Spring 2013
American Mead Maker RED BORDERS
Questions and Answers
Entrepreneurial Interview Request Jeff Herbert and Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor
5
Kookoolan World Meadery Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor
12
Meet the Mead Maker
Meet 3 Liquid Artists Algomah Meadery Superstition Meadery Moonstuck Meadery
26
Ten Lessons from the Hive
A TEDx Presentation Melissa Hronkin
36
Home and Commercial Competition Chris
41
Meadery Spotlite: Kookoolan World Meadery
Mead Competitions
Red Borders American Mead Maker is published on a quarterly basis. For advertising information and submission guidelines contact the editor: superstitionmeadery@hotmail.com Cover: Jeff Herbert of Superstition Meadery tests the brix of a fermenting pyment. Photo by Jennifer Herbert
Letter From The Editor Welcome back to another seasonal issue of American Mead Maker. Just in time for the Mazer Cup International mead competition in Boulder, CO we are pleased to bring more coverage of the mead industry to your attention. In this issue you will receive personal insight into several mead makers in 3 different states. We discuss start-up business questions posed to 2 mead owners and you will learn all about Kookoolan World Meadery through the gifted writing of the owner/mead maker. Additionally, we are honored to share a TEDx presentation prepared by an American mead maker and we talk mead competitions. So pour yourself a glass of your favorite mead, put your feet up and enjoy the Spring issue of American Mead Maker. Until next time, Jeff Herbert
Entreprenuerial Interview Request By Jeff Herbert and Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor
In February a student at the University of Arizona, Benjamin Boorem, solicited interview responses from 2 meaderies for a project on entrepreneurial business. He had some good questions, and I thought it would be interesting to our readers to read the responses from the owners of Superstition Meadery in Prescott, Arizona alongside answers to the same questions from the owner of Kookoolan World Meadery in Yamhill, Oregon.
What were the greatest obstacles to starting a Meadery and how did you overcome them? Superstition Meadery First of all you have to figure out how to make mead, if you are the owner and mead maker. So I spent a few years engaged in trial and error, entering competitions for feedback and to prove recipes, and learning about what equipment is necessary. Once you have a product that you think you can sell, you have to learn about all of the regulatory barriers which in the case of starting a winery are great. Concurrently with researching how to get a meadery going I was re-
searching how to start a Brewery. I attended a 3 day course taught at the Siebel Institute in Chicago on this subject. The subject matter and instructors were first class and I learned much about the alcohol industry and how to start a business. In addition to reading all of the entrepreneurial brewery books and countless hours on the internet I also interviewed brewery and meadery owners across the country through visits, phone calls and emails. So once you decide to get going you need a space to legally produce your product. So I had to decide where to open my business and how much
space I would need. I was living in the East Valley of PHX at the time and my family and I decided to move to Prescott. Better weather, schools, environment and an up and coming craft beverage scene. During my first visit to Juniper Well Ranch and Vineyards in Skull Valley, just west of Prescott, I left the winery with an invitation from the owners to make mead there. Fast forward 7 months and we applied to the Feds and State to become the first Alternating Proprietorship in AZ. This means that I rent a small space in an existing winery. 7 more months later and all was approved. Oh yeah, and supply chain management. Have you ever opened up a book on how to start a meadery in AZ? No you haven’t. I had to figure out everything. I am the art department, web master, mead maker, sales department etc. Lately my wife has come online as the financial manager. Kookoolan World Meadery The biggest obstacle was just figuring out WHAT licensing was needed. As I outlined in the story I sent you, there are 22 licenses and approvals needed in Oregon. But there is no
LIST of what they are, what order to get them in, etc. Most wineries hire an attorney to do the whole process for them. How restrictive are the federal and state laws to open your Meadery and sell your product to the public? Superstition Meadery They are very complex. It is almost a universal experience that everyone has their federal application returned for one reason or another to make corrections. In my case they eventually sent a letter saying that I was not approved since I had not responded to their corrections I had to make. It turned out that they misspelled hotmail and I never received the notification. Lots of delays occur. When I first called the State DLLC I was told that it is illegal to make mead. The government is full of folks who are misinformed, as well as other folks who are helpful and full of expertise. Who you get on the phone or assigned to process your application greatly affects your results. You have to put in your time, ask lots of
