Virginia USA: Silver Hand Meadery Wins 6 Gold Medal Awards at 2021 Governors Cup

From wydaily.com/brews-and-bites

WILLIAMSBURG — Silver Hand Meadery found state-wide success in 2021 with its fermented honey.

This year, the meadery, located at 224 Monticello Ave., took home six gold medal awards at a state-wide wine competition called The Governor’s Cup. They won gold for their meads called: “Soak up the Sun”, “All Blues”, “Strawberry Swing”, “Raspberry Passion”, “Dream By The Fire”, and “Black Velvet”.

“We just had an incredible showing this year. Six of our meads won gold which is shocking to us,” said Owner and Founder of Silver Hand Meadery Glenn Lavender in an interview with WYDaily. “Winning six golds was kind of a shocker to the whole Virginia wine industry because there was only one winery that had more golds than us. So that had a lot of people wondering about what are we doing in Williamsburg with honey.”

A picture showcasing some of Silver Hand Meadery’s selection of meads. Included in this photo are some of the meads that took home gold awards at the 2021 Governor’s Cup. Including: “Soak Up The Sun”, “All Blues”, and “Dream By The Fire”. (Courtesy Silver Hand Meadery)

Lavender says that as long as you have a sugar source and yeast, you can ferment. So when you’re making wines, the sugar typically comes from the sugars of the fruit. When you’re making beer, the sugar is extracted from the grains in the brewing process. When you’re making meads, the sugars come from honey.

“So whatever flavour you have in your initial ingredients really highly contributes to the final product. So we like specializing in varietal honey. The varietal is a monofloral [produced from the nectar of only one plant] honey,” said Lavender. “Like if you have bees collecting nectar from orange trees down in Florida you’ll get like Orange Flavour honey. It has a really distinct flavour. There’s also blueberry flavour, and there’s avocado. There are all sorts of different flavours of honey based on the nectar sources. So we like to play with those, but we also add different ingredients like fruits, herbs, and spices.”

Silver Hand Meadery has been operating in Williamsburg for about six years. Lavender feels like they are just finally starting to hit their stride. He says that winning the awards is “pretty awesome not just for Williamsburg, but for the whole mead world.”

This is because they have inspired more meaderies to enter the Governor’s Cup and share their creations with judges and others in Virginia. The competition has never awarded gold to a Meadery before. Silver Hand Meadery was the first. Just recently the competition added one or two other categories that are more in line with other mead competitions. Now there are categories like “fruit mead” and “cider mead”.

As the local business prepares for 2022 Lavendar says that they’ll “just try and keep making good products.”

For more information on Silver Hand Meadery, you can check out their Facebook page, or their website.

https://wydaily.com/brews-and-bites/2021/12/24/silver-hand-meadery-wins-6-gold-medal-awards-at-2021-governors-cup/ 

Colorado USA: Meadery’s tasting room a sweet spot in downtown Idaho Springs

From clearcreekcourant.com

Whether it’s for last-minute holiday gifts, something sweet for Christmas dinner, or something exciting to open for New Year’s, there’s something for everyone at Slaymaker Cellar’s new tasting room on Miner Street.

Co-owners Chris and Kent Slaymaker started making mead, a honey-based wine, in Idaho Springs last year. In July, they and staff members Jenn Pedersen and Jessica Guy opened the tasting room at 1535 Miner St., where they offer samples, bottles of mead, and other honey-based products.

The Slaymakers and Pedersen explained how there is a mead for everyone. There’s a variety of flavours and a spectrum of sweetness. Some can taste more like beers, while others taste more like wine. They even offer sparkling mead.

“Anything we can do with grape wine, we can do with honey wine,” Kent said.

Chris and Kent Slaymaker started making mead in spring 2020 and opened the Slaymaker Cellars tasting room at 1535 Miner St. in July. The tasting room has been a great way to build brand recognition and educate people about mead, a honey-based wine, they said.  

PHOTO BY CORINNE WESTEMAN

Slaymaker Cellars uses Colorado honey in its meads, and different honeys serve as the base for different meads. For instance, wildflower mead comes from wildflower honey, they said.

The business’ flagship meads are orange-blossom, wildflower, and tart cherry, but it also features rotating seasonals and dessert meads.

As for the new tasting room, the Slaymakers and Pedersen said it’s been a great way to educate people about what mead is, build brand awareness, and visit with tourists.

Having the Miner Street Market when the tasting room first opened helped bring in more foot traffic, because most people would never notice the storefront just driving by, they commented.

Along with the tasting room, mead fans should also be on the lookout for Slaymaker products at local restaurants and retailers. 

Overall, Chris and Kent said they want to be good employers who support local producers and serve a great product.

