 — Sake, Storytelling, and Japanese Aesthetics — Tim Anderson
Cut To The Feeling — The Anatomy of Smith’s Scampi Fries — Rachel Hendry
At Pellicle, we consider that the images we use for a piece are as important as the written element, and at every opportunity we look to commission original illustrations or photography for our features. We have a small stable of regular visual contributors we like to work with, but if you think your work would be a good fit for Pellicle, please email your portfolio to one of our editorial team members.
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Lastly, please bear in mind that a single, well-thought-out pitch is likely to be more successful than sending us several ideas at the same time. Above all, we are looking for ideas that are Pellicle, and we’ll reiterate that the best way to understand that is to familiarise yourself with our published stories as best you can.
Please send pitches directly to our editor-in-chief, Matthew Curtis, via: matthew@pelliclemag.com. If your pitch is about wine, please copy in katie@pelliclemag.com. We endeavour to reply to every pitch within 2-3 working days, but please note that we don’t work on weekends (and neither should you).
Pellicle is a small publication that works on a cash basis. Whenever we commission a feature, we do so by allocating a fixed fee, agreed between ourselves and the contributor at the point of commissioning. This will be agreed in writing, via email. The agreement and the terms listed below are legally binding upon the acceptance of a commission.
Our rates are presently as follows, and are based on a rough working rate of £0.25 per word:
Features (approximately 1,500 words): £375
Long Reads (2,000 words and over): £525
Photography (typically 30-40 stills): £250
Illustration (one header and two spots): £250
By accepting a commission from Pellicle you agree to the following terms and conditions:
When a commission is offered, a word count and subsequent rate will be agreed with the commissioning editor on submission of the brief. Our house style is intended to be snappy and engaging, as such overly long drafts in excess of the agreed-upon word count may be rejected by the editor on submission. Copy must be properly proofed and spell-checked, and will be rejected if it contains multiple typos and/or grammatical errors.
Drafts will typically be subject to two or three rounds of edits. You will work with an individual member of our editorial team who is typically assigned on submission. If you would really like to work with a specific member of our team, please request this when turning in your draft.
The rate agreed at the point of commissioning includes any rounds of edits and any subsequent increase to the final word count, within reason, deemed necessary by your editor. We won’t ask you to add whole new sections, but you may be asked to expand on paragraphs, add new ones, include further quotes, or otherwise add to your piece for greater context.
All invoices are paid in UK pounds sterling (£) following the submission of your first draft. International invoices are processed using a service called Wise, which will pay you in your native currency based on the current exchange rate.
We reserve the right to reject drafts we don’t feel meet our readers’ standards. If a draft is completed but then subsequently rejected (for example, if it does not stick closely enough to the initial brief, or does not meet our editorial standards), contributors will be paid a kill fee at 50% of the initially agreed rate.
A commission may be subject to cancellation if it is not turned in within a reasonable timeframe from the point it is commissioned. This is typically six months, but we accept that life circumstances can get in the way. Please contact your commissioning editor immediately if your work is expected to be delayed.
All invoices and related queries should be sent to matthew@pelliclemag.com. You are responsible for your own invoicing and tax affairs, and we will not contact you to ask for your invoice once your work has been submitted. We typically process invoices on a weekly basis where possible.
While we believe our rates are fair and competitive (based on the UK market), it is our ambition to increase these as we grow. The majority of our income is through pay-monthly donations via Patreon. You can sign up here if you would like to contribute towards supporting our network of writers, photographers and illustrators.
Written content should be formatted to AP grammatical standards (bar exceptions stated below) and submitted as a Google Doc, with editing access set to “anyone with the link.” Copy should showcase brevity and strong narrative flow. Paragraphs should be broken up by a line break. Consider that 75% of our readers access Pellicle’s stories on their phones, and try to tailor your copy to this context.
Drafts should be submitted in British English. Sources framed in the present tense should be referred to by their full names in the first instance and their first names thereafter, which makes our features more personable. Surnames should be used for quoted literary or historical sources, or if there are multiple sources with the same first name.
Quotes should be separated from body text wherever possible, unless that quote provides specific context to the paragraph it sits within. Longer quotes should be broken in the middle for flow, and sources should be named first, with the verb describing their action second, e.g.:
“I really like beer,” Matthew says. “Especially cask ale pulled through a tight sparkler.”
Longer sentences with tangents should be broken up with either em-dashes (—) or parentheses, although please be wary of overuse. There should be no spaces on either side of the em-dash. (For Mac users that’s shift+alt+_ and for Windows users, hold alt and type 0151.)
We use one-word designations like cidermaker/winemaker instead of cider maker and wine maker. The same goes for homebrewing, and so on.
We use three asterisks (***) in place of subheadings; please use these to break up chapters/sections within your feature.
Please aim to submit your copy with a suggested title, and highlight pull quotes from sources where possible.
At Pellicle we take the use of generative AI very seriously, and consider its use in the generation of copy or images to be theft, and in breach of UK copyright law. Contributors found to be using generative AI in submitted work will have that work rejected and will forfeit their right to a kill fee. Contributors found in breach of these rules will also forfeit the opportunity to work with Pellicle again.
We accept that AI-based software may be used in some forms, such as automated transcription services like Otter. However, we consider generative AI to be highly detrimental to our industry, and are making a conscious effort not to contribute to the damage it is causing for creators now and in the future. We ask that our contributors hold themselves to the same standards.
This Pitching Guide Was Last Updated September 2025.
