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JULY

Everything worth chatting about in the month just ended.

This marks the start of a new project, a monthly round-up of my work, other people’s work, and the best things I’ve eaten, drank, seen, and done over the past few weeks. Consider this a perk for being paid subscribers to this newsletter!

July has been a busy month for me, with a lot of different events to visit. I tend to work at home in my office (the spare room) or in the garden (on the bench until I fall asleep) so travelling any distance at all and mingling is an unusual and sometimes frightening experience. But I did it all this month, so you can heap your praise on me for being a good and strong and brave woman.

Things I’ve Written

“The Swan with Two Necks is a sacred place. Literally—over a pint with the local vicar in the early 2000s, landlady Christine Dilworth organised a drop-in for villagers that couldn’t make it to church, who were offered communion in the function room. Pendleton locals happily took advantage of this hallowed opportunity, until the press printed a photo of the vicar outside the pub.”

“My new friend brings my breakfast to me, a pile of fresh, silky avocado barely crushed, on top of crusty bread studded with black olives. A wealthy side salad opens my eyes to new opportunities—a breakfast salad? Why have I never done this before? Everything is doused in greenly-glinting olive oil that tastes like how I imagine gold must taste as it melts on the tongues of gods. I try to savour it, to spend more time in this pocket of serenity, but before I know it my plate is clean, and my coffee is gulped. I have to return to the dirty streets.”

The content below was originally paywalled.

Things I’ve Done

WOT’s Summer Hop // Women In Beer advocacy

Right at the start of the month, I attended the Women On Tap’s Summer Hop, an event-forward-slash conference that dissected the Dea Latis research on women’s attitudes towards and careers in beer, as well as highlighted women’s work within the industry.

This event was a catalyst for me to reach out to Amelie Tassin at Women In Beer to start offering my help and advocacy in areas I care about again. Amelie was a great listener, and I feel like I am more able to step forward after having that initial meeting with her. For a while I’ve been too exhausted to do anything much except my day job. Now I feel motivated to start campaigning and supporting again, so thank you to Rachel Auty and the WOT team for re-igniting that for me., and thank you to Amelie for being so receptive to my thoughts.

American Cider Association L1 Cider Guide

Woo, I am now officially accredited as a L1 Cider Guide by the American Cider Association.

What this means is I attended their one-day course in Highbury & Islington, and then passed an exam based on what I’d learned that day. I was surprised to find that even though I’ve been studying wine for years now, cider tasting and evaluation is so much different. Tannins and bitterness appear differently with the presence of so much sugar. Apple types are classed by acidity and tannin—not by sugar content.

It was a pleasure to be taught by Gabe Cook, the Ciderologist, who clearly has an immense passion and endless patience for his chosen drinks of choice. The day refreshed my interest in cider and perry, and I’m grateful to the American Cider Association for allowing me to take this course free of charge.

Visited London (by bus)

I didn’t visit London once last year, in fact, it was a New Year’s resolution for me not to go there. I live in the north, and I usually like to prove that there is just as much to celebrate up here as there is in the country’s capital. However, even a die-hard northerner like myself can’t deny that so many events and businesses revolve around the city, and to avoid the place out of spite does nothing to help me.

It costs £145 return for me to travel to London and back on the train—regular class, no guarantee that my booked seat will actually be available—which is one of the main reasons I never go there. I wanted to take the L1 Cider Guide exam though, so I found a bus ticket for £25 return. I can get from London Victoria directly to Accrington in just over seven and a half hours. If you’re wondering how I coped spending that long sat still next to someone I didn’t know, a long chat with Lucy Dearlove from Lecker helped, as did two naps and a copy of Vogue.

I am desperate for England to stop revolving around London, but until it does, I’ll be taking National Express coaches. Hit me up, National Express, if you want to do any paid promotion work. I’m all ears.

Things I Read

  • I’ve been reading a lot of glossy mags this month. I’m poor, it’s escapism. Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Elle are my drugs of choice.

