Ep87 — The State of Beer Media

I think what's the relevance is something that I've been really focused on at the moment is Things can seem quite out of control, especially during this current moment in time where the news cycle is very bad and doom scrolling is a lot of what I do every day, whether I want to do that or not.

And so being able to run a publication where I'm telling stories about like independent breweries and makers and doers and people who are actively involved in something that they're passionate about, that they're enthusiastic about, and also incorporating local culture and tradition in areas that I might not know a lot about.

So of course we have stories about British breweries, English breweries, etc.

But we also have lots of stories about beer in places you wouldn't expect.

So I'm referring to some of Anaïs Lecoq's work, which is a lot of the time based in Brittany and northern France.

Learning about independent beer in different places has really given me not escapism, but something else to look at for a bit of joy.

And I think that that's something we've been thinking about a lot, is how important that is.

And that's the relevance to me is that it can give people, they might not be interested in beer per se, or they might only be interested in drinking beer, but it's giving them those extra stories that really bring them in and show them that there is more to this drink than just what it's made of or how drunk it gets you.

Yeah, it's interesting you used the word escapism there, because when I launched Pellicle seven years ago, through the pandemic, we called it escapism, like, you know, get away from it all, have a read of this lovely article about a brewery.

And now it's like, if you look at what's happening at, say, the Washington Post, journalists are being made redundant.

There's this horrible platform called Substack, which...

Once you're sucked into it there, you're either on it or you're not.

And if you're on it, you read Substack and nothing else.

And if you're not on it, you read everything else and not Substack.

So there's all these horrendous challenges that face us in trying to find an audience and get work out there.

But instead of it being escapism, it's like every time we publish an article, it feels like something radical happens.

Because it's just, we've literally paid, there's a chain, we've paid people, hopefully they've been out to a pub, to a brewery, they've spoken to people, they've spoken to people who drink those beers, and they've given it context and meaning.

And I feel like that's why it's important we reach what we do.

I actually think there's a handful of beer publications in the UK, there's probably not enough coverage in terms of the amount of people that drink beer, But to flip things around a bit, there are some people who are getting coverage for short-form content, masses of content.

So we're invested in what I would call long-form content, long reads, features, that sort of thing, something you're going to need to give 20 minutes of your time to enjoy.

Tim, coming back to that cover story, whenever I get the Brewer's Journal, the first thing I read is the brewery profile.

Why invest in that long-form content? Why is it important to you?

I think selfishly is what I like reading and what I enjoy as a fan of the printed words.

And I feel like, you know, we don't do enough of the sort of short form stuff, the online little sound bites and stuff like that.

I write most of the content, I suppose, that goes into our publication.