Chemist-turned-mead-maker brewing new winery in Midlothian, Virginia

From richmondbizsense.com

Something sweet is brewing in Chesterfield County.

Funktastic Meads & Urban Winery is preparing to open at 1212 Alverser Plaza in Midlothian.

It’ll be the first meadery in Chesterfield and third in the Richmond region, joining Black Heath Meadery in Scott’s Addition and Hopewell’s Haley’s Honey Meadery.

Behind Funktastic Meads is married couple Matt and Heather Carroll. A chemist by trade, Matt started making mead as a hobby about a decade ago. Heather, an accountant, said Matt showed a knack for making the fermented honey-based beverage from early on.

“I was like, ‘Hey you didn’t do half bad on that!’” Heather said of Matt’s first batch of mead, laughing. “He’s definitely improved over time, but it was good from the start.”

“This is a hobby gone wrong. Or right, depending how you see it,” Matt added.

Heather and Matt Carroll in Funktastic Meads and Urban Winery’s future home, which is currently under construction. (Mike Platania photo)

After years of making mead for themselves and friends, and collecting a few mead home-brewing awards, Matt said in 2019 he had the idea to find a winery in Virginia to team up with so he could produce mead at a larger scale. He wound up doing just that with Amherst’s Lazy Day Winery.

“We did that for over a year and we released two bottles a month,” Matt said. “We sold out every single month, sometimes in one or two minutes, others in one or two hours. But nonetheless, we sold out almost instantly.”

That success prompted the duo to turn Funktastic Meads into an LLC last year, and in early 2021 they decided to start looking around for brick-and-mortar space, ideally in Chesterfield County where they live.

The Carrolls decided to lease roughly 1,500-square-foot space in Alverser Plaza, formerly a Conte’s Bike Shop.

M.L. Bell Construction is building out the space that Michael Pellis Architecture designed, and Matt said they’re aiming for an early January opening.

“I have a meadery in my house,” Matt said, laughing. “Our tanks are in our garage, bar stools in the guest room. I just need this to be done so I can move it all here.”

Matt said he tries to make his meads as a bridge between craft beer and wine, ranging from five to 14 percent alcohol-by-volume and sometimes using untraditional ingredients like Golden Oreos, spicy peppers or fruit.

“Meads technically fall into the category of wine but our ability to use different adjuncts is a lot more like craft beer,” Matt said.

Added Heather, “Everyone has their own thoughts of mead but it can be just as dry as the wine you’d have in a winery.”

Mead will be available by the glass, flight and bottle when Funktastic Meads & Urban Winery opens. 

                                                     (Courtesy of Funktastic Meads & Urban Winery)

The front of the house at the new facility will include a bar and lounge area with murals on the wall, all designed to look more like a brewery taproom than a winery. Matt said he hopes his meadery will be a neighbourhood spot for craft beer and wine drinkers alike.

“One of the big question marks is how will the local community receive this. I know we do well with the craft beer community, but this is gonna be sustainable because of the local community,” he said.

“I can’t wait until I have the craft beer nerd and the wine snob sitting next to each other at the bar. That’s pretty cool, and I hope we’ll have that.”

https://richmondbizsense.com/2021/10/28/chemist-turned-mead-maker-brewing-new-winery-in-midlothian/

Raise a glass to sparkling mead

From sg.style.yahoo.com

Water, honey... and bubbles! That's the recipe for a brand-new drink that refreshes an age-old tipple dating back to ancient times. What's different about this 2021 take on mead is the addition of a light fizz, as well as a lower alcohol content, at no more than 4.5°. Meet Bulles de Ruche.

What if you swapped your glass of champagne for a glass of sparkling mead this holiday season? This honey wine was already being concocted in the early days of history, relying on the transformation of sugars contained in honey into alcohol. Aristotle himself even described a recipe for this highly alcoholic tipple back in his day. The Greeks and Romans also consumed it and passed on this habit to the Gauls. In short, mead is not a new drink.

However, this long-forgotten alcoholic beverage is getting a new lease on life thanks to an entrepreneur who has had the good idea of revisiting the recipe in a sparkling version -- perfect for celebrating events -- and with a reduced alcohol content, meeting new customer demands for low-alcohol alternatives.

Bulles de Ruche is a new drink that brings mead up to date in a sparkling version

Created by Paul-Augustin Delattre, Beeche's Bulles de Ruche mead comes in at just 4.5°, while other variations can have an alcohol content of 18°. The production process is similar to that of a wine, with a stainless-steel tank for the fermentation stage, which takes place at low temperature. Exogenous yeasts are used so that the concoction maintains a certain acidity. The drink's appearance, its pretty golden color, as well as its bottle, also fit perfectly with the codes of the wine world.