The Slaymaker Cellars tasting room is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays. For more information, visit slaymakercellars.com.

https://www.clearcreekcourant.com/stories/meaderys-tasting-room-a-sweet-spot-in-downtown-springs,386445

Honey wine, mead in New Zealand sweet spot

From gisborneherald.co.nz

Family business Mead A’mour has invested about $100,000 to rebrand and expand its existing business of making wine and mead using East Coast honey.

The company was formed by Dennis and Kerry Greeks in August last year when Alchemy Beverages, a 16-year partnership between Mr Greeks and Barry Foster, and more recently a corporate manuka business, went into voluntary liquidation.

“For us it’s a chance to make a fresh start, give a new identity to the company and offer something that is unique,” said Mr Greeks.

Operating out of the same factory in the industrial subdivision, business under the new company name has started well — with 12,000 units of beverage sold in the first nine months of this year, up from 7000 units in all of 2020, and a number of growth opportunities coming on stream.

“We worked for a couple of months on changing the labels and getting our liqueur name the same brand name, ‘1st Night’, as our mead,” he said.

The research and development to create new label designs and make them industry compliant, with new company details for their alcoholic beverages, and print them, took an investment of around $8000.

They were now focused on building their stocks.

“One of the challenges at the moment is that bottle stores have taken a hit from Covid-19. With the stores being shut down for the best part of two or three months, it made a strain not only in the cash flow but also we were losing good customers,” he said.

One of Mead A’mour’s regular customers had to stop her purchases due to a rent increase imposed by her landlord because of the pandemic.

“A customer like that would regularly take products worth more than $2000 a month — for us, that is what we can use to pay our rent,” said Mr Greeks.

Prior to the August lockdown mead was making a resurgence, with sales through supermarkets showing good growth — which has helped them keep “ticking on” during the pandemic.

Mead A’mour products are sold in about 30 bottle stores, tourist shops and all Countdown supermarkets around the country.

“We are a niche market but we are also looking to start a process to get into the other supermarket chain run by Foodstuffs.

“We have also been talking with one of our customers who is a distributor in Auckland with 400 traditional liquor outlets,” he said.

Mead A’mour also exports its products, principally to Japan, China and Hong Kong. Last year it exported about two pallets, or 1320 units of beverage. This year Mr Greeks hoped to deliver about nine pallets to overseas customers.

The company also packages its beverages to overseas customer specifications in an OEM (original equipment manufacture) process.

“OEM is basically our recipe of wine and mead but somebody else’s label on it, to suit their market,” he said.

For example, a customer in Japan may like to have mead but the packaging doesn’t make much sense to them. To avoid such a scenario, distributing companies abroad send them their artwork, preferred design and labelling standards such as a pregnancy warning to suit the needs of their consumers.

Mr Greeks said the company was also working on expanding its beverage range to carbonated (non-alcoholic) drinks.

“We have done our research on our non-alcoholic drinks and sent out samples to who we think can be our key clients . . . and the feedback has been positive,” he said.

Huka Honey Hive in Taupo was one client that was “excited” about the expansion into carbonated drinks, saying they would anticipate ordering more than three pallets a year.

“If we do that, we will be launching just with two or three collectives (in nearby regions).”

With people being more health conscious around carbonated drinks, the company would use honey and fruits as natural sweeteners — so no added artificial flavours and low-calorie.

Mr Greeks said they had already done the R&D for the carbonated beverages “product formulation wise”, and could be looking to invest an additional $7000 on labels and packaging when the timing is right.

Another bonus with non-alcoholic beverages was that they did not need to pay excise tax.

“In a way it’s a chance for us to start small,” said Mr Greeks.

“If we were to do 10 pallets a year of the non-alcoholics, it would bring us another $10,000 worth of profitable turnover and that pays nearly half the rent for the year.”

Mr Greeks said this career started for him more than 20 years ago as a cider maker for Brian Shanks at Bulmer Harvest.

He later purchased the mead section of the business from Mr Shanks, partnering with honey supplier Barry Foster, who owned a honey factory. They incorporated Alchemy Beverages in 2005.

Mead A’mour co-founder Kerry Greeks is unable to work for the business due to injury.

“Kerry is passionate about the products and is great to bounce ideas off. She keeps me grounded, playing devil’s advocate with any business progression ideas.”

Mr Greeks now hopes to further expand his business by promoting Mead A’mour products for cocktails in bars, as well as reaching into more households as a delectable item.

