First outing for Melting Pot team

Last night, Melting Pot 's Oliver Craig and Anita Radini made an appearance at York's Festival of Ideas Together with Dr Keith Thomas (Brewlab, University of Sunderland) they discussed the history and archaeology of brewing and beer. Their talk on 'Brewing: Anglo-Saxon Times to the Victorian Era discussed how beer has been a staple of our diet for thousands of years, the various social functions of beer in the past, and and how today we can analyse the chemical traces of fermented drinks in archaeological material.

Above: Anita Radini discussing residue analysis at All Saints Church, Pavement (watched over, no doubt, by the Anglo-Scandinavian lord whose gravestone lies stage right.

The meeting was crowned by the appearance of Leeds Brewery's Eoforwic Ale, produced for the Festival to an Anglo-Saxon recipe .

There will be plenty more where this came from!