Local mead maker brings Viking tradition to New Braunfels, Texas

From communityimpact.com

From the halls of Valhalla to the heart of New Braunfels, local entrepreneur Isaac Pruna is reviving the ancient Viking tradition of mead through Valkyrie’s Kiss Mead.

The background

Pruna’s interest in craft brewing was sparked after serving 10 years in the Army. He travelled around the world exploring different drinks. However, after realizing that the beer and wine market was failing, he decided to pursue a different path.

“My buddies were making mead at home, and I was just like, ‘What the hell is this?’’’ Pruna said. “I thought it was weird at first, but I became really into it and started brewing [mead] at home."

Pruna said after researching the art of mead, his next step was to introduce it to New Braunfels. For two years, Pruna crafted each beverage until launching the company in 2023. In June 2024, Valkyrie’s Kiss Mead opened a brick-and-mortar location.

                                                      Isaac Pruna is the owner of Valkyrie's Kiss Mead. (Thalia Guzman/Community Impact)

Diving in deeper

Traditional mead is an alcoholic beverage made with honey, yeast and water, Pruna said.

The mead is fermented and aged in-house, then bottled and corked by hand. Pruna said the company produces nearly 6,000 gallons of mead, equating to approximately 27,000 bottles per year.

In efforts to remain local, ingredients are sourced from Youngblood Honey in Pearsall and Holdman Honey in Seguin.

The mead is fermented and aged in-house, then bottled and corked by hand. Mead's origins can be traced back over 20,000 years to the African continent. It was consumed by Vikings, Greeks and other cultures.

Valkyrie’s offers several flavours of mead, such as “Cherry Nice to Mead You.’’ Others include apple, strawberry, blueberry and blackberry. Pruna said he will expand offerings with new flavours like pineapple jalapeno and strawberry hibiscus in the future.

                                                                                          (Thalia Guzman/Community Impact)


What’s in a name?

In Norse mythology, a valkyrie is a female warrior who guides a slain warrior from battlefields into Valhalla, which inspired Pruna based on his military background.

“I ultimately went with Valkyrie’s Kiss because I've lost friends, and I've lost some of my buddies [in the military] there too, so it’s a way of honouring them," he said.

Several local bars and restaurants carry Valkyrie’s Kiss, including the recently opened Cowboys and Cadillacs. The mead is also available at local farmers markets. Guests can make reservations for tastings Fridays and Sundays.

• 6500 Hwy. 46 W., New Braunfels TX 78132

https://communityimpact.com/san-antonio/new-braunfels/business/2025/03/06/local-mead-maker-brings-viking-tradition-to-new-braunfels/

Thirsty Bee Meadery offers taste of honey wine in Tomball, Texas

From communityimpact.com

Known for its diverse local mead, Thirsty Bee Meadery was established by beekeepers Matthew Brantley and Kelly Brantley in January 2020.

The couple said that while some people expect mead to be sweet, mead is made with a variety of ingredients, including fermented honey, water, yeast and fruits, and may vary in taste.

The meadery offers mead by the glass, in bottles and growlers as well as charcuterie boards and its honey products at its tasting room. Its honey products include beeswax candles, creamed honey, beeswax bars and raw honey.

The setup

Matthew Brantley’s father kept bees in his backyard, and Kelly Brantley grew up in the Tomball area, prompting the couple to expand their BZ Honey business—which has been in Tomball since 2017—into a meadery.

Kelly Brantley said that at the time, the Tomball area lacked a destination for mead and natural honey products.

The couple has beehives in multiple locations in the Tomball area, including Plants For All Seasons, The Arbor Gate, Tomball Community Garden and the Tomball Farmers Market.

“They asked us about putting hives out there, and when we did, they said their yields just went through the roof with the bees right there on-site,” Matthew Brantley said.

Diving in deeper

Kelly Brantley said the couple wanted to introduce the Tomball area to mead and provide a variety to offer something for every taste.

Thirsty Bee Meadery offers seasonally rotating mead options, including The Poet, a cranberry melomel; Thirsty Bee Meadery pinot noir; and Three Goddesses, an apple honey wine. (Courtesy Thirsty Bee Meadery)

“We do have a wide variety of meads, and they vary from dry to sweet, and that's not always common at meaderies,” Kelly Brantley said.

Thirsty Bee Meadery offers up to 12 options of mead per season. Its mead products are rotated every three to four months. The Meadery recently added housemade wine, including pinot noir and chardonnay for those who prefer wine over mead.

Some rotating customer favorites include the White Paw, a semisweet strawberry and peach melomel; Three Goddesses made with apple honey; and Tomball Tea made with black tea. Matthew Brantley said one of the most-liked meads includes the blackberry and lemon mead; however, due to the amount of product and time it takes to make that mead, it is only available once a year.

While Thirsty Bee Meadery has been located at 108 Commerce St., Tomball, the meadery has plans to relocate to a larger location at 212 W. Main St., Tomball, by early January.

Matthew and Kelly Brantley said with the expansion they plan to host member events, larger parties and live music indoors.

“We stay connected with our community through our bees and do what we can to give back to the community,” Kelly Brantley said.

• 212 W. Main St., Tomball
• www.thirstybeemeadery.com

https://communityimpact.com/houston/tomball-magnolia/business/2023/12/27/thirsty-bee-meadery-offers-taste-of-honey-wine-in-tomball/

Discover refreshing tastes at Believe Meadery in Argyle, Texas

From crosstimbersgazette.com

Brian Harris insists he’s got something special brewing at Believe Meadery in Argyle. And no, it’s not only because he’s crazy about mead or that he’s busy selling bottle after bottle of popular flavours such as red raspberry, peach, and passion fruit each weekend.

