Today’s guest is one of the most knowledgeable people in the beer industry I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking to. Boasting multiple accolades, including Master Cicerone, BJCP Grand Master, and Accredited Beer Sommelier, Mirella Amato is an expert in all things sensory, bringing her immense knowledge and experience to the worlds of both beer and spirits. She’s also the author of Beerology, an excellent guide to tasting and appreciating beer.

Most recently, Mirella has worked as the global business development manager for the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), which launched its level one and level two beer accreditations in February 2024. Whether you’re interested in increasing your sensory development and learning how to better understand and describe the beer you're drinking, or if you’re wanting to learn how to better pair beer with food, then this episode is for you.

My reason for asking Mirella onto the show is because—as longer term listeners may know—I can be a little cynical about beer education, and the “intellectualisation” of a product that is quite literally designed to do the opposite. However, I have found myself fascinated by Mirella, along with her colleague Natalya Watson’s approach to tasting beer. Not only was this conversation immensely fun and educational, but it convinced me to sign up to take my WSET Level Two in beer, which I’ll be having a crack at this November. Stay tuned, because I’ll be writing about the experience in a future Pellicle feature.

We’re able to produce The Pellicle Podcast thanks to our Patreon subscribers, and our sponsor Get ‘Er Brewed. If you’re enjoying this podcast, or the weekly articles we publish, please consider taking out a monthly subscription for less than the price of a pint a month.

The U.K. beer media landscape is a curious one. A niche within a niche, at its most simple it’s a genre of food writing, albeit one with a far smaller audience than say, restaurant or wine reviews. Its audience is more interesting still. Beer readers are often hyper engaged and extremely knowledgeable about their subject, which can have the unfortunate knock on effect of making it less accessible to those with a more casual interest.

What, then, do beer publications do to keep readers from both camps engaged? That’s the challenge facing modern beer media. In a world based on algorithms and AI slop farmed out to the masses, how do publications, podcasts, news outlets and journalists keep that audience actively interested in what’s happening in the world of beer and breweries…

It’s certainly an introspective question, but one well worth asking, and that’s exactly what we did at the SIBA Beer X conference held earlier this year in Liverpool. Our editors Katie Mather and Matthew Curtis were joined by Tim Sheahan from Trade publication The Brewers Journal and Robyn Gilmour from the UK’s largest consumer beer magazine, Ferment, to discuss the state of beer media.

Each of our publications is actively engaged in producing long-form written content, something that might seem counter productive in a world of instant videos and shortening attention spans. And yet it still feels like it has great value, especially because there are still so many stories to tell. In this conversation our panel gets in the beer writing weeds to discuss the value of high quality media in beer, and why it matters in 2026 and beyond.

We’re able to produce The Pellicle Podcast thanks to our Patreon subscribers, and our sponsor Get ‘Er Brewed. If you’re enjoying this podcast, or the weekly articles we publish, please consider taking out a monthly subscription for less than the price of a pint a month.

Manchester in the mid-2010s was an electric period in the city’s brewing history, with several modern brewing trailblazers—including Track and Cloudwater—exploding onto the scene. Before either of them existed, however, there was Blackjack, which has been quietly plugging away with its wonderful beer since 2012.

Over the years they’ve established themselves not simply as a well-respected brewery and taproom, but through the opening and adoption of several venues around Greater Manchester. These now include Station Hop in Levenshulme, their bars at Mackie Mayor and Altrincham Market, and at their fantastic pub on Swan Street, the Smithfield Market Tavern—or simply ‘The Tav’ to its regulars.

It’s never been Blackjack’s style to boast about their achievements, however, so at the end of last year I decided to do a bit of that for them. Over the summer their lager program was, to put it modestly, having a moment. During this time I became completely enthralled by their Italian Pilsner, In Simpatico, a beer that possesses the crisp, structured body of a pilsner, and a hefty dose of aromatic Enigma hops, planting it somewhere between a lager and a pale ale. Such was its quality, I decided to name it as one of my top ten beers of the year in 2025.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I get a call from the brewery inviting me down for the canning of a new batch. Unable to resist the offer of trying the beer fresh off the line, I headed down to the brewery. Afterwards I settled in at the Smithfield with Blackjack’s managing director Jon Hartley, plus team members George Charlton, Matt Drage and Jack Williams, for a chat about the past, present and future of Blackjack Brew Co.

We’re able to produce The Pellicle Podcast thanks to our Patreon subscribers, and our sponsor Get ‘Er Brewed. If you’re enjoying this podcast, or the weekly articles we publish, please consider taking out a monthly subscription for less than the price of a pint a month.