Mechalore MeadWorks Makes Experimental Meads in Loveland, Colorado

From westword.com

Honey won out over barley for one Colorado brewer. When Adam Thompson started making beer and mead in 2006, mead quickly became his preferred beverage to brew. “I started realizing how wide open mead is, and how nobody has really explored mead as much and tested the potential,” Thompson explains.

Last year, he opened Mechalore MeadWorks in Loveland, where he brews four different kinds of mead every quarter. In his No Where to Hide series, he keeps his recipes traditional but changes the type of honey each time. His Volume One won a bronze medal in the Traditional-Dry category at this year's Mazer Cup, an international mead competition. “It’s a great mead to show how different various types of honey can be,” he notes.

Thompson says he loves to experiment not only with different types of honey, but also with spices and other ingredients. His mojito mead, called Fed Unto the Axioms, blends orange blossom honey, spearmint and lime zest. Tahitian vanilla bean is used in his sweeter creamsicle-style mead.

Mead maker Adam Thompson is all about experimenting when it comes to his Loveland-based mead operation. 

Mechalore Meadworks

“The sweeter ones tend to be more popular even though everyone complains about mead being too sweet,” Thompson laughs. Some of the sweet bestsellers include a French toast mead and an oatmeal-raisin cookie mead.

The brewer embraces sweet meads as well as modern styles. “I’m trying to hit what I think are the different palates out there — the traditional, the spice, the dessert-like, the sweet," he explains.

Regardless of the type of mead or what he pairs it with, he's glad to be making it in Colorado. “I’m happy to be part of this group,” he says of the state’s close-knit group of mead makers.

For those new to mead, Thompson advises that all meaderies are different and encourages people to keep trying and experiment. “There are a lot of good meads in Colorado. If mine doesn’t hit you, try somebody else,” he says.

Thompson plans to open a taproom in a few years, but for now he's still managing a landscaping company full-time as well as two young daughters, his official honey tasters. For now, find the mead in liquor stores in Denver and throughout the Front Range. For more information, visit mechalore.com.

https://www.westword.com/restaurants/lovelands-mechalore-meadworks-explores-traditional-and-experimental-styles-11424314 

UK: Ipswich residents are invited to summon their inner Viking on National Mead Day

From thelocalne.ws

IPSWICH — “I drive by you all the time and have never stopped in …”  

What are you waiting for? Maybe National Mead Day?

Mead, thought to be the oldest known alcohol, is fermented honey — honey wine. Honey can be fermented on its own for a traditional-style mead or fermented with locally sourced fruits to make melomel meads. 

At the 1634 Meadery, some fruit used comes from Ipswich’s Russell Orchards and Marini Farm. They, too, try to support small business.

In honour of National Mead Day (August 6), the 1634 Meadery will offer indoor and outdoor tasting flights, a science area with microscopes set up to view bees, wasps, flowers, and more, information to go about honey and bees, a free monarch butterfly egg giveaway (while they last), mead slushies, a chalk art area for kids, free varietal honey tasting, and free samples of Viking Victory Ice Cream made by Down River Ice Cream (21+) “and other surprise fun!”

Well-behaved children and dogs are welcome. The event runs at the Meadery on Short Street from noon to 6 p.m. on August 6.

http://thelocalne.ws/2022/07/25/residents-invited-to-summon-their-inner-viking-on-national-mead-day/

Superstition Meadery Is About to Elevate Downtown Phoenix Drinking

From phoenixnewtimes.com

One of the great unsung stories in local food and beverage is how much downtown Phoenix drink culture has grown in just the past few years.

Giant leaps forward have been made with openings like Sauvage (natural-leaning wines), Little Rituals (erudite, imaginative cocktails), The Theodore (tightly curated craft beer bar), and Arizona Wilderness DTPHX (brewing mastery from staple styles to experimental beers). Next month, the scene is set to spring ahead even further, and with a drink that might set Phoenix apart: mead.

Yes, mead. The “honey wine.” The boozy fluid straight out of Beowulf and King Midas and Viking longships. Mead has a bad rap in U.S. drinking circles, one that in many ways has been earned. Most mead is cloying and greets your tongue with all the tenderness of a sledgehammer made of sugar cubes. But wide-ranging Arizona craft drinkers know that mead can be restrained and eye-widening, just like beer or wine or sake.

