The Gulp’s monthly roundup is back.

“I hate January,” said the woman at the Lidl checkout this week when I did my weekly shop. “Anyway, where have you been?”

She was referring to the fact that I’ve stopped going to the shop every day, trying instead to go twice a week at most. I’ve already failed this week, having forgot bread and butter (how?) and then running out of teabags (unforgiveable).

I agree with her. I also hate January, or at least I usually do. This year feels a little different — somehow despite the terrible weather and freezing temperatures, I’ve quite enjoyed this month. I’ve been productive, I’ve cooked some great meals, I’ve seen friends, and I’ve released my zine into the world. And today, it’s sunny, so I’m going to go on a walk to the next village for a pint (of diet coke — it’s midweek and I’m sticking to my guns.)

I’ve been sleeping poorly, but out of excitement rather than insomnia. There’s a lot to look forward to this year, and I feel like I’m finally peering over through the privet to the end of the maze. Some of this is because Pellicle is feeling more vibrant and important than ever. Some is because I’ve not had a chest infection for six months. And some is just because things genuinely seem a little lighter than they have done in a while — I have been enjoying myself instead of wishing my time away. And now we’re nearly in February and I’ve had not one single winter boredom-related meltdown.

Not bad for the worst month of the year.

The Zine

A Place To Be is a collection of six stories in one 20 page zine, published by Pellicle.

I spent most of 2024 working on it, and I’m so proud of the finished thing. I designed it and took the phone photos, and Hannah Robinson did the illustrations. I’m really excited to be releasing this into the world — I’ve worked really hard on every aspect of it, and I hope the finished zine is a representation of what I enjoy most about writing. Ideas, situations, the strangeness of being taken somewhere else in your head.

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You can read more about it here.

Pre-orders are now available, and will be fulfilled in February. If you’d like me to sign yours, leave a comment during checkout.

Things I’ve Written

• The Smell of the Mash – The Gulp

• Unrequited – The Gulp

• Chocolate Cookies – The Gulp

• Drinking Kolsch in Cologne pt. 1 – The Gulp

• Drinking Kolsch in Cologne pt. 2 – The Gulp

“There is hours of fun to be had just sitting in the Päffgen hall and people watching. A man beside us was having lunch, reading the paper. An elderly couple on the other side of the room were dressed in leather and suede, a German Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks. We drank Kölsch after Kölsch, enjoying the soft, lightly carbonated texture that, to me, gave it more of a creaminess than I was used to. Our glasses were unbranded, served in chipped enamel Kranz trays probably as old as the bar, which was built in 1955.”

• Newsletters You Should Get In 2025 – The Gulp

• Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner – Ferment, issue 112 (print only)

• The Elephant In The Room (on Madri) – Ferment, issue 113 (print only)

Things I Read

• Sleeping Women, an essay on the Pelicot trial, by Sophie Smilth for the London Review of Books.

• The Irish For Stout, the story of Leann Folláin by Eoghan Walsh for Pellicle

• The Polarization of AI by Jeff Alworth for Beervana

• Positive Tension — Rooster’s Brewery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire by Mathew Curtis for Pellicle

• The Infinity of Desire, Rachel Hendry’s piece on trash, Dolly Parton, and Dolly’s unforgivably bad wine for Pellicle

• A piece on how young people are adopting socialist principles because their rich grandparents won’t help them. “If those in their 20s and 30s had a proper stake in our country’s wealth, they may be less inclined to tear it down.” Made me laugh and smile to read The Telegraph get upset about young people they would ordinarily ignore.

• The impossibility of Axel Rudakubana by David Aaronovitch for his Substack

• What I learned travelling around Britain, by Nicola Kelly for her Substack. This is an insightful and engrossing read about engaging with the communities you report on.

A note to explain myself about the paywall

The Gulp has almost 1000 subscribers now. Absolutely amazing. I’m really pleased!

I’m going to keep my essays and stories free to read, but there will be a few new bits and pieces popping up for paid subscribers only. Making money is not the reason I began this newsletter, but it sure would be nice to earn a little bit from the (hard) work I put into it every week.

Don’t feel obliged! Like I said, all the stories will still be free to read. But if you enjoy what I do and want to champion my writing, the best way you can do that is to upgrade your subscription.

Thanks so much for your ongoing support!!

After the jump:

• Things I Did in January (including addressing the haggis)

• Things I Saw

• Things I Drank

• Things I Ate

• A recipe for Baharat lamb meatballs and saffron rice

• Roast dinner at The Lower Buck, Waddington

• Using cornflakes to bread chicken

The content below was originally paywalled.

Things I’ve Done

Addressed the Haggis

On Burns’ Night I visited my best friend for a feast of vegan haggis, neeps and tatties. Of course there was whisky, and of course there was poetry.

It’s amazing, my friend pointed out, that have only one national holiday or celebration dedicated to the arts. Despite neither of us being Scottish — I grew up in Scotland but was born in England — we felt like it was important to share poems and remember Robert Burns; to celebrate the life and works of a poet.

I was very pleased to find my accent hadn’t left me when it came to addressing the haggis. Thank you to my English teachers for teaching us Scots (irony?) so ardently throughout school.

Threw a Surprise Party

It was my husband Tom’s birthday two weeks ago, and I threw him a small surprise gathering at the local pub.

If you’ve ever tried to throw a surprise party, you’ll understand how stressful it was. I love surprising people, but the actual surprise itself is nearly always far too much hassle. You have to really love the person to deal with it.

I made the cake days beforehand and hid it in tin foil in the freezer. I roped in a friend to help me invite people, who made up an elaborate story about why Tom had to get to the pub. It was all going so well — the story was that he needed help from Tom to pick up some van seats from a community centre near the pub — and in fact, despite seeing some of our friends head into the pub, he was still asking about the van seats even after we’d all yelled “surprise!” and cut the cake.