“The next phase for us will be the upcoming launch of our new website www.meadamour.com as the platform to connect with our consumers and offer unique, great-tasting beverages and recipes for all to enjoy. The website will give everyone the opportunity to purchase our products throughout NZ, whether that’s by guiding consumers to their nearest stockist or via our online shop.”

https://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/business/20211207/honey-wine-mead-in-sweet-spot/ 

Second Chicago Meadery Opens Albany Park Tasting Room After Years Of Planning

From blockclubchicago.org

Second City Meadery is Chicago's second meadery tasting room and only meadery on the North Side. The alcoholic beverage is made from fermented honey. 

ALBANY PARK — The North Side’s only meadery is officially open for business.

Second City Meadery co-founders Peter Schultz and Brian Davids moved into 4465 N. Elston Ave. in 2019 with plans to convert the old auto mechanic’s shop into a production facility and tasting room. It opened last week, and is the city’s second meadery tasting room and only meadery on the North Side.

                                    Credit: Provided    Second City Meadery's new tasting room

Schultz was inspired to start making mead, an alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey, at home in 2014 because his wife loved the sweet flavour — but buying it off the shelf was “a little pricey,” he said.

The first few batches were terrible, Schultz said. But after experimenting and researching for a few years, he entered his meads in home brew competitions and started winning medals, he said.

Schultz’s wife was so impressed with his passion for brewing mead she encouraged him to quit his day job as an accountant and pursue brewing full-time.

Schultz teamed up with his friend, Davids, who had brewed beer at home for almost a decade, and the idea for Second City Meadery was born. They started by testing small batches of mead, giving it away for free in 2017.

The tasting room features a bar with eight stools, three standing tables and two longer tables with barstools at them. It has board games and is pet- and family-friendly.

“We also allow people to bring in food. There’s tons of great local restaurants, so they have a lot to choose from,” Schultz said. 

Since opening the tasting room last week, Schultz has had neighbours unfamiliar with mead drop by the check out the space, he said.

“We want this to be an inclusive space where anyone can come by and enjoy mead, which I know a lot of people aren’t still that familiar with,” Schultz said. “Part of the experience for a lot of the people that came in this past weekend was education.”

The tasting room only has one mead on tap and is still waiting for the full keg system Schultz ordered in October to arrive. Once that system is in place, more tasting room exclusives will circulate on the Second City’s taps. 

                      Credit: Provided. Some of the meads available at Second City Meadery

             

“We have a carbonated mead right now that’s 4 percent alcohol. It’s closer to maybe a hard seltzer or a sour beer than anything else we serve,” Schultz said. “It was a pretty big hit over the weekend.”

The meadery is open open 6-11 p.m. Fridays and 1-11 p.m. Saturdays. For updates on Second City Meadery, visit its website or follow its Facebook page.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/12/01/after-years-of-planning-second-city-meaderys-tasting-room-is-now-op/

London, UK: Peckham’s getting a Christmas forest full of delicious MEAD

From timeout.com 

Finally, a go-to London venue for all your honey-beverage requirements

Never knowingly out-cooled, Peckham is getting a pretty unusual Christmas pop-up this year: a hybrid urban-forest-mead-bar. Mead is one of the world’s oldest alcoholic drinks, made by fermenting honey. London’s only meadery, Gosnells, is running this seasonal sensation, after the success of its summer mead garden. They’ve even got a funny pun name for it: ‘Gosnells Garden of Meaden’ and have hired that woman off of ‘Dragon’s Den’ to be the face of it. That last bit is a lie, of course. 

                                                                                                    Image: Gosnells

On the monkish drinks menu (mead was often produced in monasteries, which explains a lot) is the new Gosnells 4 percent sparkling Wildflower Mead on draught, along with its Hopped, Sour, Hibiscus and Citra Sea meads in cans. If you’re a proper mead-head, you should check out its 5.5 percent Original, its small-batch experiments, and its Vintages 2019, 2020 and 2021, all made from London honeys. For the less honey-committed drinker, there are softies from Square Root in Hackney and lager from Freedom Brewery, plus what’s billed as ‘a razzamatazz of snacks’. 

You can also take away more mead, plus mead vinegar, and, in a bold move, purchase actual Christmas trees. So the plan is, get stuck into the mead like Friar Tuck, then, once suitably jollified, drag home an unsuitably massive fir tree that you have to leave in the front garden overnight then saw in half in the morning to get it through the front door accompanied by a shocking mead hangover. See you there, yeah?

Gosnells Garden of Meaden, Bellenden Road Business Centre, Arch 2, Bellenden Rd, SE15 4RF. Book here.

https://www.timeout.com/london/news/peckhams-getting-a-christmas-forest-full-of-delicious-mead-113021

Party like a Viking during KingView Meadhouse & Winery’s opening in Mt. Lebanon, Pittsburgh USA

From nextpittsburgh.com

Scott Neeley wants you to celebrate the yuletide like a Viking at KingView Meadhouse & Winery. 