And the verdict?

When first sampling the drink, its lightness immediately leads to comparison with cider. However, the similarities end there. As a certain bitterness coats the palate, it gives rise to an obvious comparison with a lager. But here, in a different form, beer drinkers can revel in an altogether more floral drink.

The brand has chosen three types of honey to create versions of the drink with different aromatic profiles: lychee honey sourced in southeastern Madagascar, lavender honey harvested on the Valensole plateau in Provence, and lime honey gathered in the Forest of Halatte in the Oise region of France. The drink is sold for €12 (around $14) at the Grande Epicerie de Paris, as well as at the Halles Modernes and at Cigoire in Lille.

And if ancient wines are your thing, it's possible to sup concoctions that are as close as possible to the recipes that the Romans used to make wine at a vineyard in France's Gard region, where excavations have unearthed amphorae. Heir to a Gallo-Roman villa that made containers for exporting wine, Mas des Tourelles has developed three original wines, including Mulsum, a blend of wine and honey and a certain number of plants and spices to make an unusual and delicious drink!

Bérangère Chatelain

https://sg.style.yahoo.com/raise-glass-sparkling-mead-085456267.html

The Meading Room offers sweet alternative in Arizona’s wine country

From eminetra.com

Combining honey with water and yeast produces mead, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages known to humans. Mead debris has been found in ancient Chinese pottery since about 7000 BC, with more examples from ancient Greeks, Scandinavians, Egyptians, and Celts.

This bold ancestral wisdom has been repackaged for the modern audience by Kylie Daniels and Barbara Christianson.

The mother-daughter team opened The Meading Room in Sonoita in September 2019. Christianson is a former Raytheon engineer and Daniels is an experienced winemaker with a degree in art from the University of Arizona. Their collective skills have created a venue with stunning views and savoury light meals.

The main building is surrounded by rolling hills and offers 360-degree views of the distant mountains. Daniels and Christianson worked hard to build a property to their liking. Almost everything is made by ourselves and all drinks are handmade in the production room.

The team wanted to stand out in the competition when they first considered starting a business in the Arizona wine region. According to Daniels, Mead was very versatile and Christianson had the skill to create interesting flavour combinations.

“You can add almost anything and create very complex flavours,” says Daniels. “We have created a” new fashion “that is a spin of the” old fashion. ” It is avocado flower, orange blossom honey, cherries, aged in barrels with bourbon and tempranillo ports. “

Their drink offerings change seasonally due to the availability of products from other local businesses. Daniels’ favourite mead is a breakfast club developed with locally roasted Brazilian cold beer. Christianson has developed the Hatch Green Chilies Margarita, which has a delicate balance of spicy and sweet flavours.

However, pandemics will test their business strategy in just a few months after opening. Like most small businesses during the pandemic, The Meading Room had to be closed and the team wondered if they were going to make it in the wine country.

“One of the biggest hurdles I had was not following the huge social media yet, so when everything was shut down and I tried to push online orders, I had so much reach. I didn’t have it, “said Daniels.

Christianson and Daniels have renewed their business by expanding outdoor space and shifting focus from the inside. They landscaped a lawn courtyard, added aisles, built a poultry farm, a butterfly garden, and plenty of outdoor seating options.

Christianson said he changed the serving procedure to reduce the infection of the virus.

“After COVID, we switched to flights, so we put them on trays so people could take them out and separate them,” Christianson said.

With all these changes, The Meading Room is increasing its production every month to meet demand.

“Within the two years we’ve created, the demand in the tasting room was so high that we increased production five-fold,” says Daniels.

We also collaborate with locals to hold events in the courtyard. They recently hosted a Chilean festival where you can enjoy live music, roasted Chile and barbecues.

Christianson said he is planning a Christmas market during the holiday season and will host local Halloween games. The Patagonia acting group will play Heidi’s monkeys at 7 pm from October 28th to October 30th. The play is touted as a psychological horror and costs $ 10 at the door.

The Meading Room has had tremendous success during the pandemic, thanks to Daniels and Christianson’s swift business strategy.

