We put an enormous amount of work into our recipes at Colchester's Mead Hall. Not just making the food every day, but coming up with the recipes themselves.

One of the reasons we have a limited and rotating menu is that everything you eat represents extensive research and tons of experimentation.

While most of our food is locally grown or made in-house, we strive to use only Old World ingredients: things that would have been available in Scandinavia during the Viking Era through late Middle Ages. We use traditional curing, smoking, boiling, and roasting techniques as well.

Why do we do all this work? Because it's cool. And, frankly, we're nerds about this. Rules actually help us to be more creative. If we can only use certain ingredients, it makes us think in new ways.

Another reason we do all of this is because the Vikings had an extremely healthy diet. It's tough to conquer the land and seas without a good breakfast of fatty meats and lots of vegetables. As part of our mission to build strong communities, we are deeply committed to providing healthy, ethically sourced foods.

The one area where we take some license is with our cheeses. They are all imported from Scandinavia, and cheese was probably a very important part of the Viking diet, but we simply have no way of knowing what types of cheese they were eating.

Oh yeah, and since we're fanatically committed to being an open source company, all of our recipes are free for you to make at home. Once we have them all locked-down, we'll be publishing them for your enjoyment! 

If you'd like to try your hand at developing Viking-era dishes, some of our favorite resources are:
Viking Answer Lady
Hurstwic
And the wonderful book, Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink

As many of you have heard through the grapevine, Erik, the Head Brewer of Havoc Mead, will be leaving Vermont to pursue a career in music.

This has led to no small quantity of panic, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
"What will happen to Havoc Mead?!"
"Has Fire-Drake come into being, only to be snatched away again like a cruel joke?!"
"Should I begin hoarding cans of Root of All Evil like it's the End Times?"

Please, calm yourselves. 

From the beginning, Kelly the Boss has owned Havoc Mead. Brewers, despite the popular misunderstanding, are often employees and not owners of their own brewery. Erik's recipes and designs are beautiful and will remain with the company, while he goes off to do wonderful things.

For the time being, Ricky will take over brewing responsibilities for both companies. About this, he is not incredibly pleased, but he's recently been complaining about having too much free time. Serves him right.

What really matters is not the cans or the mead inside them. Erik has been an incredibly important part of Groennfell, Havoc, and Colchester's Mead Hall for many years, and he will be very deeply missed.

Thank you, Erik, for all the Havoc you've brought into being. Go do great things.

In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about aging mead under pressure, preventing oxidation, wild fermentation, young mead off-flavor, and more!

Thank you to everyone who came out to Feast Weekend! We had an amazing time! 

Because everyone seemed to enjoy it so much, we've decided that we're going to have the Build-Your-Own Feast menu every single Saturday from now on! This is in addition to the normal menu at Colchester's Mead Hall!

For those of you who couldn't join us last weekend, here's how it works:
1. Every weekend we'll have five main courses to choose between. Some will be the same every week (cheese board, herring platter, bratwurst), and the others will rotate by the season. One will always be a local vegetable and the other will be a historical Viking dish. Each main course is meant to be shared between a few people.
2. We'll also have side dishes which complement the main courses including our famous house-made sourdough black bread and gluten-free options.
3. You pick a few main courses and a few side dishes, and we take it from there.

Not only is it extremely easy, it's also extremely affordable. Each main course costs $12, and each side dish is $4. How (and why) is it so affordable? Read about our Food Mission.

Want to find out more about the foods we offer? Check out Colchester's Mead Hall's Food Partners.
Want to hear what people are saying about eating our Viking Feast? Check out the Seven Days Article!

Our big Feast Weekend is just a few days away, and we thought that this would be a great time to tell you a little bit about our food mission.

"A food mission?" we hear you incredulously ask.

That's right, it's a Mission: what we serve our meadiacs, where it comes from, and the larger impact goes to the very heart of what we do.

At Colchester's Mead Hall we're committed to offering every patron a chance to eat like a Viking. That may not mean what you think it means, however.
​
The idea of a bunch of dirty, surly men scarfing down piles of meat is much more Hollywood than history.
To honor our forebearers, we stick to the following principles:

1. Our produce selection changes with the season. We source all of our vegetables and most of our herbs from Lewis Creek Farm. That means that for parts of the year, your food options are: Turnips or Beets. In the spring and summer? The sky's the limit! (Vikings loved their veggies.)
2. Our cheeses are all imported from Scandinavia and also change throughout the year. Since cheese depends so heavily on high quality and varied milk, we always get the real deal. Local cheese is amazing - some of the best in the world - but it simply won't taste the same as Nordic dairy.
3. Good food must also be good for the environment. We do our best to source all of our food ethically, but we are obsessive about our herring and our meat products. Our bratwurst are made for us right in the New North End of Burlington by Bessery's Butcher Shoppe and we purchase all of our fish from companies that participate in the Marine Stewardship Council. Vikings might not have been kind to their enemies, but they sure as heck took care of the earth and sea.
4. Most importantly, our community comes first. Many people have commented that our menu seems quite inexpensive given that we use locally grown and produced ingredients in almost everything we make. When we founded our Mead Hall, we wanted it to be a place where everyone felt welcome. One of the ways we do this is by insuring that our menu is extremely affordable. The way to keep a menu affordable is to keep it short. Long menus with lots of options means two things large (usually poorly compensated) kitchen staff and lots of food waste. By all but eliminating food waste and curating our menu to be varied and seasonal, we have a restaurant which compensates our staff very well and is always affordable for our beloved meadiacs.

​A complete list of our sources can always be found at Food Partners on Colchester's Mead Hall's website.

​In which Ricky the Meadmaker points at some food!