Mead is an ancient drink, but there's a brand-new maker in north Texas: Breaking Brew Meadery recently opened in Farmers Branch, at 14438 Midway Rd., where it reigns as the first and only meadery in North Texas.
Most of Texas' other mead-makers are in Central Texas and other areas, but Breaking Brew is here in the DFW, in the Midway Center in northeast Farmers Branch, where it sells mead as a tipsy alternative to beer, cider, and wine.
Mead is fermented from honey, and this makes it gluten-free, which draws in the gluten-free crowd. It's a drink with a smooth, clean taste, and comes in several different styles, similar to beer and cider.
For now, Breaking Brew Meadery is selling session meads, which are lightly carbonated and served cold, by the glass.
In the near future, they'll expand their product offering to serve traditional meads and offer take-home options by growler, can, and bottle. Their meads are currently available in their taproom only, but they have plans to start supplying kegs outside the taproom in 2019.
Breaking Brew VP Gary Gordon says that mead definitely merits an upswing as a drink for everyone, and not just Vikings and lasses who wear dresses with tight-fitting bodices.
"Our meads are easy to drink, they have no GMO, and are gluten-free," Gordon says.
He also says they believe that promoting the use of honey will increase the number of apiaries, which in turn will help increase the bee population. The only problem is that the bees are working for you and you're taking their honey, so it's not such a great proposition for the bees.
But let's not dwell on the bees. There's mead to drink, and the good news is that Breaking Brew Meadery is open weekends: 4-9 pm Friday, 1-9 pm Saturday, and 1-6 pm Sunday.
Mead, an ancient honey-based fermented alcohol that is flavoured with natural fruits and spices, is making a comeback in India thanks to a handful of enthusiastic alcobev buffs
Quick, what's common between Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and the Vikings? It’s mead (rhymes with need), an ancient honey-based fermented alcohol that’s slowly making a comeback in India with a handful of players producing it. “Mead is not beer,” says 38-year-old Rohan Rehani, Co-founder of Pune-based Moonshine Meadery—the very first meadery in India that started production in 2018.
Rehani and childhood friend Nitin Vishwas (38) read about mead in 2014 in an article that talked about how London was getting its first meadery in 500 years. Having only read about meads in Lord of the Rings (Gandalf takes swigs of it) and Harry Potter (Hagrid orders four pints at the Three Broomsticks Pub in Hogsmeade), they had thought of mead as something mythical that had been lost to time. “We were fascinated. Mead is probably the first known alcohol. It finds a mention in 7000 BC in Chinese pottery. The Vikings drank it before going into battle. Mead was also a part of ancient Indian culture. The word mead comes from the Old English word ‘medu’ that comes from ‘madhu,’ which is honey and then there is ‘madhushala,’ which is a place where you drink alcohol,” says Rehani.
Both Rehani and Vishwas are engineers by education and had corporate careers. In 2016, Rehani quit his job to make mead full time. What started as a kitchen experiment finally moved to a proper plant on the outskirts of Pune. However, since mead had not been made in India before, there was no provision for it in the excise law. “You could brew beer and ferment grapes to make wine but you could not ferment honey,” says Rehani.
Rehani and Vishwas decided to meet the excise minister of Maharashtra to change the excise law and get a licence.
Meanwhile, Yoginee Budhkar (39) and Ashwini Deore (39), two friends who completed their PhD in biotechnology and bioprocess technology, respectively, from Mumbai, also decided to make mead. After almost a year of trying, all four finally met the excise minister. “It was difficult to meet him but once we did, he was very open to the idea of us making mead and we got clearance instantly,” says Budhkar.
While Moonshine hit the market in 2018, Cerana (named after the Indian honey bee) started producing mead in 2020.
No Label, a brand of Bored Beverages, has raised Rs 2.5 crore in seed funding
Currently, Moonshine produces two types of meads: the year-round flagship meads, such as Apple Cyder, Coffee, and Traditional, and a MeadLABs series, which comprises small-batch, experimental, and seasonal meads. Salted Kokum, Grilled Pineapple, which is Rehani’s favorite, Guava Chilli, Hopped Mead, Thai Ginger, and Kaffir Lime, all at 6.5 per cent alcohol by volume (ABV) are the best-selling items under the MeadLABs series. Moonshine is available in Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Assam, Rajasthan and Silvassa, and is priced at Rs 140-250 for 330ml. Production has gone up from 200 cases in the first year to 5,000 cases a month today, and they plan to expand capacity to 3x by the end of the year. “Mead is made with all natural ingredients, with honey being the most important. We now control our supply of honey to ensure we have the best quality,” says Rehani.
Nashik-based Cerana has a focus on local flavours. For its main meads, which include the Jamun Melomel, Pomegranate Melomel, and Chenin Blanc Pyment, priced at Rs 180 for 330ml, it procures the jamuns, pomegranates and grapes locally. Its limited-edition seasonal meads, which include varieties like Yule Spice (made with honey and spices) and Pinot Noir Pyment (made with honey and grapes), typically have a higher ABV of 12 per cent and are priced at Rs 450 for 375 ml. Currently, Cerana is available in only Mumbai, Nashik and Pune. But it is planning on increasing production and will soon be available in Bengaluru and Goa.