“Both Kylie and I are very creative. I like to have fun coming up with new ideas and experimenting with different ideas,” says Christianson.

https://eminetra.com/the-meading-room-offers-sweet-alternative-in-arizonas-wine-country-on-the-menu-tucson-arizona/801430/

The Buzz Meadery finds sweet spot in Maryland USA with mix of mead and cider

From eu.delmarvanow.com

Brett and Meghan Hines, both full-time teachers at Indian River High School, opened The Buzz Meadery in Berlin during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brett Hines said they signed their life away before the pandemic hit, which left them no choice but to open.

"I don't think much would've changed had the pandemic not happened," he said. "It's honestly given us a chance to start slower and figure things out."

When the couple lived in Colorado, Brett was a member of a homebrewing group called Liquid Poets.

"A guy in my homebrew club got me hooked on session mead. I started making it and really liked the way it tasted and the brewing process was fun for me," Hines said.

Using fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness, they source from local growers around the Eastern Shore to create various meads and ciders. 

Hines said they look for organic growers or transitional organic growers first when selecting who to buy fruit and vegetables from for the meads or ciders.

Brett Hines, Buzz Meadery, pours a cup of Grape mead Friday, Oct. 15, 2021, at The Commons on 21 Jefferson Street in Berlin, Maryland.    LAUREN ROBERTS/SALISBURY DAILY TIMES

"If that's not an option, we try to partner with whoever is closest, who has the most sustainable practices," he said. "It's my way of making an environmentally more conscious alcohol that tastes freaking awesome and is just really fun to drink."

The Buzz Meadery was started in an 800-square-foot building on Worcester Highway, where it had a brewing area and tasting room, which has since closed to the public.

It now serves meads and ciders out of a van parked at The Berlin Commons. The donation-based, community green space is located at 21 Jefferson St. in Berlin.

"We live right here in town and this was a way we could pull up our mead truck, serve here on the weekends and have our neighbourhood friends and family come walk into town and enjoy sitting outside and really kind of establish a community again," he said.

Hines said The Berlin Commons was a creative collaboration to have an open-air, outdoor space that is COVID-friendly and centred between the residential and business districts. 

"I think what the Commons really represents is community. I think everybody can just take a step back and remember that everybody is doing the best they can," he said.

Brett Hines Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021, at the Buzz Meadery brewery in Berlin, Maryland.  

LAUREN ROBERTS/SALISBURY DAILY TIMES

The Buzz Meadery sells its product directly at The Berlin Commons from 4-9 p.m. Fridays and 2-9 p.m. Saturdays.

Also in Berlin, Boxcar on Main and Sterling Tavern have the Soulstice on draft while Blacksmith has bottles available.

West-O Bottle Shop & Bar in Ocean City, Pitt Stop Beer, Wine and Spirits in Berlin, and The Buzzed Word in Ocean City also carry Buzz Meadery products.

https://eu.delmarvanow.com/story/entertainment/2021/10/21/mead-and-cider-served-up-buzz-meadery-berlin/8520944002/

Thee cheers for Kinsale’s Mead Great Taste win

From southernstar.ie

KINSALE Mead are celebrating after a win at the Great Taste Awards 2021.

The business, which is Ireland's only meadery, was honoured for its Hazy Summer Mead. Its flagship traditional mead Atlantic Dry Mead was a winner two years ago.

Co-founder, Denis Dempsey said they were delighted with the recognition: ‘It’s been a tough time for everyone, and every acknowledgement from independent sources is a boost.’

Kate Dempsey added: ‘As a small, artisan company and the only meadery in Ireland, we are very proud to be able to say that Irish mead is recognised as being among the best in the world, and we work hard to select the best, pure honey and berries to make our meads.’

The Great Taste Awards is one of the most trusted and prestigious awards for food and drink globally with thousands of entries, so there’s stiff competition.

Awarding Kinsale Mead, the judges said: ‘The aroma was of rich ripe strawberries and honey, which was extremely enticing.’

https://www.southernstar.ie/business/thee-cheers-for-kinsales-mead-great-taste-win-4231295

From beehive to bottle, Honeytree Meadery serves up a unique product in Nashville, Tennessee

From mainstreet-nashville.com

In East Nashville, Honeytree Meadery is a cheerful white rectangle, the building itself reminiscent of a beehive box. And on this sunny afternoon, the honey tree is buzzing with activity.

Just days ahead of the 2021 Tennessee Honey Festival — cancelled last year due to the pandemic — co-owners Ross Welbon and Dru Sousan are working hard to prepare their signature craft mead for sale.

The meadery is one of just two in Middle Tennessee, and the only in Nashville, carefully brewing a spirited nectar with honey from local beekeepers and its own private apiary of 30 beehives in East Nashville.