  • I’ve started both Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson, and Elmet by Fiona Mosley. Both very different, but cut from the same patch of turbulent sky. I blame the dreich weather we’ve been having.

  • Them magazine is basically my daily coffee break read at this point. Their profile on restaurant critic Soleil Ho—one of the best to ever do it—is fantastic.

  • I’m really enjoying Liberty Hodes’ CaffWalk substack.

Things I Saw

Things I’ve Eaten

In Highbury & Islington, I ate a bowl of lunch special spaghetti carbonara so rich, so baconny, so eggy, it felt like an English fry up. It was ideal, it was comforting on a rainy day in London when I felt so far from home, and it was only £6.90. A triumph.

I had a Greggs bacon butty for the first time in years on my way to the bus station in Manchester, and honestly, it was showstopping. How they continue to operate a business while giving each customer upwards of five rashers of bacon, I will never know. But I appreciate it.

The best recipes I followed this month were mostly accompanied by Maroulosalada, an incredibly simple but totally delicious Greek salad made, this time, by Instagram chef Chef Marinie, whose Greek recipes are always simple to follow and perfect in execution. She has a new series out where she is making Greek/Indian fusion and I’m going to try all of them.

I love making veggie lasagne, and I made a great one this month. I stole the tricks I use from my friend Bridie, who was once a chef. She says the best lasagnes:

  • Have as many layers as you can manage to pile

  • The white sauce is mixed with the meat or veg filling with some white sauce retained—this way each layer is creamy AND full of filling, and you have some white sauce left to pour on the top before adding your grated cheese for the oven

  • The filling is cooked down well, almost dry, so the white sauce can incorporate and won’t be too wet (this is especially important for vegetable-based lasagnes as the water content is so much higher to begin with)

As you know, I’m not much of an exact recipe cook, but here is how I made my July lasagne.

July Lasagne

Filling

  • 1 courgette

  • 1 red onion

  • 1 carrot

  • 2 Romano peppers (just use red peppers, these were on offer)

  • Handful of spinach

  • Four tomatoes or a can of plum tomatoes

  • Tomato paste

  • 4 cloves garlic

  • Dried oregano

  • Black pepper

  • Salt

  • Lasagne sheets

White Sauce

  • Like, 70g butter?

  • About 2 tbsp. plain flour—enough to make a roux but not crumbs

  • Whole milk (or oat milk, whatever you use)

  • A big load of finely grated Grana Padana

  • Nutmeg

  • Salt

  • Pepper

Method

  1. Chop all the vegetables except the onion and garlic roughly into small cubes and keep separate so you can add them to the pan at different times.

  2. Finely chop the onion and add to a large pan with olive oil or cooking oil of your choice. There is a cost of living crisis going on, sunflower oil is fine, so is rapeseed.

  3. Turn the heat to about medium.

  4. Once the onion is cooked but not browning, crush or grate or chop your garlic (I like to chop) and add to the pan. Stir and stop it from browning.

  5. At this point I add salt and pepper, not sure it’s important when you add it but it stops me from forgetting later.

  6. Add the chopped courgette and carrot and let them cook down until they are soft.

  7. Add the peppers—they don’t take as long to cook.

  8. Add the chopped tomatoes or can of tomatoes in juice. Add tomato paste and dried oregano and stir well. Turn the heat up a little so the pan is bubbling and the liquid is cooking down but do not let it catch on the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring often. Keep your eye on it.

  9. Add the spinach and again, let the veg cook down well. Turn the heat down if it’s getting a bit violent. Once it’s getting close to a thick sauce rather than a pan of veg stock, turn the heat down to a lower temp so you can make the white sauce without burning the filling.

  10. Add the butter to a saucepan and melt it at a low-medium temperature.

  11. Add the flour to the melted butter, and mix with a whisk. Keep it cooking on that low-medium heat until the mixture smells like pastry rather than raw flour. It takes a couple of minutes.

  12. Add milk bit by bit, and whisk as you go—the first half cup or so will interact with the flour and make a thick paste. Keep mixing so there are no lumps and keep going with more milk additions. It’s fine. This is what’s supposed to happen.