Is there anything more northern than a birthday party in a pub’s back room? I hadn’t made triangle butties, but I did have the four-tiered cake (chocolate and vanilla) and a big helium balloon. A baby friend showed off his new skill and walked across the room to me. Strangers came in and wished Tom a happy birthday. It was all worth it in the end.

Things I Saw

• Cyclocross

• A lot of Matt’s Off Road Recovery

• I changed my phone background to Imperial Fritillaries in a Copper Vase by Van Gough

• A beautiful sunset over the Salthill industrial estate

• An episode of CSI where 16 year old Justin Bieber was a bombmaker

Things I Drank

• A gorgeous bottle of left bank Bordeaux that was left in my friend’s house by the former owner (a sommelier)

• Redbreast 12

• A really delicious pint of White Witch by Moorhouses

• A lot of lime and lemonade

Things I’ve Eaten

• I made a lot of this chicken — but instead of egg and mustard, the chicken is marinated in Greek yoghurt (which I spike with all manner of spices and seasonings) before breading in the crushed cornflakes. This adds more protein, and it also helps the crunchy coating feel more like fried chicken once it’s been in the air fryer (which I recommend for this, it’s less messy.)

• Bestie made a vegan, GF haggis out of lentils, wholegrain rice, loads of black pepper and magic

• ZMA. It really stops me from flailing about in the night.

• An incredible cheese board — I’m going to write about it separately in another newsletter

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For my birthday we went for a roast at a favourite local pub. I really don’t enjoy my birthday, and this was the ideal outcome. I love a pub roast, and the Sunday roast at The Lower buck in Waddington is outstanding.

Since the pub was taken under new ownership, it has been deep cleaned and scrubbed up to a former glory I didn’t know it was capable of. Rather than painting the walls in muted Farrow & Ball, each room looks perfectly historic, as though nothing has been done at all, which is exactly what I want from an old country pub.

The front room where we normally sit is a blazing fireplace and tired dogs sort of place, with lots of light filtering in through the Georgian window onto the stained glass above the bar. In the back room where we had our meal, the walls were a warming, dramatic shade of brick, with dark navy waist-high cladding. The last time I’d been in this room years ago, it was a storage space for stacking chairs and had a pull-down projector screen to show the 6 Nations. Now it’s a beautiful dining room. It’s amazing what can be done when someone who actually loves pubs gets to take on somewhere with such obvious potential.

The highest compliment I can give The Lower is that every time I leave, I think to myself how lucky I am to have such a quintessential English country pub as a local. That people might travel for miles to visit it, but I just need to walk a couple of miles — and that couple of miles is also as picturesque as they come; over the river, through fields, into historic Waddington itself. It’s a pub the village should treasure, and despite having three in such a small place, this is definitely the best.

Visit the Lower Buck, Waddington
www.thelowerbuck.co.uk

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Baharat lamb meatballs and saffron rice

I made this as a portable meal to take to our friends’ house, and even though I made it up on the spot, it worked really well. You do need Baharat though, which is Arabian masala. I got mine from family — both my mum and my sister and her family live in Abu Dhabi, so when they come over I demand spices and fragrances to be wowed by like some sort of medieval peasant.

I’m absolutely sure you can buy similar spaces from Sous Chef or similar. Sainsbury’s actually seem to have a really good selection these days too. If you’re really struggling, use cumin, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg for a similar but not exact replication.

NOTE: I made a tagine-like sauce for my dish because we were having a sit-down meal but these meatballs could easily be shaped into kebab skewers and served with salad and flatbread instead.

Ingredients

FOR THE LAMB

• Lamb mince

• Half red onion

• Garlic granules

• Baharat or Arabic masala

• Salt

• Pepper

FOR THE TAGINE

• Oil – I used sunflower

• 4 garlic cloves

• Half red onion

• Ajwan seeds

• Sumac

• Baharat or Arabic masala

• Tin of chickpeas

• Tin of tomatoes

• 2 tbsp. Tomato paste

• 500ml chicken stock

• Pomegranate molasses

• Salt

• Pepper

FOR THE RICE

• Basmati rice, rinsed four times

• Salt

• Saffron

• Green olive oil

FOR THE YOGHURT SAUCE

• Greek yoghurt

• Pomegranate molasses

• Salt

• MSG

• Cucumber

Method

FIRST, MAKE THE MEATBALLS

1. Take your lamb mince (400g pack) and add to a bowl with the spices, salt and pepper.

2. Chop the half onion finely and add to the lamb mince.

3. Use your hands or a fork to squish all the mince and seasonings together into a well-mixed paste.

4. Leave to marinade in the spices for at least half an hour.

5. Oil your hands so the meat doesn’t stick.

6. Using your hands, roll small meatballs and fry in the pan you will make the sauce in.

7. Once seared, remove from the pan.

MAKING THE TAGINE SAUCE

1. Chop the half onion finely and fry in the lamb fat and more oil.

2. Mince or chop the garlic and add to the onion.

3. Add ajwan seeds and all the spices and fry until fragrant.

4. Add drained chickpeas and coat in the spices.

5. Pour in your tomatoes and scrape up the caught bits of lamb fat and onion.

6. Add tomato paste and chicken stock.

7. Stir well until the tomato paste is combined into the sauce.

8. Cook down for 15 minutes, then add meatballs back into the sauce.

9. Cook on low for 30 mins.

THE RICE

I use a rice cooker. You should get one.

1. Put the kettle on.

2. Rinse your basmati rice four times AT LEAST, until the water runs clear.

3. Leave the rice to soak while you do the saffron.

4. Put a pinch of saffron into a ramekin or teacup. Pour in about 50ml hot water from the kettle and let the saffron infuse for about 10-15 mins.

5. Rinse the rice one more time, then add saffron and safforn water, salt, and water up to the required amount.

6. Cook your rice according to the rice cooker’s directions (flick the switch to “on””)

7. Once cooked, allow to steam for 10 mins on “hot”.

8. Stir in green olive oil to taste.

THE YOGHURT SAUCE

I made this because I love yoghurt and rice together. No other reason.