“We pride ourselves on either knowing the beekeepers or being the beekeepers for all the honey we use in house,” Sousan says.

Honeytree Meadery co-owners Ross Welbon and Dru Sousan use honey from their 30-plus beehives to make their mead.                Larry McCormack / Main Street Nashville

This will be Honeytree Meadery’s first year as a vendor at the festival, and with up to 25,000 people expected to attend on Sunday, preparations are immense. But the festival isn’t the only big development on the horizon. Starting Oct. 11, Honeytree Meadery will be available in liquor stores and restaurants all over Nashville — the product’s first foray into commercial distribution.

“We’ll sleep when we’re dead,” Sousan says with a grin.

It’s been a long road to get here, working through the pandemic and extensive damage from the tornado that ripped through East Nashville in March 2020. It all started when Welbon discovered he had a knack for brewing while working at a local brewery. A self-taught beekeeper, he started making mead with honey from his backyard beehives.

“You can’t read through a beekeeping book without seeing mead in there somewhere,” he says. “It progressed from a hobby into more of a profession.”

It takes about two to three months to go from honey to the mead bottle. Each batch of mead takes a two- to three-week fermentation process, then the flavour needs time to develop and for the mead to become clear.

Honeytree Meadery in East Nashville sells mead on tap or in bottles. Larry McCormack / Main Street Nashville

Honeytree Meadery first became available in local restaurants in 2018, and the next year, the business opened a tasting room at the East Nashville location. It’s developed into a sort of clearinghouse for local honey producers to sell honey. Sousan says when local beekeepers are looking to sell big batches of honey, the meadery is a good option.

“It doesn’t cost them any packaging because we take the honey, dump it into the tanks, clean the buckets and give them the buckets back,” he says. “Our goal is to be the highest source of revenue for beekeepers in the entire state.”

Every bottle of mead produced is made from Middle Tennessee local honey.

In case you were wondering, while consuming local honey has many benefits, including boosting gut health and helping with seasonal allergies, it’s not likely that mead brewed with local honey has the same properties.

“I always tell people, if you believe it is, it can be,” Welbon says, chuckling. “But the alcohol probably kills off anything that’s beneficial for you.”

But since mead is made with only honey, water and yeast, it’s a good alternative for people with gluten intolerance or issues with tannins in wine.

Both owners are looking forward to meeting with other local beekeepers at the Honey Festival this weekend and raising awareness about the importance of local beekeeping.

“Even if you don’t like honey or you don’t like mead, your garden, your food, your yard, everything depends on these bees,” Sousan says.

Honeytree Meadery will have three selections available at the festival: its flagship Basic Batch, made with dark wildflower honey; the Bouquet Toss, made with rose hip, hibiscus and linden flower; and the Signature Series, a sweeter sampling with a note on each bottle tracing the origin of the honey used to brew.

https://www.mainstreet-nashville.com/news/from-beehive-to-bottle-honeytree-meadery-serves-up-a-unique-local-product/article_11a09992-2244-11ec-bc50-57a53ba0fe28.html

Heilung announce signature mead & beer

From nextmosh.com

Enigmatic world music outfit Heilung are proud to announce their personally created, limited edition mead and beer! The specially developed signature beverages, which were created in collaboration with mead developer Mjødgård and beer brewery Nevel, are now available HERE.

Heilung comments:
“It´s feasting time! We wish you all a pleasant autumn equinox, the time where we reap what we have sown and enjoy the bounty of the harvest. This year, we have a special sort of harvest to share with you: Our very first batch of our very own ALU and MJØDR. We have always liked the idea of creating a beer and a mead, and thanks to our dear collaborators in Doomstar Bookings it all got set in motion this year. The choice of breweries landed on one of the oldest Danish mead breweries Mjødgård and the well renowned Dutch beer brewers Nevel Wild Ales. Please note: This is by no means a cheap, mass-produced product with a band logo on top, this is something we have been developing after our own taste for quite some time, and pored all our love into, like with everything we do. Skåååååål!”

Doomstar Bookings comments on the collaboration:
“Doomstar Bookings is utterly proud to unveil a project that combines two of our passions; music and tasty thirst quenchers! Upon touring together late 2019 with Heilung, the idea was put forward to create a Heilung beer. That idea started a life of its own and resulted in two beautiful products, the Heilung beer named Alu and the Heilung mead named Mjøðr, respectively created by the Dutch (award winning) artisanal ale expert Nevel and the renowned Danish meadery Mjødgård Bryggeri. Both have created an excellent alcoholic beverage that totally fits the artist’s flavour desires and their historical image. A limited amount of 3500 75CL bottles of this herbalized saison tripel beer and 1100 70CL bottles of the herbalized honey wine will be released to the world this autumn equinox through our partners at Spirits for Rock, we hope you can get spiritual after indulging in this amplified tastery!”