  13. Keep adding milk every time you’ve incorporated the last splash until the mixture is a creamy sauce. Don’t add too much, because you want a sauce, not white water.

  14. In total you’ll probably use about 3/4 of a pint of milk. Sorry for the imperial measurement, I get milk in pints. What’s that, about 350/400ml? Something like that.

  15. Add a dash of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste, and then plonk a big great handful or two of grated Grana Padano cheese into the sauce and stir it in. This will make it a little thicker and incredibly delicious. (Secret cheat code: You can use any cheese, I just like this one and always have some in the fridge somewhere for making sauces like this. Try your cheapo mature cheddar butty cheese, it’ll be fine.)

  16. Get a lasagne-friendly baking dish out and turn the oven on to 180 degrees centigrade. My oven is a fan oven but is also temperamental as hell so I cook everything at 200 degrees and hail Mary. This is also why I don’t have exact timings for anything.

  17. Turn off the filling pan and give it a stir for good luck, and tell it how good it’s going to taste. Add in about 3/4 of the white, cheesy sauce you made from scratch, and stir it all together.

  18. Add a thin layer of this combined filling to the bottom of your dish, then layer lasagne sheets on top. Repeat as many times as you can.

  19. When you reach the top of the dish, instead of using the filling (which I would hope is all used up by this point unless you had the foresight to double batch it, in which case absolutely fair play), pour on the remaining white sauce to cover the pasta sheets, and grate over a whole lot more cheese. Again, use whatever you like, I just like Grana Padano for whatever reason. Gouda and its Dutch friends are always cheap in Lidl and melt really nicely. Mozzarella, imo, is too stringy and doesn’t taste of enough. It makes my lasagne taste a bit like pizza, which I hate. If I want pizza, I’ll have pizza.

  20. Bake in the oven for as long as it takes to brown the cheese. I would say give it at least 25 minutes in there, because you need to cook the pasta through too. If your oven is as much of an asshole as mine, put foil over the top f the cheese starts to brown prematurely so you can get it all to cook properly. Then whip it off for the last 5 mins for a bit of crust.

  21. This bit is vital: Leave it to stand for AT LEAST 5 minutes. Maybe longer. I like to make the salad once the lasagne is out of the oven, so I’m not tempted to cut into it too early. You want the layers to find their place in the world, and the filling to get a bit of structural integrity. Serve it up too early and you’ll have plates of sauce with pasta sheets floating on top, all of it hotter than a Lanzarote patio at midday. Chill. Pour a glass of wine. Throw some garlic bread in the oven while it’s still hot. Tell everyone food is ready—that’ll be another 20 mins before they get sat down anyway.

Serve this oregano lasagne with Maroulosalada and bread or garlic bread. I would probably drink a herbaceous and floral Trebbiano blend (crisp, dry white wine from Italy) to pair with the oregano and vegetables, or a bottle of Taras Boulba by Brasserie de la Senne (a lightly hopped blonde Belgian beer) to stand up to the cheese sauce and rich tomato.

Thank you so much for subscribing to The Gulp, I’m looking forward to August because I have a few food and drink-based adventures lined up. Who loves fish and chips?

Katie xox

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Fig Tree Cafe, Highbury & Islington

Finding secret gardens wherever I go.

It looked like it was going to rain, which was annoying, because I’d left my umbrella at my friend’s house. I found my way to where I was supposed to be joining my American Cider Association class, but I was 45 minutes early—it either takes half an hour longer to get somewhere in London, or considerably less time than you expect—so I did what any sane person does at 8am on a Wednesday, and I went looking for a decent cup of coffee.

My version of decent is different to yours. My husband Tom loves third-wave coffee, all acid and balance, that to me always tastes like peaches and apples left to rot in the fruit bowl. I like dark coffee, coffee that smells like full-roasted Italian breakfast beans, that pours the colour of liquorice, and tastes somewhere between dark chocolate and burnt toast. After breakfast I like it black, but early in the day I want milk in there, a touch of creamy, almost vanilla froth to set me up for the morning ahead.

