What is a Source?
There are three types of sources, primary, secondary and tertiary, that can be used as a bibliography.
v a Primary source is an item that existed in period. If you were doing documentation on bog dresses and you were able to physically examine a period dress you would be working from primary documentation. Examples of primary sources for brewing exist today in the form of dregs of ale found in jars on a Sumerian archeological dig or dregs of wine found in Greek amphorae from a dig in Pompeii. However, unlike many other arts produced in the Society, the typical SCAdian brewer has no access to them and must make do with secondary or tertiary sources.
v a Secondary source is either writings done in period that either describes the physical appearance or method of creating a period object, or writings done out of period which directly examine a primary source. Therefore a book written by Arnald of Villanova in 1347, although it was republished in 1946, is considered a secondary source. However, any comments made by the editor in such republished works are not. On the other hand, Janet Arnold's Queen Elizabeth's Closet, Unlocked is a secondary source as Ms. Arnold's information came from directly examining clothing worn by Queen Elizabeth I.
v a Tertiary source is a source written out of period which refers back to a secondary source. Most books available in the History section of retail book stores are tertiary sources. Examples of tertiary sources are A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman, Wine and the Vine by Timothy Unwin and Vintage by Hugh Johnson.
What is Documentation?
Documentation is the paperwork submitted along with an entry to an Arts and Sciences Competition that describes your research and explains the methods you used to make the entry. Proper documentation answers six basic questions; who, what, when where, why and how.
In order to make this explanation clearer, lets look at a piece of documentation which was used to enter a Strawberry wine in the John Barleycorn Brewing Competition.
"What is being entered?
Strawberry Wine
"Where" did I get my original recipe? This also answers the question "when" my recipe came from as this notation refers back to my bibliography which dates this book.
Original Recipe
Source - The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby, Kt. Opened: Whereby is Discovered Several ways for making of Metheglin, Syder, Cherry-Wine, &c.
"What" is the original recipe? You should always try to include an original recipe in your documentation as it proves you made your entry from a period source
Strawberry-Wine.
(Original spelling and grammar kept)
Bruise the Strawberries, and put them into a linen-bag, which hath been a little ufed, that fo the liqor may run through more eafily. You hang in the bag at the bung into the veffel, before you do put in your Strawberries. The quantity of the fruit is left to your difcretion; for you will judge there to be enough of them when the colour of the Wine is high enough. During the working, you leave the bung open. The working being over you ftop your veffel. Cherry wine is made after the fame fafhion. But it is a little more troublefom to break the cherry-ftones. But it is neceffary, that if your Cherries be of the black fowre Cherries, you put in a little Cinnamon, and a few Cloves.
"How" did you "redact" or translate the original recipe? This particular paragraph also explains how the entry was made. If you don't use you original redaction as your recipe then you should include a separate paragraph describing the methods you used to make your entry. Please note that it is not necessary to use an exact translation as your recipe. Just make sure you explain where your methods or ingredients differed from the ones described in the original recipe and why you changed them.
Redaction:
In a plastic primary fermenter I placed six pounds strawberries in a straining bag and squashed them. Since the original recipe includes the line "�you will judge there to be enough of them when the color of the wine is high enough�" I assumed that there was something already in the "veffel" that would affect the intensity of the color of the strawberry juice. Other recipes in Digby's book and other books of the same time period usually use white wine or water as a base to add fruit to. Since white wine would greatly affect the taste of the finished product and since the sugar content of strawberry juice in its unadulterated form is so high as to shock wine yeast into a stuck fermentation; I chose to use water as a base and added a little less than two pints. To this I added a yeast starter that I had made from a batch of cherry wine I had racked the previous week and preserved in my refrigerator. (To make a yeast starter I take the dregs of a just racked batch of wine and stir the lees back up into the liquid. I then add some sugar water to keep the yeast active until I'm ready to use it. As long as sugar water is added periodically to the starter it can be kept indefinitely in the refrigerator and used as needed.) Ten days after I started the wine I racked it into a one-gallon glass carboy. When the active fermentation ceased, about six weeks later, I bottled the wine.
"Why" did you do what you did? What were the factors behind your decisions? This can be as simple as "I had a lot of pears and thought a pear wine might be nice. Since I couldn't find a period recipe for pear wine I used the recipe I found in Digby for Raspberry wine and substituted the fruit."
Reasoning:
I used six pounds of strawberries because in my experience that is a good amount to use when making one gallon of wine. When enough water is added to reduce the sugar level to a healthy one for yeast, the color is still intensely rosy and pleasant. As stated previously I added water to the must because I inferred from the recipe that there should be a base of some sort and felt that water was the least intrusive to the strawberry flavor in the resultant wine. I added the lees from a different batch of wine because in my opinion this is the most period way to start a batch of wine in mundanely sanitized equipment. I wasn't worried about the yeast starter being from a different type of wine because period records indicate that wine kegs in period were used for many different types of wine before they deteriorated to the point that they were retired. Arnald of Villanova's Boke of Wine states: "The vats must be well washed and cleaned with salt water, and when they have dried must be fumigated with incense and myrrh. In vats that have been thus prepared wines are well protected and will not spoil." Modern wine vats are sterilized by burning strips of sulfur in the bung. If the incense mentioned by Villanova were similar then initial fermentation would have been caused by airborne yeast. If it was not, then there would have been residual yeast left in the vats as the other cleaning agents; salt water and myrrh are not yeast inhibitors.
This is not actually a necessary part but it describes "how" I thought the entry turned out.
Result:
The resultant wine was a hearty rosy pink color with a strong strawberry nose. As there was no follow-up feeding of sugar to the must mentioned in the documented recipe, as is necessary for a sweet wine, the wine is very dry yet pleasant.
This last part is one of the most important. It's the "who". "Who" did I read in order to know what I know about this entry. You don't need to list every book in your library or even every book you've read on the subject. Simply list the books you used to make the entry
Sources:
Arnald de Villanova. Boke of Wine. 1438 (translated into English from Wilhelm von Hirnkofen's German version
by Henry Sigerist M.D.) New York: Shuman, 1948.
Digby, Kenelme. The Closet of Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby, Kt. Opened: Whereby Discovered Several
ways for making of Metheglin, Syder, Cherry-Wine, &c. Falconwood Press Edition. London: H. Brome, 1677.
Garey, Terry. Joy of Home Winemaking. New York: Avon Books, 1996.
Anderson, Sta