Superstition Meadery — based in Prescott and a local craft favourite — is soon to debut a large indoor-outdoor restaurant and mead destination. Jeff and Jen Herbert, co-owners, are slated to open in the lavishly restored Jim Ong’s Market building at 11th and Washington streets, or specifically 1110 East Washington Street, next month.

“Our mission statement is to reintroduce the world’s oldest beverage to mankind,” Jeff says.

Since opening in 2012, when they rented 18 square feet from a Skull Valley winery in central Arizona, the Herberts have been doing just that, having crafted more than 300 meads. Some highlight the soul of the ancient beverage, honey, including wildflower, mesquite, ironwood, and other honeys, all sourced from Arizona until this year (as newly released canned “session meads” use Brazilian honey). Other Superstition meads sculpt and bend honey’s flavours via techniques like adding fruits and spices, or barrel aging. Just this fall, Superstition won six medals at the Mazer Cup, an international mead competition — the most of any meadery.

                                                Jeff and Jen Herbert, owners of Superstition Meadery. Chris Malloy

In a way, Superstition Downtown will shift the Arizona meadery’s public-facing locus to metro Phoenix, where the Herberts went to grad school (at ASU), and where Jeff worked as a firefighter, commuting from Prescott in recent years until retiring in December 2019.

“We have more customers in Phoenix than anywhere else in the world,” Jeff says. “Even though we have distribution in 26 states and to dozens of countries, almost everyone that knows about our company lives in Phoenix. And not just the Valley, but Phoenix specifically.”

Superstition Downtown will seat some 120 people, feature a wide-ranging mead-and-food pairing program, and have some 35 Superstition beverages when the doors open. Some of these will run through the 24 taps of the long, polished, L-shaped bar topped with wood salvaged from the splintery wake of a west-of-Flagstaff tornado. Most of the 24 taps will dispense meads, but some will pour ciders. (One Superstition cider, Blueberry Spaceship Box, is the world’s top-rated flavoured cider on RateBeer.)

                                                    Superstition's bar will have 24 taps of mead and cider. 

Chris Malloy

The new downtown drinkery has a pitched ceiling of exposed wood and rafters and, over an open kitchen, a lower overhang of ancient-looking-but-new tin. There is a lounge area of upholstered chairs and an ample patio outside. The wide-open kitchen will turn out a full restaurant menu, much from a wood-fired grill.

This food, eclectic and geographically varied, pulls from the Heberts’ world travels. Superstition has taken them all over. Their meads have been poured in places like Spain, Thailand, Japan, and a Michelin-starred restaurant in Norway.

Superstition Downtown will be, Jeff claims, the “only mead-and-food-pairing concept in the world.” Adolfo Heredia, best known for a long run as head chef at Tuck Shop, will captain the kitchen. The menu will come with many suggested mead pairings. Food-wise, there will be a tapas menu and a fuller menu. Starter boards laden with many small bites will come with, if you want, many mead pairings.

Superstition’s mead will still be crafted in Prescott, at a site removed from the Courthouse Square tasting room. The exception: a few potion-looking demijohns on shelves along one exposed brick wall, honey-light or darkly opaque meads-in-progress of absorbing flavours from oak spirals and chile peppers, fruits and coconut chips.

“We use whole fruit,” Jeff says. “We freeze fruit with liquid nitrogen. We use fruit juice. We use all different kinds of barrels, all different kinds of yeast. We don’t limit ourselves to any particular types of ingredients or process. We'll use anything available to make the best possible mead.”

That has meant spending $500 per pound on Tahitian vanilla or procuring small-batch bursage honey. It has resulted in meads like Peanut Butter Jelly Crime, which takes the sandwich’s exact flavors, or Berry White, a raspberry-and-white-chocolate mead that has scored a Mazer Cup gold medal, a mead considered one of the best anywhere.

Upon opening, many Superstition beverages will be available for takeout and limited delivery. Superstition will also be releasing its first wine, an orange wine of orange muscat and sauvignon blanc grapes.

Whatever mead's perceptions, the downtown Phoenix drink scene is about to get a honey-flavoured jolt when Superstition Downtown opens. Recently, this scene has evolved in so many directions. The next rung should bring Phoenix into truly new territory.

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/restaurants/superstition-meadery-phoenix-downtown-jeff-and-jen-herbert-11500279