The clouds held, and I walked down the arterial road that leads east from Highbury & Islington to Dalston looking for a café that looked good enough to stop for. I like to think I can tell if the croissants in the windows were frozen. I don’t tend to visit places with strong branding aimed at future franchising. At the corner of St. Paul’s Road I saw it: Fig Tree Cafe. Wooden, strewn with Mediterranean bric-a-brac, and dark enough inside to illicit a deep sense of curiosity, I crossed the road and entered through the open door.

It’s Greek in spirit, you can tell from the profusion of fresh vegetables and produce in the butty shop display counter that takes up most of the first room. It smells of fresh baking and house plants. I feel like I’m in a grandparent’s home, visiting someone who wants me to sit down and eat. I’m not wrong.

“A coffee for you?” the owner asks, adding, “You look like you’re in a rush. Only coffee is fast.”

I asked about the breakfasts he makes, and he says no. “I don’t make it quickly.”

That’s okay, I say. I’ve got time. He shrugs, and leads me to the rear of the tiny cafe into a second dining area, and then a conservatory, and then an outdoor terrace bursting with verdant green only a passionate vegetable gardener can achieve. On a blackboard were some of the most ideal-sounding brunches I’d ever seen. Before I can choose, he picks the avocado on toast for me, and tells me to sit. Again, he asks if I’d like coffee. I must look tired, because I am. Yes, please. Definitely.

He leaves me to explore the paintings and pottery and furniture, and I wander, carefully looking at everything as though I’m in a museum. The wooden decking of the outdoor space is not as creaky as I imagined (I have a fear of falling through, I’ve seen too many Instagram reels), so I take a seat under the heavy pergola of grape vines, sheltered from any passing showers that might come over. My coffee is brought to me—dark and frothy, a perfect cup—and I dunk a homemade almond biscuit into it while admiring the courgettes growing vigorously in a little window box balanced precariously on the edge of the platform. There is life everywhere. A magpie is chattering in the trees above. I can hear two restaurant workers further down the street panicking about a lack of mayonnaise. A train goes past totally hidden from view at the end of the lot. In my little garden, I feel like I’m spying on the rest of the city, secret and invisible in a cocoon of leaves.

My new friend brings my breakfast to me, a pile of fresh, silky avocado barely crushed, on top of crusty bread studded with black olives. A wealthy side salad opens my eyes to new opportunities—a breakfast salad? Why have I never done this before? Everything is doused in greenly-glinting olive oil that tastes like how I imagine gold must taste as it melts on the tongues of gods. I try to savour it, to spend more time in this pocket of serenity, but before I know it my plate is clean, and my coffee is gulped. I have to return to the dirty streets.

Inside again, I thank my host for the beautiful meal, and he complains that I didn’t spend long enough relaxing in the garden. I promise him I’ll be back, and I’ll spend all afternoon there. That he won’t be able to get rid of me. He smiles, I tap my card, and then he hands me another homemade almond cookie—a kavala, maybe?—in a napkin “for the road.” I eat it on my way to my engagement, thrilled to have been cared for so beautifully in a city I consider cold, that I’m often scared to visit. Food, coffee, biscuits, and kindness. They can be found anywhere. Even in London.

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Pellicle: A Drinks Magazine With Purpose

I want to tell you about this mag I work for.

This week, I was officially promoted to Deputy Editor of Pellicle. I’m extremely pleased about it—I love this magazine and I love editing.

Pellicle was started by Jonny Hamilton and Matthew Curtis with the shared ethos of showcasing beer, wine, and cider at its very best, and telling captivating stories about drinks culture that weaves in-between the drinks themselves.

Over the years, writing for Pellicle and being edited by both Matthew and Jonny sharpened my writing and taught me so much about telling stories. There is more to a tale than my own perspective, even in a personal essay—this is the main lesson I’ve learned from Pellicle. There is so much to share. Show, don’t tell.

