How a Wedding Favour Inspired Buffalo’s Newest DIY Brewery & Meadery

From stepoutbuffalo.com

Going to a brewery is a great way to get to know beer a little better, but one new local brewery gives you the chance to step in, get your hands dirty, and actually make your own beer.

At the new Iron Cedar Brewing & Meadery on Genesee Road near the airport, owner and head brewer Nick Demarco opens up his process to any person or group who wants to brew a gallon or two of their own beer or mead. Nick says the cost for brewing a gallon is “a couple hundred bucks” which you could split any number of ways. Nick says this offer is inspired by how his business got started, making a special batch of beer as favours for his brother’s wedding in May 2022.

“We made 165, 5-ounce bottles that we decorated with their name and their wedding date,” he says. “I had such a positive response to the beer from a lot of different people, not even within the family, like people I had not even met before. That pushed me to open my business.”

                                                                           Photo courtesy of Iron Cedar Brewing & Meadery

There’s a lot more that makes Iron Cedar unique beyond the opportunity to brew your own beer. The brewery is also a meadery, and both sides of the operation use honey as part of the brewing process. While mead is traditionally honey-based, Nick uses honey to brew his beer because it helps to jumpstart the fermentation process. If you already have a preformed opinion on mead or beer brewing with honey, don’t bring it to Iron Cedar. The beer tastes like traditional beer, and the mead is triple-filtered,  which makes the honey more of a background note as opposed to an upfront flavour.

                                                                 Photo courtesy of Iron Cedar Brewing & Meadery

“If you’ve had mead before, I can guarantee you mine is nothing like any of the other meads you’ve had,” Nick says. “And if you haven’t had mead and you’re very sceptical because you really don’t like sweet stuff, some of my meads are on the dry side.”

The brewery is also different in that it’s trying to appeal to travelers coming or going to the nearby Buffalo International Airport. For people who aren’t into the whole brewery thing, there’s a full bar and bottles of beer from massive breweries like Labatt. There’s also a scratch kitchen making classic Buffalo comfort food like wings, dips, soups salad, and hot sandwiches.

“We do a lot of work to elevate everything and try our best to kick it up a notch to make something different because that area is a bit of a food desert for sit-down restaurants,” Nick says. “There really isn’t much around other than McDonald’s or Pizza Hut.”

                                                         Photo courtesy of Iron Cedar Brewing & Meadery

The appeal to travellers appears to be working. Nick says the brewery draws a lot of travellers who are getting into the area or preparing to take flights. While the lunchtime and dinner crowds include a lot of locals, crowds later in the evening are almost exclusively national or international travellers.

“Within the two months that we’ve been open, we’ve been seeing a lot of people from outside the area,” Nick says. “We’ve had a good chunk of people from the UK. We’ve had a gentleman from Australia come in. We’ve had people from all over the States and Canada.”

With so many different aspects to the business, Nick says Iron Cedar is still finding its footing. He’s hoping to increase brewing production to meet demand and increase staff to expand hours in order to accommodate late-night travelers. That being said, he invites people to come in, try out the various brews, have something to eat, rub elbows with some travelers, and provide feedback.

“We are still growing, and any kind of feedback that we can get, any kind of support we can get, is appreciated,” Nick says. “And you know, if there’s any kind of flavors of beer or mead that people are looking for out there, come talk to me. We’ll make it.”

Hours at the time of publishing (subject to change): Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. – 11 p.m., Sunday and Monday CLOSED

https://stepoutbuffalo.com/how-a-wedding-favor-inspired-buffalos-newest-diy-brewery-meadery/ 

Boozy Honey? Try it at This New Meadery Opening This Month in Buffalo NY

From stepoutbuffalo.com

Wildflower Meadery will open a new taproom space inside the Niagara Frontier Food Terminal (1500 Clinton Street, Unit 167) on Feb. 22 (2pm). The meadery will open with a full selection of meads on tap, including Original Honey Session, Cranberry Orange Session, Bubbly Apple Cyser, Bubbly Pomegranate, Still Wildflower Traditional, Still Sweet Traditional and Blackberry Currant, as well as in cans and bottles (Bubbly Guava, Bubbly Cranberry Orange, Bubbly Meadarita, Spiced Ginger Pear Session), non-alcoholic offerings like NA meads and mocktails, a limited food menu and packaged mead to go. Moving forward, they will be open Fridays, 5-10pm, and Saturdays, 2-10pm. They will open opposite Chateau Buffalo.

https://stepoutbuffalo.com/boozy-honey-try-it-at-this-new-meadery-opening-this-month-in-buffalo/

Wildflower Meadery @ Niagara Frontier Food Terminal (Buffalo, New York)

From buffalorising.com

The The Niagara Frontier Food Terminal (NFFT) continues to impress, with yet another unique business being added to the mix. Wildflower Meadery is the latest enterprise to pop up at the Terminal, which is already home to numerous businesses and artists.