questions, and like any business have you. I spoke with the lead investigasome mentors in your field to rely on. tor for Arizona recently and he said that as long as the receiving customer is over 21, and I comply with interKookoolan World Meadery state shipping regs, I am good to go. “Restrictive” and “obstacles” are words that rub me the wrong way. Kookoolan World Meadery There are requirements and you just have to put in the calories to un- I focus on Oregon. We ship through derstand and comply with them. Any Northwest Wines To You, which is a degree you want to earn has a set of business run by our local monastery. graduation requirements, a Program They service dozens of local winerof Study, and minimum GPA that ies and do all the shipping out of must be earned. ANY business you state. I know that Oregon requires want to start up has regulations. me to have a shipper’s license to ship out of state. I know that most Are there a lot of regulations for states require you to have a shipper’s engaging in selling your product license for THAT state, to ship into that state. I’m not interested in between different states? researching, obtaining, and maintaining 49 other states’ licenses. Superstition Meadery I don’t sell out of state yet, but yes. Check out the Fedex website on wine shipping for good info on interstate shipping regs. Heck, UPS told me last week that it is impossible to ship wine out of AZ. I know of one winery exporting to Australia, so you can never take no for an answer, or if you do temporarily, find another person or business that will work with
When you began your business, how did you gauge your target market and decide how much product to initially produce? Superstition Meadery I wrote a decent business plan, and identified through research and interviews, that my target market would
be educated craft beer and wine drinkers. I have a strategy that I am still evaluating which is to make a great variety of meads and a hard cider, and see what sells. I make some 25 gallon batches and mostly 50 gallon batches. This was based on equipment and space limitations, realistic batch sizes, and my budget.
form of a 3% credit card “loan,” and I forecast to have no business debt by 2014. Then of course it will be time to expand. I have done this almost as small as possible to get going and prove if my ideas are feasible with out risking too much. I knew that I would make lots of mistakes, and have a huge learning curve and I wanted these mistakes to be inexpensive. The answer to this question Kookoolan World Meadery is directly proportional to the potenI didn’t. I’m really a homebrewer who tial risk, previous experience of the outgrew my hobby and wanted to be founders, and particular scenario the able to sell what I produce because I entrepreneur envisions. can’t drink it all and it’s expensive to make. I made a 42-gallon batch ini- Kookoolan World Meadery tially because that’s the largest fermenter I could buy through our local There’s no way one model can answer this question. Mine was very small homebrew supply store. to get the first 42-gallon batch out Approximately how much capital the door because I already had the is required, in your opinion, to es- building built. However, the poured concrete underground building expantablish a successful meadery? sion I now aspire to will be about $50,000 plus the fermenters I want Superstition Meadery to put into it are $11,000 EACH. I I have put around 25k into the proj- just spent $3,500 on 167 cases (ie, ect and many many hours. And I have not many) of empty glass bottles for set up a situation where I have very bottling my current batch of Vin de low overhead. Much of this invest- Noix. How much capital you need dement was out of pocket, some in the pends upon whether you’re starting
from scratch, how rapidly you want to grow, how much you want to produce, and how long you want to age the Mead before it goes up for sale. Ageing is probably the biggest cost factor: holding the finished wine in tanks, barrels, or bottles requires a LOT of temperature-controlled area, and that’s expensive. We are adamant not to incur any debt at all beyond our first mortgage on the property, so that boundary condition plus investing to grow the rest of the business has slowed down the growth of Mead production. What percentage of your funds have been allocated to marketing/ advertising, and how important do you feel that it is to success of your meadery?
Kookoolan World Meadery Zero, believe it or not. Although once I have a bigger volume to sell I do think it will be necessary. I think marketing is very necessary; advertising maybe not so much. Most of the work of “selling” a bottle of Mead is actually educating people about what Mead is. I think the industry is poised to take off, just as cider and sake have done recently. The more Meaderies there are out there the better; truly we don’t compete with each other for Mead business; rather, we work together to educate people about how Mead is made, and getting people interested in the Mead experience.
