The annual ASNaC society black tie dinner was punctuated with a presidential toast from the ASNaC mead horn this Saturday (27/01), marking the group’s long standing love affair with the ancient honeyed beverage.

Members of the society also enjoy a 10% discount on all mead from Cambridge wine merchants, and can purchase ‘drink mead and study ASNaC’ themed merchandise through the society website.

Society mead policy is coordinated by George Ellison, officer for mead provision. Ellison, a self proclaimed ‘sesh gremlin’, is responsible for ensuring ‘there is plenty of mead at BTD (black tie dinner)’.

Ellison has also taken up responsibility of brewing his own mead for the society, with committee minutes noting that he had ‘bought honey for the purpose of homemade mead’ last year.

Mead is also used to initiate new members, who drink from the mead horn at The Castle pub or alternatively on top of castle mound

One ASNaC society member and keen mead drinker told Varsity that mead drinking was “even more of a spiritual experience than getting wine drunk”.

One former member praised the society as “a great bunch of people who like the same things you do and a department society that uses a mead-horn in its initiation rite”.

Beyond mead drinking, the society also enjoys other archaic social events such as sword fights on Castle Mound and St Chad’s day themed pub crawls.

ASNaC told Varsity: “The ASNaC Black Tie Dinner is a staple in our year and it’s always amazing fun to chat and share a glass of mead with everyone, from fellow students across the years to alumni and lecturers.

"It was such an honour to stand with nine of the previous society presidents, including some of my lectures and closest friends, and drink from the ceremonial ASNaC mead horn as is tradition, even if I was left with quite a lot to down at the end," they said.