1. Decant your tub of Greek yoghurt (NOT “Greek style”, GREEK) into a bowl

2. Add a pinch of MSG and salt to taste

3. Add a good shot of pomegranate molasses and stir through like raspberry ripple ice cream

4. Chop up a cucumber and place on top

5. Add more salt to taste, and a drizzle of green olive oi

   

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I really hope you try that recipe because it’s super delicious. It would probably work just as well with Ras Al Hanout and Harissa, but it won’t be the same.

Have a wonderful rest of your week,

Katie xox

A zine about drinking in liminal spaces

I’m really pleased and excited to share that my zine, A Place To Be, is now available to pre-order with Pellicle.

I spent the best part of last year writing this, working on short pieces that explore the moments of freedom and strangeness of being outside of reality for a moment. What I like most about liminal spaces is how lost it’s possible to be in the moment. I’ve found that when I’m sitting with a pint, thinking, there’s a different sensation of normality, somehow enhanced, as though the realities I’ve been wading through are all inventions in my head. I wanted to explore memorable places where time slips, and in A Place To Be, try to describe how it feels to be somewhere outside of your conventional schedule, enjoying the glitch.

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.

A Place To Be includes four original works, and two re-worked pieces you may have seen me experiment with in this newsletter before — My Favourite Pub is a Petrol Station Forecourt, and The Bar on board the Manxman. These have been completely rewritten — I knew what I wanted to say when I wrote them to begin with, but they never had the impact I wanted. I think now they’re closer to what I hoped for.

This is the first print publication by Pellicle, and I’m really proud that our magazine is branching out into print. Pre-ordering A Place To Be is super important, because it helps us understand how in-demand a print magazine might be. It also shows us how many to order from the printers.

The zine itself was designed by me, with some phone photos by me, and brilliant illustrations by Hannah Robinson. I thought you might like a preview, so here’s a piece I’ve selected to brighten up the grey January weather.

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A balcony, on holiday

I’m alone. The shower’s going, so I’ve got at least 20 minutes to myself to decompress from a busy afternoon of wandering, looking and snacking. The wine in front of me is a cold glass of local white poured from the fridge, extra-refreshing in the late afternoon heat.

Salty fingers from salty crisps, I’m looking over my balcony wall towards the tiny glimmer that is the sea, then down into the crowded narrow street below. Here, I don’t exist, observing this perfect moment unseen, sipping my drink and feeling the world continue in my absence.

The wine is good. We are in Spain, and I pour another glass as a nearby church tolls a bell for some evening congregation. Golden hour is approaching, and my skin has caught the sun. A long night stretches lazily ahead—most places aren’t even open for dinner yet. The sound of a scooter buzzing down a side street combines with the smell of its exhaust fumes. Above, there are sparrows in the gutters, chirping like a videotape rewinding.

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.

Fewer towns these days have a big brewery belching out the scent of hot, wet barley, and that’s a shame.

I spread Marmite on my toast (wholemeal, the best toast for Marmite) and as it melts into the butter I am taken to the paving slabs of an Edinburgh street, a thin rain falling as the winter wind brings a warming and familiar scent my way. Sweet and yet deeply savoury, an edge of bitter roast. The smell of breweries and distilleries is the smell of winter, to me.

In Luthermuir, the fields would be covered by used mash from the Fettercairn distillery. On frosty mornings from the school bus I saw steam rising from the piles of spent grain as they continued rotting and fermenting on the stubble, and wondered what it would be like to plunge my chilly hands into them. The smell was sometimes overwhelming, a sickly, vegetable earthiness, like oatcakes being baked alongside a stock pot over-simmering.

The smell of breweries has followed me around all my life. Growing up near Lancaster while the Mitchell Brewery was still in operation gave me a weekly dose of stewing malt while we shopped in town on a Saturday. I could never tell if I liked the smell or if it made me sick — the stickiness of it seemed to stay inside my nostrils long after we’d gone back home. Now, I’m more likely to smell hot barley from the animal feeds factory down the road as I walk along the boggy fields near my house, the scent mingling with oats, linseed and earthy vegetables as they’re processed into sheep nuts.

But in Edinburgh, that’s where the smell is most evocative. Tall tenements and chimneys still look as though they should be shrouded in the soot of the industrial age — their former residents would have smelled this too. Their beer and their whisky being made just around the corner.

Come to my workshop!

It’s more important than ever, I think, to start taking our work off social media and to start keeping our own personal blogs or newsletters.

If you’ve been struggling to keep up a blog you started some months/years ago, or you’re finding it hard to think of topics to write about during this time of upheaval and confusion — please come along.

If you made it your aim for 2025 to create a blog or newsletter to work on your writing and share your experiences and thoughts but you’ve not quite got round to it yet — please come along.

If you’re already a blogger but you’re looking for more inspiration and confidence to keep you going — please come along.

When is it?

Wednesday 25 January at 6.30pm

Where is it?

It’s online

How much is it?

It is £20 to book your place. You can do so here.

All I want is to share my experience with writers, and get more people creating work about topics they care about. Obviously, my primary areas of expertise are in drinks and food writing, but if you are hoping to create a blog outside of these topics, you are still welcome! It will still be relevant!

In order to help make writing more accessible, there are a couple of free places available for those who cannot afford the fee. Please get in touch with me directly to discuss.

I hope to see you there xox

Will Champagne ever love me back?

In every situation where a drink is offered, I want a glass of sparkling wine. It’s becoming an issue.

I’m a pints girl — always have been. But lately I’ve fallen hard for the fizz in a way that’s both unreasonable and unsuitable. My local pub does Prosecco in tiny, single-serve bottles. It tastes awful. I know better, especially since their cask beer is so good. Even so, over Christmas, I sat with my uncharacteristic flute of prosecco, warm from the dishwasher, and wondered to myself, “what am I playing at?” It certainly wasn’t the experience I wanted, and yet I’d insisted on it anyway, hoping, perhaps, that at the last minute I’d sniff freeze-dried strawberries and brioche in my glass.