I’ve been editing for Pellicle under the title of Associate Editor for a couple of years now, and it’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve loved it. In editing I feel like I’ve found a calling—something I thought I’d already found in writing. It’s true that I still love writing with all my heart and brain and body, but editing is just different. It’s a collaboration, but it’s more than that to me—almost an osmosis with the writer’s mind with whom you’re working with. You’re helping someone, but to do that you have to understand where they’re coming from: their point of view, their turns of phrase, their personality, their accent. Editing can be done successfully in a number of different ways, but for me, the process is most gratifying when both I and the writer are working together, learning something. I am not a red pen editor. I’m not a doormat either, but I like to see past what’s there and encourage confidence so that sentences can sparkle with the writers’ own wit, perspective, and talent.

Editing is not a chance for me to flex. Editing is an opportunity to sharpen my skills and help others to do the same.

Anyway. I wanted to use my Thursday newsletter this week to thank Matthew and Jonny for creating Pellicle, the first publication to commission, publish, and pay for my wine writing, and to say this: I am so proud to be a part of the team. I know we are going to do huge things. I’m excited.

Please be a part of it too by subscribing to our Patreon. Every penny we spend commissioning writers and artists comes from our supporters and main sponsors Loughran Brewers Select. We literally could not make this magazine—now one of only three of its kind in the UK—without you.

Apologies, but I am on le road and writing this on my janky phone using the janky Substack mobile web editor, so reading/art/music links will not happen this week. Stay tuned for links on Tuesday instead, plus a July round-up for paid subscribers to The Gulp before the month is out. Love ya!

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Underconsumption Core

Picky teas and slabs of beer. Is this it forever?

When I packed my van up for a weekend at a music festival, I didn’t realise what I was doing was highly trendy.

In years gone by I might have expected to spend upwards of £100 on beers at the festival bars over the weekend, and more on festival burritos, festival Diet Cokes, and festival burgers. You know I love a burger van.

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This time, however, I’ve finally learned how to superbudget, which is what I call living on the absolute bare minimum. It’s something I’ve been in training for my whole life, and I’m really good at it. We ate sandwiches and Pepperamis, a jar of gherkins (essential vegetable component) and multiple big bags of crisps. These sorts of “picky teas” are well-known in the North as somehow both an immense treat and the answer to being too skint and tired to cook a proper dinner. This peasant’s charcuterie served us well all weekend, and I am smug about it.

Underconsumption core exists because even the most exuberant of haulfluencers are starting to feel the constrictions of what is basically a national money shortage. When Broccoli is £1.20 a head in Lidl (one pound twenty pence!! for broccoli!!), there are many other things that have to get cut from our monthly budgets. Nights out become more infrequent. Takeaways become frozen pizzas. Beer turns into slabs of whatever tinnies are on offer at Tesco. We do what we can to keep ourselves afloat when the weekly shop increases by more than 20% over a year.

There are two reactions to a recession. One is to cut back to the bare bones of your budget, and enact control over your life this way—aka. the Picky Tea scenario. The other is to surrender to the cosmos and treat yourself, in a phenomenon well-known as “The Lipstick Effect”. (Of course this term was invented by a lipstick manufacturer for marketing purposes and picked up by journalists as an actual scientific theory—Leonard Lauder of Estée Lauder, in fact.) We buy small luxuries to make our lives worth living. We treat ourselves so that the daily drudgery of taking your own shitty coffee on the train and not having a pint after work feels less like penury. I bought a red lipstick this morning, because I decided I deserved it. As it happens, it was highly underwhelming and underpigmented. Don’t buy the Pixi +HYDRA LipTreat in Poppy, it is rubbish.