The much-anticipated tasting room at 101 Beverly Road in Mt. Lebanon will hold a soft opening on Wednesdays through Sundays from Dec. 9-31. Guests can try the world’s oldest known alcohol, which is made from fermented honey. Hours are 4 to 10 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday,  11 a.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday.

The 1,500-square-foot former Gulf gas station is equipped with 40 taps pouring KingView brand mead, wine and cider, as well as other Pennsylvania-made beer, wine and spirits.

                                            Photo courtesy of KingView Mead.

In addition to sipping the ancient beverage, customers can participate in the KingView Christmas Tree Contest to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Trees will be set up outside in the courtyard on Nov. 29 for families, businesses and nonprofit organizations to trim by Dec. 8. Send an email to Neeley by Friday, Nov. 25, for details on participating. There is one decorating rule: Neeley asks that participants use LED lights to save on energy costs.

From Dec. 9 to 25, trees will be judged by the public by placing money in corresponding donation jars inside KingView. All money raised will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and winners will have their name or logo on a plaque that hangs in the taproom. The business will handle clean-up at the end of the season.

Neeley’s uncle, Jack Neuser, was in charge of decorating the windows at Kaufmann’s and Macy’s department stores Downtown for more than 20 years. He’s featured in Rick Sebak’s “Happy Holidays in Pittsburgh” documentary. 

“He would have 13 trees decorated in his house in Bethel Park and it holds fantastic nostalgia for the family, so I want to recreate that and also tie into the Beverly Brite Nite,” Neeley says, referencing the Beverly Road holiday celebration on Dec. 9.

Launched in 2015, KingView churns out about 30,000 gallons of booze a year. The business has a retail location (that also serves cocktails and beer) at the Tanger Outlets in Washington, PA. KingView Farm & Meadery, the company’s 33-acre property in Springfield Township, is available for weddings and other private gatherings. It boasts between 500 and 600 beehives.

Through the state’s PA Preferred program, 75 percent of the company’s output is made from ingredients from Pennsylvania, including apples and honey. Production on a batch of mead can take anywhere from one month to an entire year, depending on the style.

At the 2021 Pennsylvania Farms Show, KingView won a gold medal for its Happy Apple Pie mead and a silver medal for its Triple-Beere, a blackberry, blueberry and red raspberry mead. Viking Grog, a mix of grape, juniper berry and cranberry mead, also earned a silver medal.

Enjoy the elixir out of a KingView drinking horn if you want to feel like a medieval warrior. Skål!

https://nextpittsburgh.com/latest-news/party-like-a-viking-during-kingview-meadhouse-winerys-opening-in-mt-lebanon/

Gosnells Of London Has Xmas Sorted With New "Mulled Mead" Bag-In Box

From beerguild.co.uk/news

Gosnells of Peckham has taken its winter drinks offering to new heights with the launch of a 5 litre and a 10 litre bag-in-box of exotically spiced mulled mead.

Gosnells will be selling the boxes in 5 litre boxes for retail at £30, with free UK mainland delivery; or in 10 litre containers at £45 for parties – or for the growing numbers of pubs and bars intrigued by the potential of mead.

Gosnells Head Meaderer, Will Grubelnik comments:

“As Christmas is in summer in Australia, I’m pretty new to mulling; and people tell me that mulled wine is hard to get right consistently as the character of the red wine can vary from thin and weedy, to gargantuan Shiraz and Malbecs. So the amount of sugar, spices, orange peel or sweet liqueurs varies loads every time.

“Mead is more fortunate than red wine as it has complex sugars from the honeys with natural balance, and it has a breadth to its flavour profile which is useful in mulling. Mead also loves spices. So what we have produced for 2021 is a recipe made of very floral wildflower honey, with zero added sugars. We have drastically cut back on our use of cinnamon, as we found in the past that it took the edge off the brilliance of all the other spices. We have then added bitter orange peel, juniper, fresh cloves, nutmeg, star anise and green cardamom to our new recipe. The result is a mulled mead which can be served as it is, or pimped to please individual palates with the likes of rum, pomegranate molasses, apple juice or tequila, or served cold on ice.”

Tom Gosnell adds: “We sold Gosnells Mead in cans in 2020 and had great response from so many stay-at-home experimenters; but we thought that we should be more about party-time in Xmas 2021, and the bigger format seem to have hit the spot!”

https://www.beerguild.co.uk/news/gosnells-has-halloween-xmas-sorted-new-mulled-mead-bag-in-box-serve-hot-or-cold/

Four Fires Meadery shares the inspiration behind “Slappin’the Basil”

From ohionewstime.com

The co-owners of Four Fires Meadery share the inspiration behind the Blueberry Basil Mead

Maumee, Ohio — Most adult beverages begin with fermentation, and after the addition of ingredients and a specific process, the result is beer, liquor, wine, or mead. Mead is gaining popularity in the craft beer community and Four Fire Meadley is a great place to learn about this honey-based spirit.