Finally, if given the chance to redo the process of starting up and Superstition Meadery establishing your business, what Very low really. I guess you could say would you have done differently? that giving mead away at events for 1.5 years was marketing, but besides Superstition Meadery that I haven’t paid for anything but a few signs at my accounts. So un- I may have gone with screen printder 5%. I don’t budget for advertising ing on bottles instead of applying laand the only add I run is in Ameri- bels. Otherwise everything is going as planned, slow and steady. Lately can Mead Maker. things are beginning to pick up for us and I am looking forward to a
great year and our first expansion in early 2014. Kookoolan World Meadery I would’ve been bolder and jumped in for higher volume straightaway. The demand is there, and it’s my favorite part of the business.
Photo: Jeff Herbert moves boiling water around inside a bourbon barrel. Photo By Luke Herbert
By Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor other reason would there be? Proprietor and Meadmaker At a time in my life when both money and time were precious, I spent too much of both to go, The Backstory My fascination with Mead be- and found Budweiser and Cogan when I was still under- ors’ Light to be the only drinks age: “Beowulf” in tenth-grade there. Very disappointing. In English class. I had an excel- 1996, I was going for a walk in lent and handsome young in- my new neighborhood in Hillstructor and if anybody in class sboro, Oregon, when I walked showed an interest in anything, past, and then turned around he pounced on that enthusiasm and walked into, Main Street to try to motivate the rest of the Homebrew Supply, and began class. As a result we had prob- finally to dabble in Meadmakably more discussion about ing. I’ve been hooked ever since. Mead than any English class Made dozens of small batchbefore or since, and he encour- es. Read all the books and legaged my extra-credit research ends. Decided to someday have into the topic. Years later when a Meadery somehow named for I was at Arizona State Univer- Cuchulain (pronounced koosity, I heard for the first time CULL-en, a Mead-swilling catabout a Renaissance Festival, tle rustler from ancient Irish litand thought that of course there erature) but couldn’t figure out would be Mead there, what how to make that work, since
hardly anybody has ever heard the table. Our farm is Kookoolof him, and it looks unpro- an Farms, and was founded in nounceable spelled in Gaelic! 2005. The name Kookoolan World Meadery anchors the Where does the name come Meadery to the farm and emphasizes the diversity of Mead from? styles we inMy husband tend to proKoorosh had duce: more a childhood of a Mead du nickname Jour than one Kookoolan or two sta(pronounced ble products. KO O - ko o I’m more of a lan). The first dabbler or a time I heard Mead anthrohis older pologist, fasbrother call cinated by all him that, I the myriad heard “Cuchstyles from ulain” and alall places and most fell out times around of my chair. the world. It It became seems to me something of singularly an inside joke beautiful and between us, unifying that and when it in all places was time for and times, us to name someone has our farm, no made Mead, other name and thatMead was even on
has borne the unique mark of and rabbits. And we make that place, time, and culture. Kombucha, Mead, and dessert wines. (Our classroom is also a fully-licensed tasting room, Just a Little About the Farm Kookoolan Farms is a diversi- although it really doesn’t aesfied grass-based small farm. thetically function as such yet.) We’re not certified organic, but we have never bought or used Bootstrap Start-up any synthetic fertilizer, herbi- We bought our farm in Octocide, pesticide, or fungicide in ber 2005, and immediately set the eight years we’ve ben here. to work trying to set up income We raise chickens for meat and streams. We started chickens, eggs; keep a few Jersey dairy built fences and outbuildings, cows; and have a few acres in learned to butcher chickens vegetables that we sell through and milk cows, and started rea CSA subscription program. building our 1905 farmhouse. We have the largest and most We converted an existing 20 foot complete selection of home X 30 foot two-story outbuilding cheesemaking supplies any- into a poultry slaughterhouse: where in the Northwest, with six months a year, one day a about $25,000 in inventory, ev- week, we hand-butcher about erything you need to make any 300 poultry animals. And the kind of cheese you can think of, other 340 days of the year, the more than 60 different cultures, building is idle. Mind you, this five kinds of lipase, three kinds is a fully licensed and inspectof rennet. We offer cheesemak- ed food processing plant, with ing classes. We’ve become a stainless steel walls, coved baseloose co-op of small livestock boards, enamel-painted floors farms, and with our partners sloping to drains, triple sinks, are able to offer three differ- food-grade hoses, and certified ent kinds of pasture-raised City water from a source in Orepork; beef; lamb; veal; ducks gon’s Coast Range. Meanwhile,