I’m desperate all the time for the thrill of a great glass of Champagne, the light-hearted giggle of the bottle as it pours. Fizzy wines remind me of fun evenings in the golden hour sun, the “shall we just get a bottle?” afternoons when nobody can decide what to choose from the menu. They remind me of sharing, and laughing, and having no plans. Bubbles are fun and frivolous to me — never a status symbol, because I never buy the bottles worth Instagramming. If I was going to spend brand-money on bubbles, I’d choose grower Champagne recommended by the person in the shop. Spend that advertising cut on juicy grapes, pop it right in the worn Carhartt pocket of the maker. But I’m in the business of being totally honest with you, and in the spirit of that, I’ll be real with you: I very rarely have the cash to buy real Champagne. Perhaps this is why it sparkles so in my peripheral vision, I want it because I can’t have it — annoying because this is the marketing doing its job. I’m not avoiding it because I have morals, I’m unable to enter its intimidating circle because my credit card gets used for food shops rather than trips to the Maldives.

You know what really sucks about this set-up? I really enjoy Champagne, and during my WSET qulifications, I found I was really good at tasting sparkling wine, finding flavours and aromas among the carbonation, and learning that there was something incredibly fascinating to me about how simple grape juice could create such magic in my glass. Ever since I was given a taste of vintage Pol Roger blanc de noir I have been searching for that berry-strewn dreamscape. Ever since I blind tasted sparkling wines in a conference room in some faceless hotel I knew that this was the style of wine that had me in a headlock. I love Champagne, but she doesn’t even know I exist.

The lovely woman in The Gulp’s header image is taken from a 19th century German oil painting called “Maid Secretly Drinking Champers” (possibly not its original name). She has cleared away the glasses from her Lady’s table, and in the hallway, hidden from view, she downs the last remaining dregs of the bubbles. Her head is tipped right back to catch every drop, her cheeks flush with excitement, knowing she is tasting something out of her reach — and yet is literally in her grasp regularly. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate image for this newsletter.

Other Stuff

• If you want to chill the fuck out to frosty electronic music that sounds like a snowy forest sighing during a downbeat Royksopp set, Jan Blomqvist’s 2018 album Disconnected is what you need.

• There was news this week that the Tour de France may include some cobbled Montmartre streets in its route this year. If you’re planning to run a wine-based coach trip to go see the final stage on the gorgeous hill of Sacre-Coeur, please do let me know.

• Found myself re-reading this piece I wrote in 2018 (??? surely not???) about my visit to Rudi Trossen’s vineyards.

• Rooster’s Brewery is one of the most important breweries in the country, and you probably don’t even remember the last time you drank one of their beers, do you? Read this, and then seek out your nearest pint of Baby Faced Assassin.

• I’m a huge fan of the motorcycle journalist FortNine and his writing — he’s hilarious, informative, and I learn tons, especially when he gets the blackboard physics lessons out. His latest is just stupidly good.

• Rachel Hendry, on learning, growing, rejection, wine, and life.

My Stuff

• I returned to the gym with a vengeance last week with a few fitness goals in mind. The north east summits challenge on the Isle of Man is one of them, I’m going to do it in March.

• I’ve written a zine for Pellicle and the illustrations are almost ready. Expect a pre-order date soon.

• I’ve been asked to edit another book, a memoir, which I’m super jazzed about.

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And the death of a wooden spoon.

Last week I fancied something deeply chocolatey, and I knew a shop-bought cake wasn’t going to fix my need. I scratched around in my hateful little baking cupboard — hateful because it’s so narrow and deep, I dread to think what’s in the back — and discovered two packs of chocolate chips, one dark, one milk. Triple chocolate chip cookies it had to be.

My cookie recipe is always just the first one that comes up on Google. If I wanted to share the best with you, I’d recommend Ella Risbridger’s cookie recipe from her book Midnight Chicken. I didn’t use that recipe though. I think it was BBC Good Food’s this time. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The results were tremendous.

I make cookies in a bowl with a wooden spoon. It doesn’t seem necessary to hassle my 40+ year old Kenwood with such an easy-peasy baking session. I’ve always done them this way, and I’ve always hated getting aching arms from creaming the butter and sugar together, so now I also always swap the butter for baking spread or similar. Look, I’m the one eating them, not you.

On the way to creating soft, crystal-packed sugar-butter-cream, my heavy-handed beating snapped my spoon in half. I loved that spoon, it was my favourite utensil in the whole house. You could tell because one side of it was straight in a diagonal line, worn down over years of stirring, and the handle was chipped from being rapped on the edge of pans throughout its long and useful life.

I don’t like change. I still look for that spoon every time I cook. But it gave me two decades of service, I worked it out. 20 years I’d had it, since I stole it from a student let when I moved out because I’d enjoyed cooking with it so much. That spoon made chilli when I needed comfort food and risotto when I needed to use up roast chicken. It was adept at stirring soup, and I never saw a pasta dish it couldn’t handle. My replacement spoons are adequate, but they don’t fit in my hand the same way. They aren’t smoothed by my cookery, my energy, my love.

I have always been quick to anthropomorphise objects and then become upset when they break or I lose them. This is why I’m not allowed to name the van, and why I’m still sad that my first car (Jeff) broke down for the last time in 2017. Being attached to a wooden spoon is different though. It came with me on move after move, and was a part of every meal I cooked. Every single meal! Can you believe that! What a pleasure to have had such a wholesome sidekick all along. Rest well, little spoon. You made my cooking better.

I’m running another writing workshop!

On Wednesday 29th January at 6.30pm UK time, I will be hosting an online writer’s workshop for writers who want to start their own blog or newsletter, or who started but then stopped again, and need a bit of push in the right direction.