I spoke to Founder and Managing Member, Greg McNulty, about the new meadery that is scheduled to open at the end of February. McNulty told me that the idea for the meadery sprouted up in 2021 during the pandemic, which is when he and his partners procured a license. Then, in 2022 they began producing, with the goal of opening a meadery (tasting room).

McNulty told me that although he formerly worked in the restaurant industry, he was not versed in the making of mead. The idea for Wildflower Meadery came about when he was trying to create a product in a category that he liked, but that consumers might be relatively unfamiliar with. After talking to a number of mead makers and doing his homework (including watching plenty of YouTube videos), he felt as if he was ready to take the next step. The idea was to concentrate on dryer versions of mead, that are very much apart from the sweeter styles of mead that fans of the beverage might be accustomed to drinking.

                                                                                          The Niagara Frontier Food Terminal

Up to this point in time, McNulty and his partners have been busy experimenting with meads, and testing out the products to make sure that consumers like the product. For a revenue stream, they have been self distributing to places such as Fattey Beer Co. and The Beer Keep. They have also been selling online through a digital channel, and attending farmers’ markets in Lewiston and Kenmore, for example.

One thing that McNulty finds surprising is that their brand got picked up by a distributor in New York City that specializes in meads, hence they have become fairly well known downstate. Wildflower Meadery has been stealthily making a name for itself in Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens, which is why McNulty and his partners felt that it was time to open up a dedicated tasting room in Buffalo. The goal is to “spread the word” in Western New York that there is a new hometown meadery that is making waves in the market.

Wildflower Meadery’s new 1000 SF tasting room at the Niagara Food Terminal will have a seating capacity for around 25 people. The hope is to eventually build out a larger tasting room with a full service kitchen. In the meantime, they will be offering up small plates such as charcuterie and nuts. The tasting room will also be a showcase for a number of products that are associated with their New York State Farm Meadery license, including bottled honey from local apiaries.

“One of our goals is to support the ecosystem that we live in,” McNulty told me. “That’s why we want to sell the NYS honey that is used to make the mead (from light and crisp to elegant and complex). We also want to do our part to make the Terminal a destination. We’re located right next to Château Buffalo, and across from The Nickel Plate. Since there are also artists at the Terminal, we are offering up our walls to hang art – artists can take home 100% of the profits from the works that they sell.”

McNulty is especially excited to have people stop by the meadery, to try different types of meads that, he feels, will change the way that they feel about the beverage. He’s convinced that everything that they know about mead will be turned upside down, as people discover the dryer varieties that are being served up at Wildflower Meadery.

                                                                                                     Tasting room menu

Wildflower Meadery | The Niagara Frontier Food Terminal |1500 Clinton St Unit 167 | Buffalo, NY 14206 | 631-804-5239

https://www.buffalorising.com/2025/01/wildflower-meadery-niagara-food-terminal/ 

How mead is made from New York honey

From spectrumlocalnews.com/nys

Upstate New York has well-established craft beverages with hard cider, Finger Lakes wine and a variety of beers, but a local entrepreneur has taken to a different alcoholic drink.

Elaine Ferrier, owner of Combgrown Mead in Auburn, began fermenting honey in her home before deciding to turn it into a business.  

“I couldn’t find the style of mead that I really wanted to drink myself out on the market, so I started experimenting,” Ferrier said. 

She originally began her mead business in Canada, but when her family moved to Auburn, the chance to expand came up. 

“It was an opportunity to get a brick-and-mortar and really try to find a space within the agritourism economy in this area,” she said. “There’s some really fantastic wineries and breweries, and there’s a couple meaderies but nothing super local.”

Traditionally, mead is a wine made from fermenting honey, but the style of mead Ferrier makes is more comparable to hard cider or craft beer with its lower alcohol content that makes it easier to drink with the same taste.  