in the background, the dream of opening my own Meadery was never far beneath the surface. As I continued to “dig in” to reading all the legal codes on wineries and breweries, the “ah-ha” moment finally hit me: everything we had put into the slaughterhouse made the same building the ideal small winery. It would be trivial to convert the building to a winery, or for that matter to any kind of food processing facility including a creamery. What I didn’t want to have to do was build a second, separate, $80,000 licensed facility dedicated just to making Mead, sitting there idle half the time while my slaughterhouse sat idle the other half of the time. Finally I had a conversation with our food safety inspector: if we sold the property and someone wanted to use the building as a creamery or a winery, would that indeed be a trivial license conversion? Oh yes. What if I didn’t sell the property, but I got tired of killing chickens, could *I* easily convert the building to one of those other
licenses? Oh yes. What if I only wanted to kill poultry from May through November, and make Mead from December through April? Could I switch back and forth? His eyes almost popped out of his head thinking about all the extra work he’d have to do visiting me three or four times a year instead of just once. I calmly told him I didn’t really care about the extra work for him, and of course I’d be happy to pay for both licenses; what I didn’t want was to have a building sitting idle so much of the year, and not to build a second under-utilized dedicated-use facility. Finally he conceded that there were a few wineries that also make fruit jellies, and I knew I was onto something. Licensing Licensing requirements vary greatly state to state. I couldn’t find any single source to tell me all the licenses I needed, and everywhere I turned I found another approval necessary. I started making a notebook, then a spreadsheet. I
tried mapping it as a flow chart, then as a project schedule, then as a budget. But no one could tell me my list was complete. Finally after discussing my goals on the phone with the instructor, I enrolled in a one-semester graduate course at the Chemeketa Viticulture program in Salem, Oregon, an hour away. My class project was to come up with a complete licensing plan, including all necessary agencies and approvals, what order to get them in, how to apply for them all, how much they all cost, and how long the whole thing was going to take. And indeed a semester later I had compiled it: to go from zero to selling bottled Mead required no fewer than 22 licenses, permits, approvals, and label approvals from multiple county, state, and federal agencies. Yikes. This is where my engineering management background came into play: this was just a complex engineering project. I mapped it all out and got to work. Meanwhile, with skills learned from
my attorney father and advice from my attorney younger brother, I kept gently working on the inspectors until finally I found the magic phrase: “multiple use facilty.” I believe that I am the owner of the only building in the United States ever to be simultaneously licensed as both a poultry processing facility and as a winery. “Kookoolan Meatery and Meadery”??? If there’s a marketing angle there, I’m sure I don’t know what it is, but with this final piece in place, we finally received our license to operate on November 9, 2009! We managed to get our little Meadery off the ground and operational with no borrowed money and no outside investors. Of course, our capacity was little more than large-scale homebrewing, but it was a start. Teaming up with Doug Remington I had made dozens of batches of meads over a period of some 13 years, but my largest batch to date had been a mere 13 gallons. With my new $1,700 coni-
cal 42-gallon Fermenator and some $500 worth of honey, I didn’t want to screw things up. So I invited my old friend Douglas Remington to come over for a day of large-scale homebrewing to help me make sure everything went according to plan. Douglas has been advising home Meadmakers at Main Street Homebrew Supply for more than a decade, had made hundreds of gallons of excellent Meads, had judged Mead, beer, and wine competitions, and is the author of www.TradionalMead.com. Turns out we get along splendidly as work partners: we’re both committed to turning out the highestquality, interesting Meads possible with no cutting corners. Our Meads Our first commercial Mead was a Metheglin inspired by a 3-pound basket of fragrant Habanero peppers at the farmer’s market in the summer of 2009. On impulse I bought them; took them home and put them in the refrigerator a few days; in