Four Fires Meadery is located in Mommy. In addition to manufacturing the product, the building also has a tasting room. Co-owners Andrew and Chris say the facility is more than just a place to try drinks. It is also an educational experience about Mead. When asked what was in Mead, Chris explained: After that, it becomes quite extrapolated. “

“Slappin’the Basil” is a sweet and refreshing blueberry buddy. “The original inspiration came from Moscow Mule, like the Moscow Mule in blueberry basil. We took those flavours and then made carbonated mead,” Andrew said. This mead, which has been in Meadley for some time, is the first mass release of Four Fires Meadery bottled sodas.

The mead is delicious, but I was even more happy to know that some of the ingredients came from other local companies. “So we get all the basil locally here in town. We use the herbs of Bitter Sweet Farm or the hydroponic plants of Balance Farm, especially in winter,” Andrew said. I am. “Everything we see from these local farmers is well above standard,” added Chris.

Mead is an interesting drink because it tastes like wine, but it’s often found on the Beall’s List. Andrew and Chris have stated that it is legally a wine, but due to the experimental nature of Mead, it is “similar” to the craft beer scene.

“I think the beauty of our industry compared to beer and wine is that we have both sides of the story,” Chris added. One thing to keep in mind is that carbonated mead drinks like beer, and spirited or non-carbonated mead drinks like wine.

Mead does not use grains in its products, but there are certain types of mead that are permitted to use grains under certain regulations. Bragot Mead can be produced in collaboration with the brewery. Andrew and Chris say this is an interesting product that they want to make at their local brewery in the future.

“Our motto is ’Creation through collaboration’, so we are trying to focus on many collaborations with various companies such as Bitter Sweet Farms and Balance, or with real breweries and meadows across the country.” Andrew said.

Four Fires Meadery has been producing mead since early 2018. Starting as homebrewers, Andrew and Chris decided to pursue full-time mead production. The company was founded by four individuals with completely different backgrounds and became part of the name’s inspiration.

Andrew and Chris explained that the history behind the land also influenced the naming of the business. They shared the history of a land of tribes that gathered to create a forum titled The Three Fires Council. Inspired by history, the four owners Four Fires Meadery, who gathered to create a business, have become the name we now know.

Injecting local harvest into the product and passionately creating each flavour makes mead unique. Four Fires Meadery is packed with flavours, history and energy.

https://ohionewstime.com/four-fires-meadery-shares-the-inspiration-behind-slappinthe-basil/282381/

It’s Colorado mead, honey!

From thefencepost.com

Premium Colorado honey and unique approach fuels Honnibrook Craft Meadery’s award winning success

Just a couple of home brew enthusiasts since the 1990s, Honnibrook Craft Meadery co-owners Michael Fagan and DJ Kurtz became friends in 2010 and started a business journey together that eventually took the surprising path of opening a craft meadery. That journey has brought growth and awards to their Castle Rock, Colo., based facility, including winning the prestigious “Commercial Wine 2021 Best of Show” trophy at the Colorado State Fair for their Peach Habanero mead.

Officially open for business in February of 2019, how has Honnibrook Craft Meadery managed to stack up the growth and awards? Fagan and Kurtz credit their unique approach to crafting mead along with using premium Colorado honey from Lockhart Honey Farms.

BREWERS APPROACH TO MEAD

Although dedicated home brewers, the duo also enjoyed making the occasional mead. At different locations, they would bring in both drinks, only to observe“ people were drinking the beer, but they were lining up for the mead.”

But it still took more to nudge them into mead making.

“We still wanted to brew beer, because beer was cool,” said Kurtz with a laugh as he and Fagan supervised the machines pumping and mixing a 55-gallon drum of Colorado honey with filtered Castle Rock water. According to the pair, drafting a business plan was the tipping point.

“We looked at (our) business plan and we needed $1.5 to $2 million dollars,” said Kurtz about the costs of a craft brewery requiring outside investment. “We realized we were going to be employees. We were not going to be owners.”

“Do I really want to work the long hours for someone else?” chipped in Fagan. “So then we were like, we are going to do mead, but still keep our beer roots.”

Keeping their beer roots meant approaching mead from a “light and refreshing” beer angle versus the traditional heavier wine style of most 10%-14% alcohol content meads.

