“Our focus will be on both the big, fruited sweet meads and lighter,
carbonated, lower ABV meads suited for a hot summer day in Florida."
You don’t have to wait for the Renaissance Festival to get mead drunk, Odessa’s Pye Road Meadworks is set for a March opening at 8533 Gunn Hwy.—about a mile north of Sickles High School.
Owned
by husband and wife Matt and Debbie McDonough, the mead brewery will
operate—for now—at a little over half-capacity inside (outdoor seating
is available, too). Located in the Hillsborough County sector of Odessa,
Pye Road also offers craft beer for those not interested in drinking
mead.
“Our focus will be on both the big, fruited sweet meads and
lighter, carbonated, lower ABV meads suited for a hot summer day in
Florida,” Matt McDonough told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
Some of you may ask, what is mead?
“Mead
is a wine that uses honey as its primary fermentable ingredient,
instead of grapes,” McDonough said, “We use local honey whenever
possible, and combine it with seasonal fruits, juices, spices, and other
ingredients to create small-batch, boutique meads.”
pyeroadmeadworks/Facebook
The
McDonoughs started as successful mead homebrewers, but couldn’t legally
sell product so, besides sharing their brew with friends, they got
creative in getting known in the craft beer circuit.
“We… shared our mead in the beer release lines
that we all used to go to before the pandemic hit, the ones that would
draw lines around the block,” McDonough said, adding that he and Debbie
knew what beer fanatics wanted. “Small batch, limited access, high
quality ingredients.”
From there they started pouring at festivals
that allowed homebrewers and got so busy they had to make a decision:
scale back or go commercial.
After about 100 people showed up at
an event at Odessa’s Bru Florida Growler bar during 2019’s Florida Beer
Week, they decided commercial was the answer.
Of course 2020 happened, so things got delayed. And not just because of COVID-19.
“We
had about a [four or five] month delay with Hillsborough County while
the Land Development Code was being updated to clarify the ability to
brew on premises in commercial zoning,” McDonough said.
The codes
only focused on beer, neglecting wine and therefore mead. The McDonoughs
worked with the country to create more inclusive to different kinds or
brewing licenses, which was approved in early 2020.
Pye
Road already sold-out of memberships, which is a good sign for the
McDonoughs’ hope of turning Odessa into a must-stop city for craft drink
lovers.
“Our hope is that, between us and Bru, this becomes a
mini destination for the craft enthusiast outside of the Seminole
Heights and Tampa Heights area,” McDonough said.
Eric Depradine Breaks Ground in Alcohol Production
As a child, it wasn’t Christmas until Eric Depradine’s grandmother
uncorked her home-brewed hibiscus drink. Made from the vibrant
magenta-colored tropical bloom, the drink had a tart cranberry-like
flavor.
An immigrant from the village of Manzanilla on the island
of Trinidad, Ena Depradine (pronounced deh-PRAH-deen) settled in Boston
in the 1970s, and she brought with her knowledge of how to make a
variety of fermented beverages using honey, fruits, flowers, herbs and
spices.
“That lady taught me a lot about these beverages … and how essential
these drinks are for folks in the Caribbean for celebrations,” says Eric
Depradine, the owner of Zydeco Meadery.
“African Americans have the same traditions, using strawberry soda for
their Juneteenth. (Hibiscus) serves the same purpose as cola — to color
the drinks.”
It wasn’t a huge leap to figure out how to make mead, an ancient
beverage that has regained modern cult status thanks to the hit HBO
series “Game of Thrones.”
Mead is often referred to as honey wine. Instead of grapes, the
majority of fermentable sugar comes from honey, which is mixed with
water and yeast, and possibly other flavorings. Alcohol by volume for
meads range from 3% to 20%.
“My grandma is a very straight-laced Catholic lady. Her grandson is
the deviant,” Depradine says with a laugh. “I was the one who took it
from non-alcoholic to alcoholic because I just wanted to see how it
would taste.”