Ferrier pours spicy mango puree into the honey and water mixture. (Emily Kenny/Spectrum News 1)

Mead with a higher alcohol content is made by first dissolving a higher concentration of honey with water.

“It’s often made to max out the amount of alcohol that yeast can make — that can be as high as 19% and it’s often quite sweet— but our modern tastes are looking for something that’s more sessionable,” she said.  

More honey can be added after the fermentation process to make a sweeter mead, referred to as back sweetening. Ferrier makes flavoured meads including peach sour, blackberry, elderflower, apple and strawberry rosé, which all require an extra step. 

“If there’s a fruit, I add a little bit at the beginning and then some of it partway through the fermentation process,” she said.  

Honey doesn’t like to ferment on its own, so Ferrier adds an additional ingredient to boost the fermentation process. 

“I use an organic nutrient to help keep nudging the yeast along, so there’s some babysitting of the batches while it’s fermenting,” Ferrier said. 

Ferrier holds a freshly poured glass of mead. (Emily Kenny/Spectrum News 1)

After the fermentation process, the mead has to settle so the sediment can go to the bottom of the fermentation tank. 

“You do what’s called racking, which is where you siphon off the yeast and what’s sort of fallen into the bottom of the tank and [then pour it] into another tank to let it settle again. Then we filter our meads a couple of times,” Ferrier said.  

The final steps are the most time-consuming in the process: carbonating the mead and canning the final product. 

Farm meaderies are required to use 100% New York-produced honey in their products, which gives apiaries a new market.  

“I am using all local honey and that’s not an agricultural ingredient that is really being utilized. Breweries may have a beer that has honey in it, but not at the scale that once we really grow. We’ll be using a lot and support a lot of local beekeepers,” Ferrier said. 

Women and minorities are largely underrepresented in the craft beverage industry. According to national data from the Brewers Association, 93.5% of brewery owners identified as white and only 23.5% identified as women.  

It’s not known exactly how old the beverage is, but it is believed that it pre-dates agriculture, Ferrier said.

Ferrier stands for a portrait in her tasting room. (Emily Kenny/Spectrum News 1)

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/news/2024/07/29/how-it-s-made--mead-from-new-york-honey- 

Combgrown and creative: Meadery opens in Auburn, New York

From auburnpub.com

AUBURN — Mead, or honey wine, means high alcohol to most. But the flagship product of the city's first meadery is just 5.5% ABV.

That's just one example of the creative approach to the beverage taken by Elaine Ferrier, owner of Combgrown Mead, which opened Friday in Suite 4 of 26 Osborne St., across from Wegmans.

"What I love about mead is it's such a blank canvas," Ferrier told The Citizen. "There aren't a lot of expectations, so there's a lot of room to be creative and surprise people in good ways." 

Combgrown is the second mead business for Ferrier and her husband, Michael Sojka, a family physician at Auburn Community Hospital. Their first began about 10 years ago in southwestern Ontario, Canada, while he was in medical school and she worked in environmental policy for the province's Ministry of Natural Resources. 

A homebrewer, Sojka suggested they try fermenting honey to produce mead. Ferrier ran with the idea, he told The Citizen, making a batch in the kitchen of her family farm in Thorndale. There, they opened Tallgrass Mead, named for the area's endangered prairie and savannah ecosystems that are more rare than rainforests, she said.

                            Elaine Ferrier and her husband, Michael Sojka, at Combgrown Mead in Auburn.

                                                                Kevin Rivoli, The Citizen

New career opportunities took Ferrier and Sojka to Michigan, where they briefly commuted while continuing to run Tallgrass. When another opportunity presented itself in Auburn, they decided to take the meadery with them, expand it and rename it Combgrown. Ferrier thanked her parents for letting her use their property until the move.

                                                                Combgrown Mead in Auburn.

                                                                     Kevin Rivoli, The Citizen

On Osborne Street, Ferrier and Sojka will have 1,000 gallons of capacity to produce meads like Honey Pops, their 5.5% ABV flagship. Such "session meads" were scarce 10 years ago, she said.

"It's not often you want to sit down and have mead. It pairs well with food, but not the way wine does," she said. "So I thought there was an opportunity to create meads that are more sessionable."

Although it has less alcohol than traditional meads, Honey Pops is actually harder to make, Ferrier said. That's partly because of the time it takes to carbonate, a process that also lengthens production of Combgrown's line of mead spritzers. About 8% ABV, they include gamay noir rosé grapes with extracts of rhubarb and strawberry, and chardonnay grapes with extracts of elderflower and lemon.

