Week #14

For my blog this week I'm going to be discussing two presentations I liked the most. Those two presentations are "Beer in Colonial America & Jefferson's influence on beer" and "Fruit & Fruit varieties at Monticello."

Beer in Colonial America & Jefferson's Influence on Beer

First off, I would like to say that the best part of this presentation was getting to try the Raz Wheat beer from Jackie O's. Tasting this beer definitely opened my eyes to wanting to try more beers from Jackie O's. But aside from that, the presentation was very well done. I liked how he described the brewing process and how he used visuals to help explain the process better. Some of the interesting facts I took away from this presentation, that I didn't know before, was that Martha Jefferson would brew 15 gallon batches of beer nearly every two weeks in order to stay stocked up at Monticello, which to me is a lot. I also found out that Jefferson had a brew house and would also spend over $5,000 on beer to be sent to Monticello. Overall, I felt that this presentation was very informative and I enjoyed listening to it.

Fruit & Fruit Varieties at Monticello

For this presentation, I found it interesting to learn about all the different types of fruits that Thomas Jefferson liked and kept in his garden at Monticello. It was fascinating to learn that Jefferson had 150 varieties of 31 species of fruits in his garden at Monticello. Overall, I enjoyed the fruits Brie brought in for the class and I thought the presentation was very well done and I learned a lot from it.