The Best of the worst award this time goes to the Small Ale experiment. In theory you can preserve an ale wort in a tightly sealed sterilized container, for a later brewing. We purchased a plaster bucket with a sealable lid, and duly sterilized it. Into it went the water from re-boiling one of the brewing barley bags, so we could make a weak ale (Small Ale) in the last week to approximate the daily drink. From our resident brewer:
The small ale however was a failure unfortunately when we opened the container to pour into the fermenter it was covered in slime and stank , I was not going to even attempt to strain or go any further with this.
No Small Ale for us!

And sometimes things are just beyond your control - the Inter-Library Loan of the Dame Alice Breyne's household accounts from the 14th century and all the good Barley action that entails arrived the day after the Pentathlon entry was due... and five weeks after the request was submitted, and four weeks after the other books requested at the same time. Still it was interesting, and there will be useful stuff for our wheat entry.
 
An update from our intrepid brewer...
It is bottled it is drinkable at this time. It seems to have worked and we have 4 litres bottles and sitting in the cool gararge along with two jars for cooking.

It's sour but drinkable ,very weak I think , not my cup of tea , has a bit of a cinnamon after taste just a hint. I'm still not a fan but I drank some . I am still living so all good.

The small ale however was a failure...



 
As with any historical reenactment or experimental archaeology, not everything you do is going to be a fabulous success. Here are our favourite two failures from working with Grapes...

The complete non-starter award goes to Vine Tendril Pie. Given how keen we were to  use  as much of the grape plant as we could, we were keen to give things ago that involved the stalk, stem and leaves - that weren't dolmades! Platina to the rescue. This recipe involved cutting green vine tendrils (which was no easy feat - these things are tenacious in their ability to hold on.. to eachother, the fence wire, garden furniture...) and boiling them to make sure they were completely soft for a new spin on a quiche florentine. After an hour of boiling these new shoots were incredibly tough, bitter, and the colour of bile. Needless to say, we didn't bother baking the pie!

The amusing, but completely disastrous award goes to the Pigeon Soaked in Vinegar to make it boneless - a recipe from Platina which Scully also refers to. It didn't make the pigeon boneless - it made the pigeon inedlible. All you could taste was the vinegar and the meat was actually tougher as a result of being immersed in vinegar for so long. The control roast pigeon was a lot tastier. So the boneless pigeon is not going to be presented on the 10th.
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Vine tendrils
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Pigeon soaked in vinegar (left) compared with the control pigeon.