“It was probably about two and a half years of experimentation,” said Fagan about dialling in their product while noting Kurtz’ formal training as a culinary chef was vital to the process. “We were trying to get the mouthfeel (and) the taste right,” Fagan continued. “We were taking little torpedo kegs to backyard barbecues, and when people were like, ‘that is pretty good beer,’ we knew we were onto it.”

As a result, Honnibrook’s unique style of mead is a lighter alcohol content with a fine-tuned carbonation level.

“Two and a half years of experimentation tells us 6.2% (alcohol content) is the magic number,” said Fagan. “It is where we want it to be.”

Honnibrook’s growth has caused Fagan and Kurtz to craft a new batch of mead every several weeks, versus starting off in 2019 making batches every several months. On top of finding their magic number of 6.2%, Fagan and Kurtz also credit Colorado’s Lockhart Honey Farms for their mead’s surging popularity.

“It is a super rich, monofloral honey,” said Fagan. “We get a super clean ferment and we get the same product all the time. We need the consistency.”

PREMIUM COLORADO HONEY

“That is the thing we bring to the table with our alfalfa honey is we set our bees next to large alfalfa fields and every year those fields are going to bloom,” said Leo Lockhart about their monofloral honey’s consistency. “When you set your bees up around just wildflowers and those kinds of things, you are getting a different balance of flowers so every year the flavour can be significantly different.”

A second generation beekeeper, Leo takes care of the bees while his wife Laura manages the business side. He estimates they have 1,200-1,300 hives in Colorado, while his entire family keeps about 9,000 hives in the state. While Leo and Laura also have hives in Nebraska and they move hives around the country throughout the year, he believes Colorado honey is the best.

“Colorado honey tastes so much better than anything else in the nation,” said Leo. “I go to national conferences and I always try the other honeys and I have never found another one that I would even put in the same ballpark as Colorado.”

“The area we produce is in the Arkansas River Valley,” Laura said. “It has always been a very high quality product. It seems like it is a rarer find (and) a rare taste. I am just glad it is something that works really well for making mead and that (Honnibrook) has had a lot of success with it.”

“We feel very lucky to have gotten hooked up with them,” added Leo about supplying drums of honey to Honnibrook Craft Meadery. “Their mead is great. I think that is one of the reasons they do so well is their attention to quality and caring about their ingredients so much.”

AWARD WINNING MEAD

That quality and care produced the aforementioned Commercial Wine 2021 Best of Show title at the Colorado State Fair. While Kurtz and Fagan had previously won Best of Show there in the mead category, the overall Best of Show caught them by surprise.

“That is grape wine judges telling us our mead is better than the grape wines they judged,” said Kurtz. “We earned Best of Show against the big guys. It is still hard to comprehend.”

“To win best wine in Colorado, never in our wildest dreams,” said Fagan. “It is just stuff we never expected to happen to us.”

Honnibrook was also recently ranked No. 1 in a list of “The 10 Best Wineries in Colorado” by ChoiceWineries.com. Although awards are gratifying to Fagan and Kurtz, they just love making mead.

“We always talk about (Honnibrook) as our happy place,” said Fagan while Kurtz nodded and smiled. “In our day jobs there is a lot of stress and there are lots of unhappy people. When people come here, everyone is happy. They are excited about it and we get excited about it.”

For Honnibrook Craft Meadery, using premium Colorado honey has led to sweet success.

For more information about the award winning Honnibrook Craft Meadery, as well as Lockhart Honey Farms, you can find them online at https://www.honnibrook.com and https://lockharthoneyfarms.com

https://www.thefencepost.com/news/its-colorado-mead-honey/

Mead and Poland – a bit of history and a few tips on which Polish meads to try!

From freewalkingtour.com

This article is meant to be about Polish mead. But what is the first image that comes to your mind when you see the word ¨mead¨? Is it a group of big, muscular, blonde Vikings at a feast, drinking from horns at a big wooden table inside a huge feast hall? It is very true and completely not true at the same time; the great Viking PR has monopolized a beverage which is one of the oldest and most important alcoholic drinks in human history! 

Mead - a bit of history

Let’s start with the basics, though - what is mead, actually? Feeling a bit lazy, we’ll simply quote Wikipedia: “mead is an alcoholic beverage created by fermenting honey with water”. Sounds very simple? That’s why its origin is most probably spontaneous fermentation observed by humans in the wild. The oldest archaeological evidence to date was found in northern China and is around 9.000 years old!! If you prefer written records, the Indian Rigveda, written more than 3.000 years ago, talks about a certain intoxicating substance “soma”, which many consider to have been mead; just like the famous drink of the Greek gods, ambrosia! Even the very expression “honeymoon” is supposed to derive from ancient Mesopotamia and originally meant that after the wedding the groom’s family would provide mead for a month (according to the lunar calendar, hence the moon), as it was believed to be an aphrodisiac. 