Zydeco Meadery is based out of Highland Community College
in Wamego, Kansas. Depradine’s first three commercial meads (ABV 12%)
are dry rather than overly sweet and pay homage to American regional
honey: Sunflower Delight (Kansas), Creole Queen (Louisiana) and Ozark
Beauty (Arkansas).
Consumers can sample the meads at 456 Wineries, an incubator and tasting room at the college. Bottles also are
available at a handful of liquor stores in Douglas, Riley and Sedgwick
counties, as well as Beer Cave Wine & Spirits in Overland Park.
Depradine, who came to Kansas City in 2015 from Louisiana to work as a
senior environmental officer for the Kansas City Water Services
Department, plans to incorporate his 94-year-old grandmother’s recipes
into the lineup.
The hibiscus formula has been approved, but he’s waiting on federal
regulators to give the thumbs up on several others, including one
flavored with mauby (colubrina elliptica).
“Mauby is an all-around drink. It’s bitter, back sweetened with honey
to balance it out. If you’re a beer drinker, you’ll like it. But it’s
not for everybody,” says Depradine, who initially taste-tested the
beverage at the Raytown Festival of the Lost Township in 2017.
“I threw people for a loop because it was a flavor they’d never had,
with undertones of licorice. It looks like bark in a Mason jar … (but) I
had people coming up to me all day asking to taste ‘grandma’s drink’
and they’d taste it and say, ‘Damn, your grandmother is cool!’”
Family
and friends help make mead. Owner of Zydeco Meadery, Eric Depradine,
with son, Zacherie, and daughter, Valentina, wife DeAundra, DeAundra’s
co-worker Kianda Simmons and Gary Clift, owner of Louis Vieux Winery, at
the Highland Community College in Wamego, Kansas (Contributed | Eric
Depradine)
Thirst for Knowledge
Depradine grew up in a segregated housing project. He was smart but
underachieved at Boston Latin Academy, a public exam school with a
college prep curriculum for grades 7-12.
When Depardine didn’t get along with his chemistry teacher his senior
year, he skipped class for four months, attending a second study hall
instead. He wound up graduating with a 1.7 GPA.
A year earlier, Depradine had received above average grades for a
chemistry class as he tried his hand at fermenting sugarcane. “It really
makes me smile that my efforts (and risks) had such positive ripple
effects,” his teacher Paul Eaton writes via email.
Eaton, of course, recognized allowing a minor to potentially produce
alcohol was a huge professional risk. He filed the proper paperwork and
alerted higher administration.
“As I remember, I don’t think he was quite successful with the first
endeavor,” Eaton recalls. “The important thing is that it was a spark
that lit a passion.”
Depradine went on to earn multiple bachelor’s degrees in chemistry,
history and Francophile studies from the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette. He met his wife, DeAundra, when he became her chemistry
tutor.
According to Depradine, his shrimp Florentine was the dish that won
DeAundra over. But not long after they were married, he paired a pecan
pie with a German Riesling. She was smitten. Since they were on a tight
budget, Depradine began winemaking at home.
Grape Escape
Visiting wineries across southern Louisiana became a way for
Depradine to taste and learn about the diversity of beverage traditions
brought to the United States by immigrants, such as the strawberry wines
made by Italians who settled throughout the state.
After his son Zacherie was born, Depradine strapped him into an
infant carrying pouch. Disarmed by an attentive dad caring for a “cute”
baby, the conversation with winemakers would begin to flow. When
daughter Valentina came along and was less content sitting in the pouch,
dad perched her on his broad shoulders bracing her with one hand while
balancing a wine glass in the other.
“They were my ticket into these spaces where you don’t normally find Black folks,” Depradine says.
Eager to buy land to grow fruit on, Depradine started writing a short
wine history to submit with his loan applications, but the research
project grew into a 200-page manuscript.
Despite his efforts, Depradine was refused for every loan he has
applied for. To start Zydeco Meadery, the couple scrimped and saved,
pulling together about $30,000, including a loan from his mother for
bottles and supplies.