This brings me back to Underconsumption Core. Some darling young people have decided that being poor and acting like it is a core—a style to follow, a statement to make. Rather than take the indignant stance I’ve seen elsewhere that this is cosplaying as poor people, I’m happy for them, because it seems like a really cheap hobby, and it’s teaching others some good habits. They are sharing their minimal make-up bags featuring just foundation, mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick (so, my high school make-up bag,) and their worn-in trainers to show that it’s possible to live on less. The main tenet of Underconsumption Core, however, is to use something up until it is gone. You can make fun of this all you like, but to some this really is a radical notion. That a shower only needs one bottle of shampoo, one conditioner, one shower gel—revolutionary. That a skincare regime can be effective in only three steps rather than 9—unbelievable. The aim is to buy less, with the outcome of being more mindful in your daily life rather than wandering around with your big basking shark mouth open consuming everything in sight.

There’s one drawback to this fad, however, and it’s guilt. The idea of supporting local and independent businesses is engraved on the inside of my skull in florid Copperplate. Every time I avoid going out for drinks, I feel that hot little flush of shame. Every time I buy beer from the supermarket, I know that I shouldn’t be doing it. I should be supporting the good people who make better quality beer who I actually know and love. It’s tough out there for businesses—god knows I know that—but it’s also tough for customers too. Underconsumption Core only exists because people are struggling, no matter their outward optics. So what is going to happen to us all? Is this how we’re all going to live from now on? Surely not. There has to be something better on the horizon. There has to be a time in my future where heading out for a pint doesn’t require forethought. When will I never have to hear the soul-crushing phrase “Cost of Living” again? I honestly don’t expect answers, I just want to say these things out loud. When will things get easier? How much longer?

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Put fruit in your wine

Don’t think, just do it.

This piece was originally written for Glug magazine last summer. I have four monthly columns in Glug, and you can sign up for their wine club here.

I’m telling you this for your own good—put fruit in your wine.

A friend of mine from northern Italy met me in the park one day and while I had a can of something sparkling in my bag, she had brought a jam jar filled with Gavi and sliced peaches. The elegance! The rusticity! I was in awe of her resourcefulness, and of her attention to the simple, finer things in life. I had felt the day required bubbles for celebration. Her version of celebration was a true indication of the season—ripe stone fruits, cold white wine. Even the jam jar, now I come to overthink it, seems a sly remark against the preserves and penury of winter. Jam gone, the jar was now a receptacle for summer sunshine.

So, we’ve established that Gavi and peaches are an excellent pairing. There are many more wines to choose from, and fruits to pick.

Slice lemons and freeze them. Add the frozen slices, like circles of stained glass, into glasses of white rioja. Do the same, but with lime, in a Gruner Veltliner. Select the tiniest, sweetest strawberries and drop them into creamy Blanc de Noir champagne, or into the leesy, vanilla-rich folds of an oaked Chardonnay. Muscadet likes pears and green apple slices. Pale salmon-pink rosés love raspberries, and deep, sugary rosés enjoy cherries or frozen blackberries. Blueberries, even.

All of these combinations are suitable for jam jar park walks, but if you’re in the garden, I’d be tempted to bring out the big jug and stir up a sangria. The beauty of a sangria in your own home—you can do whatever you like. Taste the wine. What does it want? What do you want? Add sliced fruits, juice (if you like—I always like orange juice in my sangria), sprigs of aromatic herbs, ice, and a dash of liquor. Smile.

This week I’ve been suffering from a lingering chest infection, so my cooking hasn’t exactly been on-point. However I did make a riff of this pork chops and creamy mustard gnocchi dish on Tuesday—the weather has been wintery, so why not eat like it too?

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Overthinking a Bad Review

Does my experience need to be shared? Or am I ruining someone’s day?

I’ll let you in on a little secret today—my favourite café was a total dud the last time I visited.

I’m not saying that it’s ruined my month, but I’m still feeling a sinking feeling in my chest about it. It’s like losing a friend. Am I being dramatic?

Ordinarily, the coffee at this spot is fantastic, and the atmosphere is stunning. I like to come here to feel like I upgraded my life—on a rainy afternoon it truly feels like an aspirational place to sit and exist, among thoughtful design and architecture.

