From pressdemocrat.com
One batch of Hiveworks’ mead calls for over 700 pounds of honey. That requires a lot of busy bees, including company co-founders Sean Duckworth, Alex Mendoza and Julian Frank, who recently launched their new mead brand.
Sebastopol natives Duckworth and Mendoza met in second grade before forming a friendship with Frank (another Sebastopol local) when they were all 14.
While in college at Sonoma State University, Duckworth and Mendoza began home-brewing beer and cider in the closet of their tiny apartment, while Frank tried his hand at mead (a fermented honey beverage).
Once all three discovered the magic of mead, however, a new shared passion was born.
(Gunther Kirsch)
“We just loved the process of mead-making and found the history really interesting,” said Duckworth, whose family owned a brewery in France generations ago. “The fermentation process is really complex, and you have to use a lot of science and math to get the results you want.”
Noting a dearth of meads on the market — and no local producers in Sonoma County — the trio began to wonder if they should launch their own brand.
At the time, they’d been producing a traditional sweet mead. But after sampling a drier, carbonated style, they realized there was a world of possibilities.
“There is a huge range of wine and beer styles, but the vast majority of mead out there is sweet and heavy,” said Duckworth. “We wanted to create something really different — something that didn’t exist.”
That’s how they came to create Hiveworks’ “session-style” mead — a dry, bubbly, lower-alcohol (5.5% to 6.5% ABV) version they hope will attract new mead fans.
Hiveworks Mead Company produces three different styles of mead at their Rohnert Park facility, including their flagship Skyborne, Crimson Queen Blueberry and Emerald Swarm — a hopped version that takes inspiration from its IPA beer cousin. Additional flavours will be added seasonally.
With no sulfites or other preservatives, Hiveworks Mead has been ultra-filtered, a practice Duckworth said is uncommon for mead.
“We wanted to create something really natural and clean, but making mead without preservatives is a very difficult thing to do,” he said. “So we use a lot of CO2 to prevent oxygen exposure and filter the mead until it’s sterile. That ensures there’s no chance of refermentation in the can.”
The honey dilemma
A common challenge among commercial mead makers is producing a beverage that tastes consistent season after season. A honey’s flavor is determined by the local flora and fauna and will greatly impact the taste of the finished mead.
To control consistency, Hiveworks looks to a honey distributor in Oregon who partners with the agriculture industry.
“The honey we purchase is produced by bees that are used to pollinate specific crops, like fruits and nuts,” said Duckworth. “The honey they produce is a byproduct of the agricultural process. We spent years perfecting our honey recipe, so this will ensure we get the same honey every time.”
Honeybees are not native to North America and can compete with native pollinators. While Hiveworks hopes to produce limited, seasonal meads made with local honey, Duckworth said they “don’t want to promote huge-scale, local honey production in an area that hurts the ecology.”
Launched in February, Hiveworks Mead is available via its website (hiveworksmead.com) as well as at Oliver’s Market locations, Bottle Barn, Wilibees Wine & Spirits locations, Brewster’s Beer Garden in Petaluma, Flagship Taproom in Santa Rosa and Cotati, The Rewind Arcade in Sebastopol and more locations in Sonoma County.
“There isn’t anyone creating a mead like ours, so we’re excited to introduce something genuinely different,” said Duckworth. “We want to bring mead into the modern age.”
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