“I really hope more people of color actually go into alcohol
manufacturing, but it takes a lot of money to get into grapes,” says
Depardine, who still relies on his kids, promoting them to “assistant
winemakers” at age 10 and 8.
Face of Mead
The Highland Community College Viticulture and Enology Program
started in 2010 as a way to help Kansas farmers used to growing
commodity wheat, soybeans and corn supplement their farm income with
value-added wine grapes.
Highland currently has six acres of vines and a commercial winery. In
2019, the college opened 456 Wineries, the first wine incubator east of
the Rocky Mountains. Students typically range in age from 45 to 60, and
most students plan to open their winery on a few acres of farmland that
has been passed down through family.
Depradine, 37, is the program’s first black winemaker. Less than 1%
of wineries in the United States are black-owned, according to Wine & Spirits Magazine.
“We hope we get more students like Eric,” says program director Scott
Kohl. “Person of color or otherwise, there are not a lot of excellent
mead making wineries around. That he’s making mead just adds to the
uniqueness that is Eric. He’s not afraid to be different from the rest
of the crowd.”
The incubator has provided Depradine access to winemaking equipment, a
shared tasting room and mentoring to help him learn winemaking,
permitting processes and marketing. The wineries at the incubator are
charged an increasing amount of rent and may use the facilities for up
to five years.
Depradine took some classes online, but he also drove three hours
roundtrip to attend in-person classes and work on his recipes. His last
hurdle to get his first bottle of mead to market was the state line.
To sell wine in Kansas you must be a resident. Kohl reached out to
Gary Clift, an English teacher at Kansas State University and the owner
of Louis Vieux Winery. Clift partnered with Depradine, allowing Zydeco
Meadery to become a contractor for the winery.
Clift was impressed with Depradine’s knowledge and intrigued by his grandmother’s story.
“Eric’s not making mead as if it’s a reference to Anglo-Saxon
warriors,” Clift says. “We had to tell him about renaissance festivals.”
456
Wineries in Wamego, Kansas, is a business incubator that allows
students studying enology and viticulture access to winemaking
equipment, mentoring and a tasting room at an affordable cost.
(Contributed | Eric Depradine)
Legacy Building
Native Caribs and Arawak have been using the bark of the mauby tree to flavor beverages for centuries.
“The recipe has been passed down for the last 500 years,” Depradine says. “I submitted the recipe and (the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau,
which regulates alcohol and tobacco) … said I had to go do research in
order to prove that the bark can be used for alcohol manufacturing.”
Although frustrating, his mentor Kohl sees such speed bumps as minor.
“Eric has a lot of ingredients no one has asked to put in a
(commercial) beverage before. But he’s such a smart guy, he’ll be able
to answer their questions.”
Depradine has received approval for three more meads scheduled for
release in June: Lavender Love (Kansas honey and dried lavender), Mass
Memories (Massachusetts cranberry honey and maple syrup), and Spicy
Kanza Apple (an adaptation of his grandmother’s recipe for ginger beer,
with Kansas honey and apple juice).
Further expansion plans include adding cysers, a mead fermented with
apple juice rather than water, and fortified wine known as Angelica,
which were originally made by Franciscan missionaries when California
was still a Mexican possession.
But for Zydeco Meadery and other wineries, breweries and distilleries
owned by people of color to become more than a mere drop in the
nation’s wine bottles, more financial institutions will need to be
willing to make an investment in an industry where the cost of entry is
high.
“People have been making alcohol since we’ve been walking upright,”
Depradine says. “But in this country, for some reason, you don’t think
of Black folks doing it.”
While beer, wine and spirits get most of the attention in the world
of craft alcoholic beverages, San Diego’s Billy and Suzanna Beltz
believe that mead’s time has come.
Mead is a beverage made with fermented honey and various adjunct
ingredients, and while it is often associated with Renaissance fairs or
Vikings, it has a long, storied history through many cultures.
The Beltz’s Lost Cause Meadery in San Diego just celebrated its third
anniversary, but they have already earned an impressive number of
awards, and their flavor creations are truly unique, using the defining
characteristics of different honey varietals to pair with other
ingredients to create complex combinations that stretch the boundaries
of mead.