I was so annoyed by the bad service and uncharacteristically poor coffee (cold, under-extracted) that I left in a mood. That mood didn’t lift for a while. I sat in the van and deliberated on whether to leave a negative review. I decided against it.

But the feeling lingered. I opened the Google reviews page again later that night. I closed it. What would it achieve?

The negative Google review I imagined became a thought experiment. If I posted my exact thoughts, what would that be for? Who was my audience? Why did I want to share my dissatisfaction in this way? Did I believe it would make me feel better? Was I really warning other people not to visit, or did I want to express that personal sense of annoyance? If so, why? Now, say I did post it, along with my two stars—no, two and a half stars. Would it resolve the niggling disappointment I still felt? Would I stop thinking about how a café I loved was succumbing to money issues and corner cutting just like everywhere else? If I didn’t post it, could I just forget about the whole thing, and get on with my life like anyone else would have done by now?

The world is such a hard place to be, and we look at our small treats as reasons to exist. I think about this piece by Imogen West-Knights for the Financial Times all the time: Treat Brain: how the Pandemic is rewiring our brains. In it, Imogen speaks to scientists and behaviour experts about the human need for distraction and consumption. She posits that what was once an indulgence has now become a necessity.

The tomorrow I imagined in which I would “be good” again has never come, and I don’t want it to. I want to enjoy myself. The truth is life was always like this: a series of good times and bad times, and I deserved to eat what I wanted in all of them.

— Imogen West-Knights, for the FT

I started to think about how the disappointing coffee experience had been a representation of everything going to shit. In my calming place of beauty and perfection, I had been reminded of grim reality. My treat brain had been short-changed. But why was that anyone else’s problem?

Reviews were so important to me when I had a bar, they showed me what people liked about us, and what we could improve. It was always interesting to see, however, that positive reviews were always about the things people enjoyed, and negative reviews were about how a person felt. Negative reviews are charged with emotion, positive reviews tend to be more factual: I had a lovely drink, the cheese toastie was nice.

I also noticed how negative reviews often showed an attempt to showcase a person’s elite sense of taste or superior knowledge—something I’ve learned is called the “Cynical Genius Illusion.” Picking holes makes you seem like you know what you’re talking about, so you keep finding ways to appraise the world around you, never satisfied with what you’re given, always looking for what could be improved, never appreciating what actually exists. The life of a critic. What a depressing way to live. Please don’t let that happen to me (again.)

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Why don't restaurants serve better beer?

A rant.

I’ve just gotten off the phone with Will Harris and James Horrocks of Balance Brewing and Blending. What started as a professional call—an interview for a piece I’m writing for Glug magazine—ended as a vibrant discussion about the state of beer lists in restaurants. Why, James asks, can’t they put as much care and attention into their beer selections as they do their food, ingredients, presentation, their wine lists? I don’t know, I reply. But it really pisses me off.

Years ago, I visited a deservedly well-respected restaurant. The food was astonishingly good, in particular I remember there being venison smoked on spruce, the smoke still wafting lazily from the covered dishes brought to our table like the trail from a woodsman’s cabin’s chimney. At pudding time, I didn’t really fancy anything—I usually stuff myself with side dishes and bread rather than wait for the sweet menu—but I could have been persuaded to share a cheese board with a nice bottle of something Belgian. We asked for the beer menu. There wasn’t one. It was a memorised list of forgettable beers, some of which had run out, and there were definitely no bottled beers except for gluten free Peroni (v. nice to see them taking care of the GF crowd though, well done to them!)

It left a bit of a scar, if I’m honest. Everything that night had been perfect up until this point, and the rest of my group had a totally wonderful time. And I’m glad! But for me, a place that prides itself on being a pub should have a good selection of beer to choose from, and a place that is famous for its service and fine dining should really be offering beers that match the high mark they set for themselves. Beers like this exist! It’s not hard to find them either!

