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Honey is a product of high nutritional value, used as a raw material for obtaining mead. However, adding fruit juices, including chokeberry juice, can improve mead quality. This paper aims to assess the effects that adding different quantities of chokeberry juice, with the variation of 3 amounts of inoculated yeast, has on the fermentation and physicochemical, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties of mead. The parameters analyzed are the dry matter content, pH value, and content of volatile acids, ethanol and methanol, total phenols and flavonoids, FRAP, DPPH, and ABTS tests, and antimicrobial properties. The results obtained in this paper show that adding chokeberry juice improves the antioxidant properties of the final product and positively affects the course of mead fermentation, i.e., it has led to an increase in the maximum concentration of ethanol. Regarding the chemical composition of mead, there is no significant difference, except in the obtained ethanol content, which is the highest in samples with 10% of added chokeberry juice. Furthermore, the control sample showed the best antimicrobial activity, while the sample with 5% added chokeberry juice showed the weakest effect. Finally, the strongest effect was seen in the sample with 20% of added chokeberry juice.

This paper advances the hypothesis of a theoretical affinity between alienation and shame. This attempt will be circumscribed by a narrow intention based on the work of the philosopher Rahel Jaeggi (2014). Specifically, the paper will try to outline a sociological translation of Jaeggi’s thought, attempting at the same time to identify interpretive affinities between a Meadian social-theoretical reading of shame and a sociological translation of the German philosopher’s theory of alienation, which is widely debated in the context of social philosophy. Shame and alienation can be associated in reference to their common twofold root: they are, at one and the same time, social events, objectified and exteriorized, and individual events, linked to subjective experience. Moreover, they both show further ambivalences. They are necessary to the stabilization of social bonds, but at the same time they can indicate the emergence of social pathologies. As we will see, a Meadian reading of shame can thus help to compensate for Jaeggi’s lack of discussion of the social aspects of alienation and, at the same time, emphasize the alienation side of shame.

The aim of this paper is to show the peculiar role that George Herbert Mead’s theory can play in understanding the social character of the emotions, with particular reference to the non-dualistic and anti-reductionist connotation of human conduct. The essay starts from two philosophical antecedents that exemplarily frame the relationship between emotions, intersubjectivity and normativity. These are the theoretical options of David Hume and Adam Smith. The hypothesis underlying this contribution is that the reflection on the link between emotions, intersubjectivity and normativity initiated by these two philosophers finds a more complete formulation in sociological terms in Mead’s theory. Through the overall argumentation developed in the essay, an attempt will be made to show that in Mead – unlike Hume and Smith – moral consciousness is not discontinuous with respect to emotional consciousness, but that both represent phases of the same social process. The social character of the emotions is thus defined by reference to a common fabric of intersubjective character that binds together emotional consciousness and the more articulated dimensions of consciousness as phases of the same dynamic of human conduct.

Pollen is the reproductive agent of flowering plants; palynology is utilized by archaeologists because sporopollenin, a major component in the exine of pollen grains, is resistant to decay and morphologically distinctive. Wine, beer, and mead have been identified in the archaeological record by palynological assessment due to indicator species or due to a pollen profile similar to that recovered from honey, a common source of sugar in a variety of fermented beverages. While most palynologists have assumed that pollen grains are resistant to alcoholic fermentation, a recent study in food science implies that pollen is a yeast nutrient because pollen-enriched meads produce more alcohol. The experiment presented here explores the potential distortion of the pollen record through fermentation by brewing a traditional, pollen-rich mead with Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this experiment, the pollen grains did not undergo any discernible morphological changes nor were distorted in the pollen profile. Any nutrition that the yeast garners from the pollen therefore leaves sporopollenin intact. These results support palynological research on residues of alcoholic beverages and confirms that the fermentation process does not distort the pollen profile of the original substance. The paper concludes with the potential and limits of palynological study to assess fermentation within the archaeological record.