Stump, Karnataka’s first mead, is available in two flavours— coffee and apple cider
Childhood friends Anant Gupta (26) and Vinayak Malhotra (27) are fascinated with all things alcohol. They discovered mead on their travels abroad and thought there was a market for it in India. “We saw this wide space in India in the alcobev sector. The younger generation was looking for something more flavourful in the ready-to-drink segment,” says Gupta, Co-founder of Bored Beverages. Initially they thought they would make wine. “Our idea was to simplify wine. Right now in India wine is considered so fancy that most consumers run away from it,” says Gupta. However, they realised that not only was making wine a very expensive proposition, it was also seasonal, and that they would have to depend on someone else to make it. Mead, on the other hand, could be made the whole year round, had a long shelf life, one could play with flavours and, most importantly, Gupta could learn to make it. Their brand No Label with 7 per cent ABV was launched in November 2021 and is currently available in Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai and Pune, priced at Rs 150. They produce nearly 1,700 cases a month. Currently, they have only one flavour and will launch another by the end of the year. They have recently raised Rs 2.5 crore in seed funding from Inflection Point Ventures and other private investors.
Like wine, meads come in a variety of rich to sweet flavours and can be either still or effervescent. India’s mead producers are hard at work developing new varieties of their product to suit the tastes of their customers. Take, for example, Stump, Karnataka’s first mead, which is available in two flavours—coffee and apple cider. Founded by Himavanth Hasaganur Jayanth (26), Chandrakanth (33) and Thejaswi (43) in February this year, their coffee mead has an ABV of 8.5 per cent (Rs 180) while the apple is lighter with 6.5 per cent ABV (Rs 160). Currently available only in Karnataka, they plan to increase production to 10x by November and then target Goa, Maharashtra and Hyderabad. Jayanth has a coffee plantation and the coffee comes from there.
Arkä from Maharashtra-based Hill Zill Wines produces three high-quality dessert meads: Wildflower, Rose, and Jamun. The meads are packaged in ice wine bottles and specialised corks to aid in the ageing process and are made using local and fresh ingredients such as honey obtained from wild flowers, dried rose petals, and Konkan jamuns. The meads are available in Maharashtra, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Karnataka. They are priced at Rs 1,075 for a 375 ml bottle.
While mead is still a small market in India with the producers spending a lot of time educating customers about it, it is a growing market globally. The global mead beverage market is projected to grow from $487.9 million in 2021 to $1.62 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 18.71 per cent between 2021 and 2028, says a report from Fortune Business Insights, a market research firm. It’s time to raise a toast to mead.
Producing and retailing mead, Ernst Thompson and Robert Bernatzeder aim to establish it as a mainstream alcoholic beverage in African society and tell its story on the continent
MEAD IS THE FIRST ALCOHOLIC DRINK connected to humans and is thought to have originated in Africa some 20,000 years ago, but along with the Vikings and other medieval marauders has largely been surpassed by modern equivalents. That is until now.
Made from fermented honey, mead is growing in popularity again thanks in a large part to the television series Game of Thrones and the throngs of its followers who lap up every detail of the show to replicate in their daily lives.
“Many people in South Africa don’t know what mead is, despite the fact it is a real African drink,” Dr Ernst Thompson, owner of Cape Town Meadery, tells FORBES AFRICA.
“It is massive in the United States. Popular culture has commercialized it there over the last 10 or 12 years and it is the fastest-growing alcoholic sector.”
In South Africa, mead was a way for the Khoisan people to ‘speak to the Gods’ and is known as iQhilika in the country’s Eastern Cape province, where it remains a popular drink with cultural significance.
But it is a tiny market in what is a huge beverage industry in the country, something Thompson is hoping to change having partnered with brother-in-law and fellow entrepreneur Robert Bernatzeder.
Their meadery, the only one of its kind in South Africa, bottles traditional products, as well as mead-based sparkling wines and beers.
“The beauty of the technology we use is that it was developed in South Africa and based on indigenous knowledge,” Thompson says.
He admits it can be a tough sell to get people to switch from traditional wines to mead products, especially if there are preconceived ideas that it is too sweet, but says those who taste it are very pleasantly surprised.
“Liquid on lips is key to get people to try the product and it is great to see the reaction we get at tastings, which are key for us in educating the market about mead. The only real difference is that the alcohol is not produced from the sugar in grapes, but rather sugar in honey.”
Their champagne-style product is “proper bubbles” according to Thompson, and a variety of it is exported under licence to the United Kingdom and Germany as the Van Hunks brand.
“We are the only people in the world who really do this [create mead-based sparkling wine] and we are able to do it because of the technology we have developed,” he says.
“I have got a PhD in Nutritional Physiology, I love biotech and fermentation. My previous business, Beonics, was based on creating natural antibiotics from propolis, which is also from bees.”
I have learned a lot, but it has been expensive lessons. Now I can focus on what I am good at,” Thompson says.
Bernatzeder has vast experience in entrepreneurship having started his first business at the age of 19, and currently has interests in tourism, software development, an accounting company, food production, distribution and IT.
“The meadery got to the point where it was starting to take off and that is the stage where most businesses run out of money and resources. It was a critical point to get involved and add expertise,” Bernatzeder says.
“Educating the market is the biggest hurdle we face. We need to tell the story of mead in Africa. The ability to scale production is also something we need to figure out.”
They are assessing the viability of opening a meadery in Zambia, one of the biggest producers of honey in the world and from where they source their raw materials.
But they want to do it in a sustainable manner that uplifts communities and gives individual beekeepers in the country the opportunity to earn more for their honey.
“A huge opportunity is to set up meaderies in other countries and to build communities around that. Incentivize beekeeping to create jobs, make mead and sell it into the tourism sector,” Bernatzeder says.
Thompson firmly believes that mead has a place as a mainstream beverage in African society, especially as it originated on this continent.
“If you come to Africa, you should have mead, this is our culture, our drink,” he says.
“Mead is also one of things that gets better over time. If you buy a bottle and leave it for 20 years, it will be much nicer.”
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