• Strike the Sun is an 11.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) mead made with
Brazilian acacia honey, sunquats, Riesling grapes and kiwi. It features a
light golden color and a bright aroma of lemon blossom and white grape,
reminiscent of a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc. On the palate, citrus
sweetness is pronounced in this full-bodied beverage, but it is balanced
by substantial acidity and a flinty minerality. Despite the sweetness
on the tongue, it finishes light, with a tangy lemon acidity dancing on
the roof of the mouth.
• Made with black currants, raspberries and vanilla, and aged in
American oak, Haxa is a decadent 12% mead. Featuring a vibrant red color
and aroma characteristics of Pinot Noir and port, including sweet
raspberry, cedar and smooth oak, the black currant character emerges as
it warms. Given the sweetness of the aroma, the surprisingly tart berry
flavor with bright lemony notes comes as a surprise, but it is rounded
out by rich sweetness. With a heavy, unctuous mouthfeel, the mead leaves
substantial legs in the glass as it leads to a finish of sweet berry
and smooth oak. This mead somehow takes the flavor of fresh-picked ripe
raspberries and improves upon it.
• Along with all the brewers who created Black Is Beautiful beers to
raise money for worthy social justice organizations during 2020, Lost
Cause created a Black Is Beautiful mead to raise funds for the
California Innocence Project and Game Changer. This 12% ABV mead is made
from caramelized honey with almonds, cacao, vanilla, black cardamom and
chicory, and is a deep reddish-brown in color with golden highlights.
The seriously complex aroma brings together earthy, spicy, herbal,
floral and alcohol notes, along with coffee, anise, a light
golden-raisiny sweetness and smooth brownie batter. The flavor is
dominated by caramel and milk chocolate, but with spicy undertones, and
the finish is bright citrus with high alcohol notes. The full, rich,
mouth-coating body and mouthfeel make sense given the sweet finish, but
complementary alcohol heat keeps it from being cloying.
• While many of Lost Cause’s mad scientist creations have very
complex aroma and flavor profiles, Sweet Reckoning raspberry mead with
hazelnuts is lovely in its simplicity. It smells like … raspberries and
hazelnuts. It tastes like … raspberries and hazelnuts. Reddish-brown in
color, medium bodied and more sweet than dry, with notes of alcohol
present in both the aroma and the flavor due to the 11.5% ABV, this mead
would pair beautifully with the chocolate dessert of your choice.
Derek Wolfgram is a Certified Beer Judge through the Beer
Judge Certification Program and an officer of the Silicon Valley
Sudzers homebrew club. For more information, visit sudzers.org.
Last week, Keys’ Meads co-owner Jeff
Kesling and head distiller Jeff Wingate, known as “The Jeffs,” sat at a
table and swirled amber-colored fluid in small snifters. They were
preparing to sample their inventory. The three glasses on the table had
taped labels indicating which barrel they had come from: 107, 102 and
006.
“The 006 was aged in a sour beer
barrel. Very good, but not in my taste palate,” said Wingate,
thoughtfully. He sipped the 107 mead. He tilted his head back. “Amazing.
Tastes like heaven. Liquid sunshine.”
“Not gonna lie, it’s my favorite,” said Kesling, pointing at 102.
“It’s like biting into a crisp Gala
apple. In used beer barrels, the meads are picking up the flavors of
beer,” Wingate said, explaining that Keys’ Meads buys used oak barrels
from other breweries to age their meads in, lending each a different
flavor.
“We’re lucky if we have eight gallons of that one,” said Kesling. “Four for you, four for me.” The men break into laughter.
Thus goes a typical mead tasting at
Keys’ Meads, educational and fun at the same time. “The Jeffs” enjoy a
breezy back-and-forth banter. Kesling said that one of the names they’re
batting around for their new distillery is “Throuple Jeff,” because,
believe it or not, the other co-owner, Kesling’s father, is named Jeff
Kesling Sr.