It costs £20 to book, and if you’re interested but don’t want to book right away, please do get in touch with me (you can just reply to this email, or message me directly) to ask any questions you might have. All are welcome.

What’s it all about, then?

This workshop, unlike the last few I ran which were about finalising work you’d already written, is about getting started.

I figured quite a few people’s new year’s resolutions or goals for 2025 would feature finally getting those words out of their head and onto the page. I want to help with that.

Build Your Own: Blog will be all about starting a blog or newsletter, exploring what to write in a blog and when, ideas generation tactics, being brave enough to let other people read your work, and more.

Why should you listen to me?

My own writing career started when I worked on my (now defunct) personal blog The Snap and The Hiss. It was a place for me to try out ideas, test my writing skills, and play with styles and topics in ways that interested me. I did this while I worked full time in marketing and part-time at a pub — so yes, if you want to write, you do have time!

As Deputy Editor of Pellicle, I encounter writers in various stages of their careers. One of the first things I tell new writers to do is to start a blog or a newsletter, and use it as a boxing gym to battle with all their ideas and experiences until they’re truly ready to step into the ring. I can change this metaphor into any sport you like, if you so wish, if it helps you to understand better. I’m not sure why I chose boxing.

I truly believe that blogging (and I count this newsletter as blogging) is integral to my writing practice, and without it my work would never progress. It’s a tool for continual improvement, yours, to be used any time you feel like it.

When is it?

• Wednesday 29th January

• 6.30pm UK time

• £20

Book your place

To book onto the workshop, just click here and follow the instructions to pay for your place. Please make sure to include the email address I can best reach you on.

Once you have booked on, I will send you an invite to the video chat link, and more information on what to expect from the workshop.

Hopefully, I’ll see you there.

Katie xox

Notes from our second and final day in Cologne.

Waking up in a hotel room after getting so used to the van was strange. The pleather curtains blocked out the daylight to such an extent I believed it was midnight when it was, in fact, 9am. From the outside, this hotel looked tired and municipal, the average of an average in terms of concrete, brick, ageing signage, and rain-stained glass. Inside, there was rather a lot of fake leather, as a bedspread, as cushion covers, on the windows. Was this a statement on the city as a whole? Whatever, I suppose it’s easy to clean.

After an extended ablution — showering is a luxury if you’re living in a van, I watched an Austrian documentary about the Matterhorn with German subtitles waiting for Tom — I complained of a rumbling tumbly. “We’ll have to do something about that then, won’t we?” Tom had said. We hit the streets in search of coffee.

At Meinstein Coffee, pour-overs are the speciality. This was all Tom’s doing, I couldn’t give a tiny mouse fart about coffee. It all tastes like rotten vegetables to me unless it’s burnt and served with creamy milk the way I like it. It was a cute little place though, all white walls and smart little stoneware cups. I swerved the pastry cabinet in favour of a mug of batch filter, whispering to Tom that I knew where we could get breakfast instead, insinuating that I was taking us somewhere special. In a way, I was. Breakfast was, after a brisk walk, bought at a kiosk outside a Merzenich in the town centre. Cologne’s answer to Greggs it might be, but I’ve never had a nicer ham and egg sandwich in my life. Our bakeries need to learn about rye.

Caffeinated and fed, we were ready to drink, which was just as well, because as we headed over to the cathedral it started howling it down. Waiting for the rain to stop just made things worse — we gave up our spot underneath a concrete balcony and ran from the Cathedral to Gaffel am Dom under black skies.

Being next to the cathedral, Gaffel am Dom is bound to be a bit of a tourist trap, but it’s pleasant enough inside, with the same solid wood furniture and high drinking tables you get everywhere else that Kölsch is served. We sat at a high four-top with a half-finished glass and a wet raincoat as our neighbour until two guys took a seat next to us. When they were asked to move — the raincoat had an owner somewhere, after all — they took exception. “Fuck’n’ douchebag” said the dark-haired man to the grey-haired man once the waiter had left. Said with such venom in such a great accent, we repeated it to each other for the rest of the trip.

Gaffel is a good Kölsch, one of my favourites, and I wished that there was a little more ambiance at our table by the door. I watched the rain hammer down on the Platz outside and enjoyed second-hand happiness courtesy of the large table in front of us who were clearly having a long, laughter-filled work lunch. There was a chill though, and we were getting edgy. We wanted to go.

The rain wasn’t going to stop, so we took up our skirts and jetted to Brauhaus FRÜH am Dom, just across the way. You can easily get Früh at home in the UK, and it was likely my first experience of an authentic Kölsch, although I can’t remember for sure. I suppose I could lie to you and say it was. I’ve always liked it anyway, and its candy-striped cans. In the Brauhaus was a work Christmas party in full swing, antlers and sequins prepared for a long afternoon of drinking and singing. Service was slower here than anywhere else we’d been, which was probably because it was dead in the part of the Brauhaus we’d chosen to sit in. I popped next door to have a look inside the older part of the building all decked out for festive schnitzel and wurst and it was packed. We drank our allotted beers — do you need a tasting note here? Light, refreshing, a little dab of Noble hops — and left for the gift shop, where I bought a Früh branded umbrella. “A great investment!” said the shop assistant, a compliment about my practicality only a German could have given. I glowed.

Newly protected from the relentless downpour, I happily skipped to Sion. This was the most beautiful bar we visited by far, and we were served by the surliest man. I liked him. He poured a whole rack of Kölsch with a deft flick of his wrist, and he only had smiles for the people he worked with. He gave a glass of beer to a waitress who’d clearly been having A Day. He was polite, even with the large group of teenage boys who kept coming in out of the rain and being chased away, but he wasn’t cheerful. He just hated tourists, I surmised. When the next man through the doors went straight to the bar and asked for a pint of lager, I kind of saw where he was coming from.

The Kölsch in Sion had a little more crunch of cara malt about it, but perhaps I was looking for depth and character because I could literally see our man battering spiles into kegs on the bar to pour from, direct-drop style.