desperation I steeped them in hot water and then poured the juice into a five-gallon batch of plain Mead I had going in the house (this was a few months before we were licensed). Later, when it was cleared, I tasted it before bottling (ostensibly to adjust the flavors) and smoke and steam poured out of my ears, eyes, nose, and mouth for a good 15 minutes. The mixing began in earnest, and I realized I would need some 50 gallons of plain mead to dilute the Habanero Mead. Thus was borne our Spice Road Mead, with the heat of the peppers tempered with saffron and vanilla. Our second was not a Mead at all, but Vin de Noix, an ancient French aperitif made by harvesting young green walnuts on Bastille Day or thereabouts, when the immature nuts are fully formed but still so soft that a sewing needle may easily pass through. They are steeped in red wine and brandy for several months, along with added orange peel, vanilla, cloves, and sugar; then strained and bot-
tled in time for the winter holidays. This is an unusual, oldfashioned, and cheering drink, very warming for our cold, dark, wet winters here in the Northwest. It’s been very popular and will be a regular product for us. It’s also great use for our single magnificent 100-yearold English walnut tree! Best of all has been the Dwojniak-style mead we named Przselenie Zimawe: The Winter Solstice (in Polish). Massively rich, made from equal parts honey and water by volume, eight pounds of honey per gallon of water, with no added flavors, but then aged in a Bourbon barrel. We’re only sorry we tried it out with such a small batch; it sold out almost immediately. Now we’re eager to receive our new nine-barrel conical fermenter later this year to make a much bigger batch! We also have a semi-dry mead in progress nearly ready to bottle, and lots more planned!
in Shiraz, Iran, and had his university education interrupted by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Because he is not Muslim, Koorosh was unable to attend university, work, or emigrate legally. As a result, for several years he worked cash labor odd jobs around Shiraz, mostly construction and agriculture. In that context he spent one summer as a beekeeper, the sole employee for a family business that kept about 500 hives and moved them around to pollinate the almond and citrus groves in the surrounding countryside. You can imagine how my eyes lit up when I discovered that in addition to everything else, the man of my dreams was also a beekeeper! But, alas, it was a pretty crummy job: packing up the hives at night, loading them on the truck, moving them to another location 20 miles away, coming back to the first location for a second trip, and then sleeping outside during the day. To the idea of keeping bees on Sourcing Our Honey our farm, Koorosh’s answer was My husband Koorosh grew up not just “no”: it was “hell no.”
Did you already know that federal regulations allow you to have a winery on your residential property, but not a brewery? And that wineries cannot use malted grain in any of their beverages? Thus, sadly, Kookoolan World Meadery will never produce a Braggot. A smaller factor leading us to decide on a winery rather than brewery license is our location, right in the middle of the YamhillCarlton AVA region of Oregon’s north Willamette Valley: we are surrounded by dozens of excellent wineries, and our address on Highway 47 puts us right on the “Sip 47” wine route, perhaps the only published wine route in the country that includes not only wineries but also cideries, a sakery, a few breweries, and our Kombuchery and Meadery! This also makes it a terrific neighborhood for finding mentors: several of the local winemakers buy their families’ eggs, milk, meat, and vegetables at Kookoolan Farms, making it easy to build relationships with this community.
(At which point the thought did cross my mind as to whether this was just a Tall Tale; until a wild hive settled on a fallen stump at our next door neighbor’s place; turns out our neighbor Ken had been wanting to keep a hive for a long time and had all the supplies, but he had never handled bees. Koorosh enthusiastically said, “well, let’s go catch the bees!” Ken said that although he had all the hive components, he did not have the suit and hood yet. Koorosh said, “that’s just for Americans, we don’t need a suit.” Off they went to Ken’s garage, and sure enough, Koorosh deftly installed the box over the swarm of bees, came back after dark and moved the box to where Ken wanted it, all without suit or hood, and without getting stung once. Some of this “estate” honey found its way into one of our Meads.) So our role in the honey production of Yamhill County is to provide ourselves as a buyer of well-produced local honeys, hopefully encouraging
more people to keep bees. It’s a great place to do it as we are surrounded by hazelnut orchards and literally thousands of acres of raspberries, blackberries, plums, and other fruit trees here in Yamhill County. In addition to buying some direct from small beekeepers, we also buy some through “My Local Honey,” a Willamette Valley co-op, through GloryBee honey distributor in Eugene, Oregon, and we intend to bring in some exotic honeys as well.