But the full-time bartender’s name is Devon Mederos. “We’re gonna give him the name tag ‘Not Jeff,’” joked Kesling.
However, Wingate and Kesling take
mead-making very seriously. “Mead is more versatile than wine, honestly,
in terms of what you can do with flavors,” said Wingate.
“You can quote both of us as saying that,” said Kesling.
Kesling has lived in the Keys on and
off since he was 6 years old, and he has made a living for the most part
as an engineer. In 2014, he was inspired to start home-brewing mead
because he’s not a huge fan of beer and wine.
If, when you think of mead, you
imagine Vikings sitting around a massive wood table, yelling “Argh!” and
clinking metal cups in all those Netflix dramas, you can be excused.
But according to Delish.com, “While mead has gotten a medieval reputation thanks to movies and TV
shows, its history stretches back much further. With its simple
fermented honey plus water recipe, mead was one of the very first
alcoholic beverages ever made, predating beer and wine - as far back as 3,000 B.C."
Starting his own meadery business was
a natural decision for Kesling. “I’m an entrepreneur. I’m one of those
people, ‘If I can, I will.’ I built the walls in this place. The floor.
The walls. Very literally,” he said.
The first Keys’ Meads business opened
in 2017 on the second floor of an office building at MM 99.3 in Key
Largo. But they just moved into a new, more accessible storefront, which
is next to Mattress & Beyond at MM 99.4.
“We lucked into this location,”
Kesling said. “I came in to buy a mattress. I joked, ‘If you ever decide
to close up, I’ll take your location.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m trying
to downsize.’ It wasn’t until I was here that I realized how much I was
choking while at the last location.”
Kesling uses honey from Wingate’s
Pirate Hat Apiary business. The duo met at a local home-brewing
competition in 2014, and the rest is history.
“It was a friendship that began as a
vendor supplier and now it’s blossomed into a partnership,” explained
Wingate. “We may bring honey production in house.”
“Ah, my evil plan is coming to fruition,” replied Kesling.
In addition to selling bottles of
meads and tastings, Keys’ Meads also sells a selection of Pirate Hat
Apiary products that are made by Wingate and his wife. The items include
candles, soaps, body scrubs, and the honey itself.
Pirate Hat Apiary honey, sold at Keys’ Meads and used to make the brews at the meadery.
Kesling said business got a boost in
September shortly after Keys’ Meads moved to the current location and
artist Ginger Hill put the highly visible mural on the side of the
building. Passengers in cars can easily see the colorful painting while
sitting at the nearby light.
“The outside mural brought people here. It’s a landmark now,” Kesling said.
But, back to that mead tasting.
Wingate waxes poetic about the differences that the honey from the
different seasons impart to the mead, depending upon which flowers are
available for the bees. For example, in the summer, bees feed on the
black mangrove flowers.
“It’s the honey that the Keys are
most famous for. The mangroves’ roots are in saltwater, so the honey
tastes like salted caramel butterscotch,” said Wingate.
So how often do you sample the mead? the Keys Weekly asked.
“More frequently than we should,” Kesling answered with a twinkle in his eye.
“When you age mead in a barrel, you
have to taste it often for quality assurance,” said Wingate. “Every day
it gets different. It’s non-reproducible mead.”
“We actually like it
non-reproducible,” said Kesling. “When I talk to other breweries, they
think it’s a feat of endurance that Budweiser can pull off the
reproducibility of beer. We don’t want it reproducible. We want you to
say that you like this one better.”
“I really like the 107,” Wingate said, gazing at his glass.
“You really need to take time and
enjoy it. It’s not Budweiser,” Kesling said. “You sip it, and you sip it
like bourbon. You sip that sucker.” He paused, then turned to Wingate.
“This sour is now my favorite,” Kesling said.
Keys’ Meads tastings are $8 per
person for one-third ounces of 10 of their current meads or $16 for all.
Bottles are $24 to $38. The address is 99411 Overseas Highway, Key
Largo. Hours are Monday to Saturday, noon to 7 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 6
p.m. For more information, call 305-204-4596.