Peter’s Kölsch was the Christmassiest of all the Kölsch places we visited. The rather glam front door was guarded by two enormous Christmas trees — normalise Christmas trees being put up in the street, by the way — and inside there was a definite feeling of merriment in the air. It was busy, and the staff were serious but friendly. We took a familiar spot at a tall drinking table, and ordered our beers.

Peter’s is a gorgeous building, huge and white, with an ornate glass ceiling in the dining room like the inside of a Tiffany lampshade. It has been decorated for tourism, but I appreciate the effort nevertheless. How couldn’t you? Although it feels strange to drink an everyday beer in such a place, like eating pie and mash in the V&A.

Speaking of pie, it was time for lunch, and Tom said we had somewhere great to go to next.

Brauhaus Päffgen is such a great place that I just got emotional thinking about it. An historic brewery beloved by hardcore Kölsch nerds, of course the beer is good, but the place itself is perfection. We sat on a wooden bench and ate delicious pumpkin soup, bread, cheese and mustard, and Tom ordered a single gherkin jsut because it was on the menu. The wooden-beamed dining hall was welcoming and haunted at the same time, flanked by windowed partitions and a “confessional” — the strange but efficient booth where the maitre d’/Oberkellner took telephone bookings on a rotary phone, controlled the lighting from a central switchboard, and thrust tickets and receipts onto a steel spike at the side of her desk.

There is hours of fun to be had just sitting in the Päffgen hall and people watching. A man beside us was having lunch, reading the paper. An elderly couple on the other side of the room were dressed in leather and suede, a German Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks. We drank Kölsch after Kölsch, enjoying the soft, lightly carbonated texture that, to me, gave it more of a creaminess than I was used to. Our glasses were unbranded, served in chipped enamel Kranz trays probably as old as the bar, which was built in 1955. Black and white framed photos — of who? — are hung everywhere, and my seat is overshadowed by a wooden carving of a man we call “the friend”. I haven’t got photos other than the two here. You just have to go and see it for yourself.

To get to Brauhaus Päffgen we’d taken the tram/U-Bahn over to the west of the city centre, so we thought we’d make the most of it and visit some wine bars. This means our Kölsch journey is almost at an end, dear friends, but not until we visit one last place — Reissdorf Kölsch.

Reissdorf was actually the first Kölsch I drank in Cologne. I bought a can from a kiosk and drank it in the hotel room when we first got there, enjoying finally having a sit down after an afternoon of trudging and traipsing. For this reason, I have a fondness for Reissdorf. It sorted me out when I needed a friendly beer, and I wanted to see it again.

The Reissdorf am Hahnentor is an FC Köln pub, and shows live football matches on TV. It’s got a full menu of delicious-smelling traditional meals, and behind the bar area is plastered with “Köln Ultras” and anti-nazi stickers. We stood at the bar and soaked up the atmosphere, which, if you want to be a prick about it, was by far the most authentic we’d found so far. We drank many, many Kölsch here as the man beside us sank his Cologne-made amaro and alcohol-free Gaffel. I was particularly intrigued by the manager, who had the look of a former footballer — slim physique with a lean about it, a Haircut with a capital H, a sparkle in his wrinkled eyes, nipping out frequently with a cig behind his ear. I wanted to know his story. Sadly my German is so bad I kept accidentally saying “dank u wel” instead of “danke,” “bit-stollen” instead of “bittzahllen”. This is the pub I think about most when I remember Cologne. The older gent who said “thank you” in English when I gave him my chair. The smiling waitresses. The bottle of schnapps reserved for regulars. I’d love to see it on a match day, packed and loud, and entirely red and white.

And that’s the end of our Kölsch epic. I know there are many more breweries in Cologne, and that we missed off a few you might call obvious — we simply didn’t have the time. On our way back from Reissdorf am Hahnentor we did other things: visited a Christmas market, had a late tea at Augustiner. What I’m trying to say is, while Kölsch was our major aim, there is far more to Cologne than its famous local beer. I’ll return and try Brauhaus Stüsser, Brauhaus Pütz, Schreckenskammer, and the one with a really weird name I can’t remember at this very moment. I’m looking forward to seeing the city in the summer, when the chestnut trees are heavy with green and sitting outside to drink won’t get me drowned. There is much more to see in this great city.

Food, drink, kitchens and other stuff too.

On the Substack app, you’ll find a lot of us old-hands of the platform complaining about the worst things about being there. The constant posts about how to use Substack. The “gaming” or “hacking” Substack newsletters. The posts about stats and open rates. The posts from people re-using their Threads topic starters (“Dog-ear or bookmark? Choose a tribe!” “Anyone else secretly love drinking tea with their sleeves pulled down over their hands while gazing wistfully out of the window, or is it just me?” and so on.) The long reads that are so badly researched they should self-destruct, but instead are shared again and again by people looking for clout, not something good to read. There are negatives to every social media platform, and since Substack became one, these are its pitfalls.

However, Substack can be great too, and it’s important to remember that there are hundreds of fantastic writers crafting well-written, well-researched newsletters every week , mostly just for the hell of it. For me, it’s the perfect outlet for my thoughts and stories when I don’t want them to be shaped to fit a publication’s remit. Sometimes I just want to write, you know? Last Thursday’s post, Cologne, Pt. 1, was a true example of that—published warts and all because I was in a rush, but I still wanted to get it out there. In the end I was annoyed at the typos and niggling little grammatical blotches, but I’m glad I didn’t spend too long writing it. In the end, it was a story to be told there and then, like a chat over a dinner table or in the pub.

I’m promoting these newsletters because their authors put their curiosity and personality into them. They aren’t writing as anyone else but themselves. That’s what I still love about newsletters. Like blogs, they are an insight into a person’s life and interests without the fumigation of a rigorous editorial process. As an editor, I say that with utmost respect: editing is a necessary and useful art. But sometimes, I want to see the rubbing out, the typing so fast the letters get jumbled. In a world where AI threatens to extinguish thought, I like to see the workings-out.

