Nice work, Spuds!! I'm excited to get to give some mustards as gifts this year too! Was just given a recipe for roasted garlic mustard, I'm stoked to try that one soon too!
With my batch, I used brown and yellow seeds 50/50, and mine darkened up quite a lot after sitting for a few days. Curious to see what the black mustard does-- I haven't ever used black mustard seed before. I like how mine mellowed out, though... seems like it's a tad sweeter and has a little less BITE than when it first came out. I'll definitely be canning some too-- those half pint jars are a great size for gifts!!
Don-- My grandma just celebrated her 93d birthday, and I was chatting on the phone with her last night about you! I'd written my family earlier about my mustard adventures, and she was interested in how I got involved with it. I said I'd been chatting with you on this forum, and that you were in Ohio and do lots of canning, cooking and fermenting, etc. She grew up in a tiny little German Lutheran community called Frohna, in Missouri, and was reminiscing fondly about how everyone would make sauerkraut. Cows were used for milking, and pigs for eating, so they had a lot of pork sausages. She said when they sold the family house a number of years ago, they had at least a dozen old ceramic sauerkraut crocks in the shed ranging from 1-10 gallons, and just left them with the house!
Was so great talking with her, and she was just tickled that I could befriend someone so far away and have that bring back such good memories for her.