Dear scholars, Does anyone happen to know of a source that includes alcohol recipes from western Africa? I've performed the usual literature searches, but since I'm not as familiar with African history I could easily have missed something. I'm particularly interested in the 1500-1800 era, but would appreciate any references or suggestions at all. While I'm writing in, I thought I'd tag onto the Distillery Project topic. In my research on alcohol production in the early Chesapeake I've run across a number of receipts (1790-1820) stating that someone has or has not paid the required distillery taxes in VA, MD, and PA. What has surprised me are the number of stills that appear to have belonged to women. In the receipts the tax collector states that it is the woman's still. Have others run across this? Did it strike anyone else as remarkable? I'm interested in learning not only if early 19th century woman commonly owned stills (or if I just found a few freak situations), but also how Americans have forgotten that it was women who used to make much of the alcohol. Women brewed in other countries as well; is their involvement known outside academia? Is it only in America that we have forgotten the gendered aspect of alcohol production? I'm curious about how countries remember (or mostly appear not to remember) their alcohol histories. thank you, Sarah Meacham ************************ Sarah Hand Meacham Ph.D. Candidate Dept. of History University of Virginia