I hope you spend 2025 thinking, reading, writing, and doing!

Loudemile Weekly

Loudmila Bogatchek is a French food writer who spends a lot of her time writing about home cooking, the labour of doing so (her recent piece on washing up, for instance), condiments, cheese, and other good, relatable things.

In her own words: “…my groundbreaking work on eating ketchup a lot, or getting the shits after a bad hamburger, or stealing communion bread at church. Welcome to the party.”

The food writing world needs more instances of people writing about their direct influences and experiences, rather than the aspirational gumph we’re all so bored of.

Drinking In Strange Places

I’ve known Charlotte Cook for a few years, and as long as I’ve known her, she’s been a fantastic brewer and an activist for equality and equity in the beer industry. She has always said she’d like to write more, and you know me, I just told her to get on with it.

Not that I’m taking credit here—this newsletter is all her own doing. Drinking in Strange Places documents Charlotte’s fascinating global travels, where her interest and curiosity in local tradition, culture, and alcohol leads her to some incredible places.

Drink Zoigl in Bavaria. Drink Chichi in Georgia. Drink wine with a monk in a country that doesn’t exist.

Body Type

I like this newsletter because it’s about body image and body culture and all the toxic things that bind these things together in uncomfortable knots, written by Mikala Jamison, a former competitive powerlifter and fitness instructor.

The way Mikala talks about issues in the media around food, bodies, self-image, and fitness is really refreshing, and her notes on the Substack app are always useful — she shares a lot of good articles and reflects on news stories.

Shelf Offering

The recipes Apoorva Sripathi shares in her newsletter always make me want to cook. I can smell their spices in the air as I read them, and if I’m hungry I have to start planning what to make for tea — and I’m nearly always hungry.

It was her piece The Pantry is an Installation that got me following her. This sort of inquisitive interrogation of foodie culture as style culture always gets a big tick from me.

Pizza Every Friday

I don’t make any of the recipes in this newsletter, in fact, I never make pizza at all.

Still, this newsletter makes my world a better place because every Friday I have new beautiful photos of delicious pizzas to look at, enthusiastic words about pizzas to read, and a renewed love in my heart for pizza overall.

How I Cook

I’ve forgotten how many Ben Lippett recipes I’ve ripped off and called my own. By now it must be in the thousands.

He’s just got a knack for doing delicious elevated pub grub at home, and I have the deepest respect for anyone who dedicates a large portion of their life to making beer snacks. His Instagram is good too.

Brussels Beer City

Apparently Eoghan Walsh is reviving his blog. Will it be a Substack newsletter? Who knows. But at least my BBC tote back isn’t totally out of date now.

Lecker

Quite an obvious one, and a newsletter you’re more than likely signed up for already, but Lucy Dearlove deserves a shout.

Her passion for kitchens, home cooking, cookery skills, utensils, and all things kitchen design inspires me to think more about the places we eat and cook as well as what’s on our plates. I always come away from one of her pieces with some thoughts to have a ponder on, which is my favourite thing. I love to have a good think.

J’adore le Plonk

Rachel Hendry is one of our leading lights in wine writing right now, and don’t you forget it. She’s going to have a big year.

In the meantime, sign up for her newsletter J’adore le Plonk, which is actually outside of Substack. Use the form and I promise you’ll receive periodical delights about wine, cider, life, death, fruit, and more.

Everyone said we’d love Cologne, and they were right.

When we packed up our van to spend 10 days in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, I knew Cologne was on our agenda, and I was excited about it. Cologne, or Köln, if you want to say it like a German — which I really do, but I’ve had to stop because people think I’m talking about Colne, a very different beer town — has been on my list for years. Every winter when the flight prices dip, I plan a trip based around our birthdays in January, and every winter we fail to make it. Holidays are expensive, and both of us hate flying. Now we were actually planning to go there for real. It’s not an exaggeration to say this was a dream come true.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is free to read. However, to support my work and keep me hydrated, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Travelling up through Rhineland-Palatinate via the Mosel road was a beautiful experience, even during the bleak midwinter. Dipping over the ridge at Piesport to be met with my favourite view of the Mosel was like seeing an old friend, the steep hills and flat, meandering river like a slick of oil paint lying out before me in reality after all these years away. Although I warned him that in December the vines would be pruned-back sticks and the doors to the wineries would be tightly shut, he still wanted to see it all. I’m glad he did.

We wound our way up to Koblenz, and then through the industrial regions of the Rhine, and passed through Bonn on our way to Cologne, reading about the history of each town we drove through on Wikipedia. I’ve never known more about Wilhelminian architecture than I do now. I’ve visited almost every Aldi on the Bundesstraße 9 — which began as a Roman road, in case you were wondering.

The first time I saw Cologne cathedral, I was silenced. It punched the breath out of me. With shadowy hands around my throat, I could not stop staring at it, watching it turn slowly in perspective as we drove over the Severinsbrücke. I’ve never experienced a reaction like this to a building before — it was like staring into the face of a vengeful God. Tom made doomy feedback noises every time it came back into view to enhance the sensation that it was looming over the city, judging, seething, doling out punishments.

As a result, visiting the cathedral, known colloquially as “Dom”, was the first thing we wanted to do. I wanted to touch the blackened stone of this awesome building and see its sharp spires pierce the foggy night sky. I wanted to see if its power was as potent up close. It was a bit daunting though. Perhaps we needed a drink first.

It’s illegal, or at least impossible as far as we could work out, to park a van in the centre of Cologne, so I booked a very cheap hotel for two nights. This was actually an amazing idea and a stroke of genius too, because Mühlen Kölsch ended up being right around the corner. This was our first Kölsch in Cologne.