Mead developer Mjødgård comments:
“Mjødgård develops mead from passion. We look back in time for inspiration, and we want to show that mead is modern and, as then, still a luxurious drink. Making Heilung mead with the band’s historical and natural inspiration are completely in line with Mjødgård. To combine the essence of Heilung with our modern mead we had to use Meadow Sweet as the main spice, with its roots dating back to the Bronze Age, combined with hemp, with its thousands of years of history. Nature is our greatest source why our ingredients are all local. We want to support the preservation of biodiversity. We are therefore really proud to present a mead that builds a bridge between the world of the past and the present.”

Beer developer Nevel comments:
“Yup, that’s right! We were asked to brew for a neofolk band! Doomstar Bookings approached us, asking whether we wanted to make a traditional Scandinavian beer for Heilung, a band known for reviving traditional Scandinavian music. We could not say ‘no’ to that. We are very honoured to work together with these amazing artists and we are quite proud of the result. Alu was meant to be a crowd pleaser and we knew the band enjoyed drinking Belgian classics. They opted us to work with historical herbs and ingredients. For this beer, we used a traditional Scandinavian blend of herbs (with a.o. wild bog myrtle and meadowsweet), we added caramelized honey of beekeeper Stevns and we used a traditional Belgian Saison yeast. This boils down to a floral, thirst quencing, crushable beer. This beer is different to what you are used to, especially as this is a first time for us not to use our own house culture. We wanted to make more space for Scandinavian history.”

In celebration of the collaboration, Season of Mist & Heilung created special and extremely limited hand-made ‘mead cups’, which are available in three different colours. These cups are available via the shop HERE.

Line-up:
Kai Uwe Faust
Christopher Juul
Maria Franz

https://nextmosh.com/heilung-announce-signature-mead-beer/

Nice to Mead You: Hoop & Horn Mead Comes to Shanghai

From thatsmags.com

By Chris Foste

An old German proverb states that there is wisdom in wine, strength in beer, and love in mead. Ok, maybe the part about mead isn’t actually in the proverb, but it should be.

Just as old, if not older than beer and wine, mead is simply fermented honey water. A basic mead uses only three ingredients – honey, water and yeast – to produce a drink with alcohol strength similar to wine.

However, mead can also be brewed into fantastically complex beverages using different combinations of spices, fruits, herbs or even in addition to wine and beer. Where can one find a good mead in China? Well, allow me to introduce you to Hoop & Horn Mead.

Hoop & Horn Mead comes to China with a sweet and smooth flavour inspired by historic tastes and influence by modern trends. Hoop & Horn’s Gold Horn Mead uses raw lychee honey directly from local honey bees, which supports local farms and the ecosystem as a whole. 

Bees are good for the environment since they pollinate thousands of flowers every day, and Hoop & Horn wants to perpetuate a strong and healthy natural world.

Shameless self-promotion alert: Hoop & Horn Mead is brewed by your humble That’s Shanghai's beer columnist – me, Chris Foste. The Hoop & Horn story begins long ago during my time living in South Korea.

As a birthday gift, a local friend gave me an unnecessarily large jar of honey. With no conceivable idea on how to consume that much honey, my local brewing community recommended that I not eat it, but instead ferment it!

Almost 10 years ago, that first batch of blueberry mead came to life, and with it the dream of starting a meadery was born.

Mead has a very colourful history throughout the world – Vikings drank mead for courage, Romans drank it for creativity and medieval England paired it with their fanciful feasts – and now Hoop & Horn is bringing this coveted style of honey wine back into the main stream.

Drank well on ice or mixed into cocktails, Hoop & Horn Mead can be found in various venues all over Shanghai. Get your taste of sweet honey mead at Alimentari, where you can pair the honey wine with a fine set of cured meats and cheeses. Or, if you want to have booze delivered to your home, just order a bottle through Bottles XO.

Be sure to check out the growing number of bars and restaurants with mead, including Perch, J.Boroski, Mezcaleria, Mikkeller, The Smokehouse and Beer Barrel, among others.

https://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/post/33401/nice-to-mead-you-hoop-horn-mead-comes-to-shanghai