This restaurant is not alone in their abandonment of beer. In so many people’s experiences, beer is simply a perfunctory beverage. This is such a huge shame. Being poured an Rodenbach Caractere Rouge at The Moorcock (RIP) to pair with a supremely delicious cut of mutton belly is one of the best food memories I have. So why don’t more restaurants experiment with beer on their drinks menus? It seems such a shame to me. They could be opening up their diners to new characters and flavours, and offering something unique in a world saturated with expectations and pretentions. Why deny yourself some excitement? Why cut yourself off from a world of pleasure?

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Summer Hop

A slight pause in publications as I attend Women On Tap’s Summer Hop conference.

Today I’m at Rooster’s brewery and tap room in Harrogate for the Women On Tap Summer Hop conference.

So far the talks have included research from the Dea Latis Women In Beer paper, and from a PhD candidate researching inequality in the craft beer industry.

I’ll write more about some of the issues, conclusions, and possible solutions raised at a later date—it’s been a really interesting morning. For now, however, I’ll just leave you with some questions to ponder while I scoff some triangle butties and head to the afternoon’s seminars.

After 5 years of access to data that shows women are not engaging with beer either as drinkers or employees in any great number—does the beer industry actually want to change?

Why don’t groups of women visit tap rooms together without men?

How can beer education be promoted and made widely accessible while being mindful of issues around health, alcohol, and the law?

Are women worried about ordering beer because they feel like they will be ridiculed? Why?

Why do men order default drinks for their female partners without asking them what they’d like?

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The Swan With Two Necks

A cutting from the editorial floor to get you pumped for my full story, published on Wednesday 3 July.

This story will be published in full on Wednesday 3 July by Pellicle. The Swan With Two Necks is a local institution here in the Ribble valley, and I’m thrilled to be singing its praises on such a large platform, to readers all over the world.

In 1990, The Swan With Two Necks also became a Post Office branch.

“Basically there was nowhere else, so the Post Office rang us and asked us if we could do it,” says Christine Dilworth, the Swan’s landlady. “We were one of the first pubs to do this.”

The Post Office work, which Christine used to do two mornings a week, put them in touch with locals who they’d never normally see, who began to come in for their lunch and stay for a chat. Then, they started to have issues with the combined businesses.

“The Horizon computer just wouldn’t balance,” explains Christine.

“Then a local Post Office was robbed, and I decided I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. It was a shame really, because the week we decided to close our Post Office branch, the one in Barrow closed too.”

Barrow is a small village around five miles away from Pendleton, and despite the obvious stress of running an extra business on top of a very busy local pub, and their near miss with the Horizon IT scandal, it’s still clear to see that Christine still feels that her duty is with the local community.

Read the full piece on Pellicle from Wednesday 3 July!

When we think about pubs and the difficulties they face, our experiences are often clouded by the extremities of the Covid 19 pandemic and its long-reaching problems for the hospitality industry. The truth is, and this was underlined many times by both Christine and her husband Stephen when I spoke to them, that running a pub has never been an idyllic way of life. As well as its positives, it has always been fraught with outside interference and hardships.

The Dilworth’s close call with what later became the Horizon computer scandal is just one story of many that shows how precarious a pub owner’s livelihood can be. It is never a simple case of owning the pub, choosing the beers, serving the customers. There will always, unfortunately, be businesses to please, contracts to honour, and outside interests to fight off. That Christine wanted to double her workload to become the village’s only post office desk whilst running a very busy pub is testament to her dedication to her role in the centre of her community—but it also shows how people with the best intentions are taken advantage of. Had things turned out differently, The Swan With Two Necks could have been yet another Horizon scandal victim, or worse, and it doesn’t escape my mind that this would have meant almost certain closure.

That we still have The Swan With Two Necks with Christine and Stephen at the helm is a minor miracle—you’ll read all about it tomorrow—and one I don’t take for granted. They are part of the generation of publicans that truly live and breath their craft, and I’m grateful to learn from them, and call them my friends. When they finally retire, I’m not sure how the local pub scene will look. But then, it’s not their job to uphold standards for everybody. They simply love running their pub, and they do it well. I can only hope there are still people out there who want to do the same. I certainly don’t think I have the mettle for it anymore.