                                                    The tasting area at Combgrown Mead in Auburn.

                                                                      Kevin Rivoli, The Citizen

A bourbon barrel-aged mead should be released next weekend, Ferrier said. Though she would like to distribute Combgrown to stores eventually, for now it will be available in cans to go or in glasses to enjoy in the meadery's tasting room. She looks forward to becoming a stop on tours as part of the busy Finger Lakes craft beverage scene.

"With all its wineries and breweries, it's nice to be able to offer something new," she said. "And Auburn has been so great. People here seem to take it seriously to support local businesses."

Ferrier will make traditional meads eventually, but for now she wants to expand people's definition of the beverage. She's also still finalizing some parts of her production, like carbonation, and experimenting with varietals of New York honey. It's one of the most expensive fermentables, she said, on par with Napa Valley wine grapes. Among her first sources was Kutik's Honey Farm in Oxford.

"It's a really unique type of ingredient," she said. "In my opinion, (mead) is a more sustainable type of craft beverage. As much as I love grape wine, there is a lot of agriculture. You have to clear the land, there's sometimes chemicals used in production and definitely a lot of fossil fuels for the equipment. It's very resource-intensive. Whereas wherever there's wildflowers, bees will make honey."

If you go

WHAT: Combgrown Mead

WHEN: Open 4 to 7 p.m. Thursdays, 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays; ribbon-cutting event at 4 p.m. Friday, July 21

WHERE: 26 Osborne St., Suite 4, Auburn

INFO: Visit combgrown.square.site or facebook.com/combgrownmead, or email combgrown@gmail.com

https://auburnpub.com/news/local/business/combgrown-and-creative-meadery-opens-in-auburn/article_d42a9c00-21a8-11ee-a0c1-17c96f0cc2f8.html

5 Places That You Can Sample Mead in the Hudson Valley, NY

From wpdh.com

Maybe its because the Ren Faire is going on, or maybe because I want to try something new, I looked into the places here in the Hudson Valley where you can try mead. For this instance, I was looking for a place that made mead as well. Yes, there are some great places to purchase (great businesses, restaurants and wine shops) but this will focus on meaderies. Also, keep in mind that places doing just usually 'give away' samples, you should expect to pay for a tasting or for individual selections.

• Brotherhood Winery, in Washingtonville. This place is probably the oldest place producing mead in New York that is making mead. It is also one that you can try at the winery and usually at the Ren Faire in Tuxedo.
• Slate Point Meadery, Main St in Poughkeepsie. When these folks first started it was under the nomenclature of Salt Point Meadery.  Only open on the weekends, but they have 10 - 12 different ones to try, including a barrel aged mead.
• Palaia Winery and Meadery, Highland Mills, They are only open Fri, Sat, and Sun, but the Peach Mead is a must try. The vibe here is just super relaxed and welcoming.
• Forthright Cyder & Mead, 4052 State Route 52, Youngsville, NY 12791. There is only one mead listed on their tasting room/tap room list, right now, but it looks amazing, along with their list of cyser's. Yep, ask them why they call them cysers and not ciders. Check their website for up-to-date tasting times and their farmers market locations.
• Helderberg Meadery, Esperance, NY. You are probably thinking "Hudson Valley?" Its Scholarie County, so its a fairly close drive to the Hudson Valley, but they have great meads, with great stories to go with them. In addition to being known for their hand crafted meads, they also use ceramic bottles with cool seals, giving them a rich old school vibe. So if you are Scholarie County, check them out.

https://wpdh.com/4-places-sample-mead-hudson-valley-ny/

Bring on the mead: NY state now licensing farm meaderies

From stockdailydish.com

New York state is offering new licenses to operate farms for the production of mead, an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey with water.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that applications for operating farm meaderies are now being accepted. The Democrat says the move builds on New York‘s standing as the nation‘s leading craft beverage state and the top honey producer in the Northeast.

Cuomo signed legislation in December that authorizes the licensing of farm meaderies for the production and sale of mead made exclusively from New York-produced honey.

Farm meaderies are allowed to sell their products by the glass or bottle from their manufacturing facilities or tasting rooms, along with any other wine, beer, cider or spirits produced by a New York state farm manufacturer.

https://stockdailydish.com/bring-on-the-mead-ny-state-now-licensing-farm-meaderies/