All of that is 100% true, but the real “something special” is when those same patrons return hours later with friends.

“Many of them tried a bottle for the first time a few hours earlier. They left, and then I see them come back the same day while dragging their friends along,” Harris said. “That’s what is rewarding about all of this.”

Brian Harris brews up light, refreshing beverages at Believe Meadery in Argyle. (Photo by Lynn Seeden/Seeden Photography)

Almost everyone is familiar with beer, wine, and cider, but there are many fermentable ingredients that different cultures have used over the centuries. Mead is fermented honey, and melomel is fermented honey with fruit, and both are at the heart of what Harris is trying to do with Believe Meadery. Opened in 2020, it is a boutique producer of homemade meads and melomels that use a unique combination of wildflower honey, fruit, other natural ingredients, and only 6% alcohol.

Harris, who lives in Highland Village and recently won awards in four different categories at GrapeFest, makes everything from scratch and currently has seven flavours to choose from. There are no artificial flavours or colours, and everything is strictly gluten-free.

“I’m probably the only person in this portion of the United States making it this way, and it’s something unique that’s right here in Argyle,” Harris said. His experience in making beer, wine, ale, cider, and other fermented drinks spans 30 years. “I remember giving them away to friends when I started, and they said, ‘You should sell these.’ I thought, ‘You know what? I should.’ But I wanted to do it my way, and I wanted something I could believe in. Hence the name, Believe Meadery.”

To learn more, visit believemeadery.com.

https://www.crosstimbersgazette.com/2023/06/05/discover-refreshing-tastes-at-believe-meadery-in-argyle/

First meadery in Dallas-Fort Worth brews a crisp gluten-free drink

From dallas.culturemap.com

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.

https://dallas.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/12-07-18-farmers-branch-breaking-brew-meadery/

Mead? Mead!

From austinchronicle.com

A little more buzz for the honey-based libations of Texas

Because sometimes you just want mead.

Sure, Austin is one neverending hoppy explosion of craft beer bliss – even during COVID-19 times, as the Chronicle’s dedicated brewster Eric Puga has been reporting in his ongoing series.
And, sure, there’s a good reason cider has made such a welcome comeback – that reason is called “taste,” and it’s being perfected by the likes of Eastciders and Argus Cidery and Texas Keeper and others.

And, sure, there’s maybe still an idiot or two out there, someone who will respond to an offer of mead with a goofy smirk and a “Hurr-hurrrrrrr, do I get a turkey leg to go with it?” because – well, because there always has to be an idiot or two in this benighted world, doesn’t there, if only to let the rest of us feel a bit more like Einstein?

But sometimes you just want mead.

           One honey of a design, one excellence of a drink. Well, quite a few excellences, actually

Because mead, that delicate wine made from honey, is precisely the taste you’re craving. And, it turns out, it’s precisely – especially as summer starts a-comin’ in and something sweet and cool is just the balm for your gullet’s parched Gilead – it’s precisely what a lot of people are craving these days.

Good thing Texas provides a panoply – a panoply, by Melisseus! – of fresh, honey-based fermented beverages for our delectation.

One of the fiercest of these meaderies is, as you likely know, Meridian Hive – based right here in the ATX city limits. Hell, we told you all about that particular team of winners when they were just starting out. And of course, a little beyond our burgeoning urban hub, there’s Rohan Meadery and Thorin’s Meads and Dancing Bee and more, and they’re batching up all manner of bee-derived liquid gold for the quaffing.

Bee-derived, we emphasize, yes. Because, not to put too fine a point on it, but it turns out that the newest meadery in these here parts – WildFlyer Mead Company, out in Lynn Grove – happens to be the latest initiative from the oldest, continuously operating beekeeping and honey farm in the Lone Star state.

That’s a little surprising, isn’t it, that provenance? Not just to you, but to your current reporter, who happened upon this information – and sparked this post – from a totally different perspective.

“I blame the internet,” says the Chronicle’s Wayne Alan Brenner, happily sipping from a chilled glass of WildFlyer’s Imperius brew. “I mean, we’re all constantly online in these stay-at-home times, and so I was finally checking out the Instagram account I’d set up in 2014. I hadn’t looked at the damned thing in years, but, well, you know – streaming, bingeing, Zooming, it’s a bigger part of life for so many of us now.

“So I was checking out Instagram,” says Brenner, “and one of the accounts I follow is Lewis Carnegie. They’re an Austin-based graphic design firm, and they’d recently handled the branding for this mead company, WildFlyer, and so they posted a few images, and – the designs were gorgeous. I love mead anyway, but the typography and other elements here were, ah – I pretty much hate mezcal, you know? Because even good mezcal tastes, to me, kind of like burnt rubber? Like the distilled version of a big ol’ tire fire? But if Lewis Carnegie had provided design like this for a mezcal company, even, I might’ve eventually bought a bottle – just for the visuals. So I left a comment on the photo, praising the work. And Sean Carnegie, the co-honcho of the design firm, he’s a friend from back in the day, he was like, ‘Yeah, you like mead? We’ve got so much of the stuff right now from this project – come on over and get some.’”

So, you see, reader: One thing leads to another, by pure chance. And that happens so often in our lives that it requires its own word – serendipity, right?

But the above story also provides evidence of quality, concerning what WildFlyer’s got to offer.

Because this is a post for the Food section, after all, and we wouldn’t've steered your attention back to mead in the first place if that well-designed bottle of Imperius didn’t contain a wonderful way to slake a person’s mighty thirst. Bright, clear, not too sweet, its amber flow refreshing your palate like a blessing from the god of bees – this Imperius mead is just what you want to drink when the sun is high in the Texas sky. Or, hell, even when the stars at night are big and bright.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/food/2020-05-08/mead-mead/