3-12-24 Tonight we're getting together with Laura Angotti, who has written books on mead in history and delved deeply into the writings and recipes of people going back thousands of years to provide information on how mead was made and imbibed in various cultures and at differing levels of society. Laura's most current book, "Wellcome Mead" is available on Amazon, and her new book, "Gold and Sweet, Ensnaring" will be out soon. She has also done a book on cider, "Cider and Perry in Britain to 1700: A Collection of Material from Primary and Selected Secondary Sources - Historical Brewing Sourcebook".
Laura Angotti has been making mead for over 30 years. Her focus is on uncovering, understanding, and writing about the history of mead - specifically historical mead recipes and the meads that can be re-created from these recipes. She has cataloged over 4000 mead recipes dating from before 1750 CE and has made and tasted over 100 of these. To better understand the recipes and their context, her research includes broader topics such as genetics of yeast and other microorganisms, the density of hen eggs, and day to day operations of Medieval Abbeys, proving that context is everything and all things are interconnected. Laura uses her training in Engineering and Biology from MIT and Northeastern University, as well as professional experience in techno-economic analysis/modeling, industrial fermentation, and water treatment to weave together the threads of history and connect the past with the present. Laura writes about her work at www.mysteryofmead.com and Mystery of Mead on Facebook. Her books on historical mead and cider are available on Amazon, including the soon to be published “Gold and Sweet, Ensnaring: Mead in Great Britain Prehistory to Elizabeth I”.
Laura started making mead because it sounded different, easy, and tasty, and she knew several people who made meads she had enjoyed, including her soon-to-be fiance. She kept doing it initially because it was nice to have something to share, and it was a fun hobby to do with her husband. Their shared interests in history led them to researching the history of mead through Early English Books - now online but then hundreds of reels of microfilm. The hobby lay fallow for a number of years while they raised kids and had careers, then a chance inquiry after the information she had written up years before led her to review it, look for more, and then dive right back into a world of digitized texts and manuscripts.
Her books are available on Amazon, under her name, Laura Angotti, Gold and Sweet, Ensnaring will be published very soon, and she's already working on the next two books in what she's calling her Historical Brewing Sourcebook series. For those with either a serious aversion or an inability to access Amazon she can often work out other ways of getting books to them.
Join us to dive into history with Laura!

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