This being our first Kölsch in Cologne, we were excited to be ushered to a tall drinking table in the heart of the building. The building itself is an historic brewery hall, dating from 1858. To get in you must navigate a heavy revolving wooden door and then push yourself through an equally heavy velvet curtain, adding a definite feeling of pizzazz to the dining room you enter into. As most people in there have been seated and enjoying a peaceful meal until you arrived, they probably won’t enjoy your squeals of delight at being shoved through into what is essentially German Narnia.

To describe a beer in Cologne as clean and fresh, we learned, is the bare minimum. At The beer at Mühlen Kölsch was tinged with a hint of bitterness, but only so much as to enhance the flavour of the local water.

Just pausing here a moment to talk about the water in Cologne. It is amazing. It’s like drinking water for the first time. It’s like drinking health, like being able to taste without all the interference of years of drinking, eating garlic, and sleeping with my mouth open. It also made my hair beautiful, and I am jealous that this stuff just comes out of the tap if you live there?? Anyway, back to the story.

The next place we visited for Kölsch was Pfaffenbrauerei, a completely baffling place that combines traditional/touristic wooden dining tables and 16th century décor with detailed wooden carvings, and statues of men popping through your drinking table. We liked Pfaffen a lot, and the service was rapid. We were joined at our tiny man-statue table by two chatty Belgians who were inexplicably drinking wine and dark beer. We stuck to the house Kölsch, which was slightly bicarbonate and sweet in its flavour, perhaps something to do with their well but also because of the malt content too — it was much more golden than the other Kölsch we tried. We stayed for our regimented three glasses, and then left for the next.

Directly after walking out of Pfaffen and then to the left, we found Brauhaus Sünner at Sünner im Walfisch on the corner of Salzgasse and Auf dem Rothenberg. Even after spending another day drinking Kölsch after visiting Sünner im Walfisch, this still remains my favourite. It had everything I wanted.

• 16th century wooden beams

• Historic remnants from building being something else earlier (this was once a townhouse)

• Smell of delicious food

• Tiny snug area where we were ushered in immediately “Don’t be shy! Squeeze in with everybody!”

• Genuinely happy and smiling team pouring endless rounds of Sünner Kölsch

• Locals initiating chats and welcoming us to the city

We had such a lovely time in Sünner im Walfisch that it was quite hard to leave. We’d been chatting to a local pair of friends who bought us a shot of Underberg each and they’d told us this was their favourite place to drink too. I really enjoyed the beer here — an exceptionally mineral flavour that Tom didn’t prefer but I likened to Lake District water. Honestly, if you’re a water nerd when it comes to beer, get yourself to Cologne. Also, Sünner have had a bit of a recent rebrand and their logo is really cool. I liked the whole vibe of the place and the beer a lot.

I asked them how, as locals, they felt about the imposing presence of the cathedral felt as they went about their daily lives.

“You just get used to him,” they said, as though I was insane.

I suppose it’s strange to be scared of a building, and it was quite a weird question. I enjoy the German way of looking at things.

That’s it, our drinking for the night was done. We’d had a long day of travelling and getting lost on the tram on our way back from the Park and Ride, and we had two more things to do before we could go to bed — see the cathedral, and eat a classic German post-beer snack. I was strangely nervous as we wandered the tight medieval streets of Cologne’s old town. I didn’t have to wonder for long how much the Dom would tower over me. There it was.

At night, in a haze of drizzle, Dom looked magnificent, but after putting hands on the smooth, rounded stone of a buttress and looking straight up to the sharpened pinnacle above, I was no longer scared of this building. The black is just soot. Up close, where the Gothic lines from earth to sky aren’t so closely concertinaed and crisply drawn, it’s beautiful. I spent too long in the rain admiring the stonework. Eventually, Tom said it was time to go back, and we walked home to the hotel. I felt like I’d finally been let into the city officially now, the mighty Cathedral had met me and we were no longer strangers. We trudged home in the wet, feeling lighter somehow, stopping only for the essentials: a donner kebab, and some currywurst.

Other Stuff

• It’s Koksijde today, a big Cyclocross race on the calendar. This story from a vintage Rouleur issue really gives a true account as to what being a Cyclocross spectator is like. (If you’d like me to do a version of this for the newsletter, please let me know! I realise 99% of you do not care about the sports I like so I won’t unless you say so.)

• Because of Dom I’ve become really interested in Cathedral architecture (again). This is a great glossary on the subject.

• Call it self-preservation or self-harm depending on how you look at it, but I’ve been reading every long-form piece on the Pelicot trial I can find. This, by Sophie Smith for the London Review of Books is devastating in a new way — it breaks down preconceptions about patriarchal violence and rebuilds them anew. It’s easy to understand, and that’s what makes it cut so deep.

• Have you ever thought about writing about beer, wine or cider? Give a Golden Pints piece a go! I would do it too, but I drink a lot of macro lager and people will drag me for it.

• Even though the festive season is over and now we must pay penance for our indulgences, I can’t stop thinking about this caviar dip and chips dish from Fiona Beckett’s Matching Food & Wine blog (she says lumpfish roe and crémant will work just as well)

My Stuff

• A quick boastful reminder that this newsletter won Silver at the 2024 British Guild of Beer Writers awards, and that there are now well over 900 subscribers to The Gulp! Thank you for your support!

• My piece for Pellicle about my local pub The Swan With Two Necks was included in Boak + Bailey’s Best Beer Writing Of 2024 roundup, alongside some truly exceptional pieces on beer. It just shows that despite it all, there is a vibrant world of beer writing all around us. You can find my story here.

• Vocal champion of my work from day-dot (and don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Alan) A Good Beer Blog named The Gulp as Best Beery Newsletter of 2024. “The wide range of topics Katie Mather weaves into her writing makes it the one I first go to in my inbox.” Read the whole roundup here.

• I’m continuing my work as Deputy Editor of Pellicle magazine this year, and I’m working on some exciting developments coming soon. Please support our work as an independent publisher by becoming a Patreon subscriber in 2025.

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