Polish mead - the legendary beginnings

Even if all those theories seem too far-fetched, one thing leaves no doubt - most Indo European languages use practically the same word; just compare “mead” to Polish “miód” (pronounced “myood”). Sounds similar? No wonder, then, that you will find mead all over the Euro-Asian world, from India through the Caucasus to the Celts, Romans and Germanic cultures. As you can see, here we are back to the famous Vikings - but where does Poland come into the picture? Slavic people were of course also very fond of mead and the tribes that were ancestors to modern Poles were no different; so much so, that even the legendary foundation of the first Polish dynasty is attributed to it. According to the tale, there used to be a poor peasant called Piast whose son was coming out of age; they didn’t have the provisions to invite anybody to the party as they hardly had enough for the family. But when two wanderers arrived, having been turned away by the local prince, Piast invited them home anyway and gave them whatever little they had of their food and… mead! Turned out those strangers were saints and multiplied both food and mead, hence Piast could invite everybody. There was enough mead for all! So the tribe decided the generous Piast should become prince instead of the tyrannical one ruling over them at that time. And so we call our first dynasty the Piasts. 

                                                           Korneli Szlegel "Pilgrims visiting Piast"

The evolution of mead drinking in Poland

Legends aside, we do know that they were very fond of it - from Mieszko I who baptised the country (according to the first written record of him, his land was full of “game, wheat, fish and mead”) to the last Piast, Kazimierz the Great. And yes, with the baptism of 966 wine is introduced, but Polish climate is not exactly optimal for growing grapes. So in the Mediterranean mead was known, but overtaken by wine already in antiquity, in Poland it took much longer. It even became sort of an export hit in the XV/XVI centuries! It wasn’t an everyday drink, though, only rolled out of the basements on special occasions - only the richest of the nobility could afford to have it at their leisure. Hence begins its decline - the XVII century wars and overall impoverishment combined with competition from wine (either imported from Hungary or cheap local versions) and stronger spirits. By the end of the XVIII century, few people drank mead. It is only the interwar period in the XX century, when Poland regained its independence after the partitions, when there were attempts at reviving its importance, which came to a rapid halt with the beginning of WW2. Communism also wasn’t the best time for a beverage considered “aristocratic”, but it was not completely forgotten, emerging for example in… a cartoon for children!   If you’ve already visited Krakow, you must have heard the legend and seen the menacing statue of the dragon. (If not book your tour right now!) Yet there is another version of the dragon story, in which he is a very fine gentleman and when visited in his cave by the founder of Krakow, prince Krak himself, he serves no less than mead! That could be because Krakow was at that time one of only four cities and Poland which still had a ¨miodosytnia¨, so a meadery. 

                                 An ideal Polish nobleman party would always be accompanied by mead

Polish meads today

For some time now it is fashionable to look back and try to recreate old recipes and forgotten beverages, a very fortunate movement for mead. Poland will probably still be considered by the general public the land of vodka (more about Polish vodkas in this article), but the panorama is changing and modern meaderies are on the rise, both bringing back the centuries-old recipes and experimenting with new ones. If you happen to be in Poland and want to try mead, the first thing you need to have is a bit of patience - it is still not in every menu! Next step is to look at the type and usually there are three to choose from: półtorak, dwójniak and trójniak; these can be translated as “one-and-halver”, “doubler” and “tripler”. The names refer to the content of water vs honey, hence the strongest and sweetest is the first (1.5x the amount of water vs honey) and the driest, with less alcohol contest the last (3x the amount of water vs honey). Whichever you try, it is still within the typical wine range of 12-18% alcohol. Last thing to check is if it’s pure or with additives - in the old days, very often herbs were used (among them hops, which made such a big career with beer) or fruit; today usually it is fruit that’s popular. Serving is recommended at room temperature unless it’s winter - then you can easily drink it warm, with spices, like proper mulled wine! However it is, whichever type or strength, one thing remains the same; when you are in Poland try mead, enjoy its sweet taste and feel like a Polish noble of old!

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about Polish drinking traditions check our tours: Food and Vodka of Krakow and Beers of Krakow. 

https://freewalkingtour.com/mead-and-poland-a-bit-of-history-and-few-tips-on-which-polish-meads-to-try/

Mead, the ancient drink made by fermenting honey, is making a comeback

From moneycontrol.com

Mead makers are experimenting with flavours like rose, bhut jholokia chilies, even Pinot Noir grapes, to reinvent the drink for modern times

The word mead may conjure images of medieval knights swigging a drink before a battle, or royals in tight corsets sipping from dainty glasses. But this fermented honey drink is tiptoeing out from the shadows now.

