Exploring Our Peers' Experiments: Mead with a Side of Meat

This weekend we were given a short assignment: explore some of our peers' blogs and reflect on their projects as well as any similar challenges that may have come up. Naturally, we checked out "Mead with a Side of Meat" to see how our projects differed. While they chose to focus on meat instead of bread, we were able to compare the recipes, methods, and materials used to make mead.

1. This group has found far more information regarding the origins of mead (which is earlier than the Viking Age, as we also noted), which was interesting for us to learn about.
2. We both seemed to face challenges in regards to finding traditional Viking materials. However, while we were able to use modern alcohol making supplies, the other group creatively substituted a plastic jar as a primary fermentation container and a balloon as a decanter. It will be neat to later read how this impacted their mead (in regards to flavor and alcoholic content), if at all.
3. While they are only doing a singular batch which is fermenting over several weeks, our focus is more so on how different forms of honey ferments, thus leading us to choose a short mead recipe. Again, as mentioned above, we look forward to comparing how this impacts the mead. 
4. A couple of things that brought up questions for us from their blog was how they used the raisins (whether they were used to add flavor or to track the fermentation process), what kind of yeast they used in their mead, and if they heated the honey and water together or if they just mixed it by shaking. The reason we ask these question is because all of these things effect the fermentation process.

 Our ability to compare projects was slightly limited as not all the steps were detailed. We look forward to contacting the group regarding our questions to learn more!

-B, J, and Jo