Chrissie and Koorosh
Kookoolan World Meadery’s Kombucha is not your supermarket Kombucha: it’s brewed under the winery license and contains 1.5% alcohol. No vinegar flavors. It’s a clean, thirt-quenching fusion of cider, iced tea, and wheat beer flavors. The fruity aromas come from the custom tea blend made specially for Kookoolan World Meadery by local Tao of Tea: it’s an organic Ceylon tea with an amped-up amount of bergamot oil because unlike a hot cup of tea, Kombucha is mostly enjoyed ice cold and right out of the bottle.
In addition to Mead, KookoolanWorld Meadery also produces a few unusual wines. They’re currently bottling their third year of Vin de Noix, an ancient French cordial made by steeping young walnut fruits in red wine and brandy, along with spices.
Our Packaging The first bottle design was inspired by the sleeve tattoo of my grown son Sam, and drawn by his tattoo artist. The bottle was lovely but the real breakthrough was realizing that it would be better executed with silkscreening than on a paper label. Paper labels really require professional designing to print beautifully, and require expensive multi-color printing on expensive paper stock. They also require specialized equipment for applying. By contrast, silkscreening is done directly on the bottle and all that’s left to be done is to fill the bottle and cork it. Also, Meads age well for decades; just a few months before, we had been to a dinner party at friends opening a few 20-year-old bottles of wine that had been cellared: the labels had deteriorated beyond reading. Silkscreening is far more robust for long storage, and can’t be marred or torn or wetted like a paper label. The downside is if you overestimate the number of bottles needed, they can’t be
used for any other product! TriS in Tualatin, Oregon, is an absolutely wonderful bottle silkscreener who does the bottles for Rogue Ales and many other brands a lot bigger than us. So far our volumes have been so small that we’ve only been able to use their one-color, smallvolume printing machine, with the ink being cured afterward on a separate belt oven. (Our Vin de Noix bottle can’t be silk screened because it is so tall and skinny that it falls over in the cure oven before the ink is cured, resulting in a smeared mess, so that’s why we have a paper label for that.) But Tri-S also has a high-precision, four-color, it-situ-UV-cure machine too, that requires a minimum order of 10,000 bottles to use. We’re looking forward to more sophisticated artwork in the future! Our bottles have all come from Saxco Pacific Coast in Vancouver, Washington, and they have a warehouse based in California’s wine country as well. They have two separate divisions that offer beer bottles
and wine bottles, respectively. When we were getting ready to ramp up our production of Kombucha, I got a referral to a “brand developer” marketing specialist in Portland who has worked with some of the bestknown wineries plus Nike here in Oregon. I met with her and got a quote on brand development: the quote was for $45,000 to name the product, choose the packaging, design the label and a few accessory items such as window stickers and table cards, and to develop a singlepage, non-active website (basically, just a one-page flyer). I figured that meant that I would have to sell the first 45,000 bottles of Kombucha just to pay her, at a time that I was manufacturing 75 gallons a week of Kombucha. So I sat down with our egg cartons and business cards, which had been designed by our architect, and spent three days coming up with the Kombucha bottle design myself. While I’m sure the professional would have come up with a better design, it is also brutally
clear that DIY was a better business decision: the design is simple, clean, consistent with our farm brand, and paid me the best wage I’ve ever made in my life, some $60,000 for three days of work! (A penny saved is better than a penny earned because you don’t have to pay taxes on it!) Absolutely there is a time and a place for professional graphic design, and in no way do I mean to imply otherwise, but don’t be afraid to see what you can come up with yourself!! Plans for the Future We’re bullish on Mead, and are finalizing plans for a larger poured-concrete, partially-underground Meadery expansion building to go in later in 2013. This will provide a lot more area for ageing tanks, barrels, and storage of empty and filled bottles.