Like beer is made by fermenting grains, wine with grapes, ciders from apple… mead is made by fermenting honey with water and yeast. It can also be flavoured with fruits, spices, vegetables, etc.

The fermented honey gives mead a unique taste. “It’s a cross between wine and a cider,” says Sukriti Mahajan, a craft beer drinker turned mead enthusiast. 

This golden-coloured drink also has some eccentric relatives such as Melomel (a mead with fruits), Methaglin (a mead with herbs/spices), apple-based Cyser and Braggot (a mead with grains).

It takes anywhere from three-six months for honey to ferment and mature completely into mead. Is it alcoholic? Yes. Most meads in India are in the 6-12 percent ABV range which is considered standard for traditional meads. However it can go up to 20 percent - these headier drinks are called ‘sack’ meads, and they can be thick and cloyingly sweet.

But mead is not a new beverage. It is the oldest fermented drink, dating back to 7000 BC.

“The Vikings drank it before battle, ancient Indian text like the Rigveda mentioned it, and Greek and Roman historians have discussed it. There have also been numerous references in literature from Shakespeare and Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter and even Game of Thrones. But it lost its prominence over the years as it’s both an expensive and difficult drink to make,” says Rohan Rehani, co-founder Moonshine Meadery.

Rehani got interested in the beverage after reading an article about Gosnells, London's first Meadery. The curiosity led Rehani and his friend Nitin Vishwas to try making some mead at home using local honey and yeast. The output wasn’t good but it excited their passion to build a business around mead.

Other significant mead players in India include Nashik-based Cerana Meads and Arkä by the same company that produces Fruzzanté, a sparkling alcoholic beverage.

Is mead healthy?

Although mead was associated with good health and vitality in ancient cultures and called “the drink of the gods” in Greek mythology, these claims many not hold up today.

The star ingredient honey has antioxidant and antimicrobial properties, but there isn't enough research yet to show whether honey retains these once it’s fermented.

“Mead is an alcoholic beverage, and we cannot make any health claims. Our meads contain approximately 183 kcal and 8.25 gms of carbs per 330ml pint. Every pint starts off with 10 teaspoons of honey; nine of which get converted to alcohol and one remains behind as residual sweetness,” says Rehane.

Flavour profile

Apart from being sweet, dry, still or sparkling, meads can also be infused with spices, fruits and vegetables. There’s no limit to how creative people can get with it. It is this flexibility that excites mead makers. Case in point: Moonshine’s guava chili mead uses bhut jholokia chilies. Its other offerings include a thai ginger and kaffir lime mead, a grilled pineapple mead, and coffee mead (starting at Rs185 for 330ml).

Similarly, Arkä Rose Mead (Rs1,095 for 375ml) is reddish-pink liquid with a heady smell of roses in bloom. “Roses have an inherent essence and bitterness which needs careful cold extraction and light pressing to get the goodness of the blooms. I tried various method using rose buds, blooms and petals. But it worked only when I used dried rose petals,” says Arkä co-founder Priyanka Save. The meadery's other variants include a jamun mead (Rs1,050 for 375ml). 

Cerana Meads, on the other hand, has been pushing boundaries with its genre-defying Pinot Noir Pyment (Rs450 for 375ml; the unflavoured mead is Rs180 for 330ml). “This is a bold mead that uses Pinot Noir grapes which are not known to grow best in the Nashik terroir. But we have been able to identify a farmer who has diligently grown these grapes to perfection. We use it with multifloral honey from Himachal Pradesh,” says Dr Yoginee Budhkar co-Founder, Cerana Meads. 

Challenges in the mead segment

Good mead must start with great honey. The bee population is dwindling due to the use of pesticides and other farming techniques. Finding a regular source of honey is a major challenge. Most meaderies have tie-ups with beekeepers and aggregators from across the country for the honey.

Apart from sourcing difficulties, quality is another headache for mead makers. “Adulteration is a major issue in honey production. Every batch of honey received needs to be tested for purity, sugar and pollen content. Some suppliers use formic acid as a preservative, which may inhibit fermentation if added in excess quantities,” says Save, who procures honey from the Jawhar and the Mokhada areas of Palghar.

Mead's future also depends on category re-creation. Most people confuse it with beer, wine or cider. But that is bound to change with time, says Save.

“The median age of the Indian consumer is 28.5 years," says Save, "and this demographic is flexible to change and comfortable experimenting with new trends."

NIVEDITA JAYARAM PAWAR is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist, who writes on food, art, design, travel and lifestyle.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/features/mead-the-ancient-drink-made-by-fermenting-honey-is-making-a-comeback-7656811.html