Checkout Kookoolan World Meadery on the web and stay tuned for more writing from this American Mead Maker.
Meet the Mead Maker Moonstruck Meadery Algomah Meadery Superstition Meadery
Moonstruck Meadery was named after the March 2011, Super Moon, which occurs every 18 years. The Mead Maker and Owner, Brian Schlueter, has created many libations of Mead begining his mead adventures from 1990 till today, from a small Island in Japan called Okinawa. His passion and love for making mead stems from years of homebrewing, and interest in educating others on the art of craft beverages. Luke Schlueter, oldest son to Moonstruck Meadery owner Brian Schlueter, has teamed up with his father to build and grow Moonstruck Meadery. Luke joined his father on Thursday, July 12th 2012, and has already stepped in to take over the distribution of getting Mead into the hands of local businesses as well as assisting his father in the day to day Management Operations of Moonstruck. Luke brings with him a passion, desire, and love for Mead and the art of Mead making. He has crafted his own Mead while active in the military. Luke will take over full time operations of Moonstruck in the near future as his father teaches him the nuances and intricacies of the father/son business. Both share an aspiration in producing the finest quality Mead locally, regionally and nationally. (See Brian and Luke on previous spread)
It is nothing less than fitting that the place of Melissa Hronkin and John Hersman’s honey operations happens to be a historical Catholic church in Greenland, MI. As caretakers of this church, the two are acutely aware that their honeybees have, in a sense, come full circle. The Catholic Church has a long history with honeybees – the monks being the first beekeepers who produced wax for the church’s candles.
John and Melissa produce everything from raw honey to olive oil soaps, making it appear as though it is not possible to not be inspired while living on 38 acres of old farm fields filled with clover, trefoil and basswood trees. Beekeeping strikes the perfect balance between John’s culinary experience and Melissa’s art background (Melissa is an elementary school teacher, an adjunct professor at Finlandia and a practicing artist showing around the U.P.), and it allows them to combine their environmental passion with their interest in artisanal food products and gardening. For the couple, beekeeping and its process allows for creativity. It is both a passion and a lifestyle that they plan to continue by means of sustainable methods. John and Melissa have bee yards in
Ontonagon and Houghton County, keeping between 50 and 100 hives. Since U.P. honey is harvested just once per year in August, the bees’ hives yield on average 60-80 pounds of honey each. The raw honey has not been over heated or filtered so that the honey retains its unique and complex flavors and beneficial nutrients. The honey itself is spun on a 20 frame extractor. It is then filtered and bottled by hand in the church kitchen. John and Melissa’s candles and soaps are also made in the church kitchen. (Photos by Melissa Hronkin of Algomah Meadery)
Superstition Meadery is a Federal and State licensed winery that produces a variety of honey based wines (mead) and hard cider. The core of the Superstition Meadery is the husband and wife team of Jeff and Jen Herbert. Their skill sets compliment each other and work harmoniously in a left brain/right brain manner to facilitate a positive working environment. Jeff brings to the table a creative energy that has resulted in our company making a diversity of fantastic meads from ingredients such as Tahitian vanilla beans, Spanish saffron, Marion berries, and toasted Hungarian oak. Jen makes the business successful with her nononsense approach to managing finances, record keeping and facilitating communication. We are a small business, but we are gaining momentum because our current production capacity is maxed out and demand for our prod-
ucts continues to grow. We are carving a niche of awareness in the world of small batch alcoholic beverages. We only use Arizona honey in our meads, which is mixed with water from a deep high desert well. We believe in making unique products serving a diversity of palates. We are the first alternating proprietorship in Arizona, which means that we lease a space in an existing winery allowing us to significantly lower overhead expenses and share equipment. We have returning customers, additional accounts lined up to carry our products, and have caught the beginning of a new wave in a fresh industry. We are proud to be founding members of the American Mead Makers Association and we hope to be a part of helping our industry grow. (Previous Spread: Jeff and Jen Herbert)
Check back next time to meet more American Mead Makers...
Crisis of the Colony: Millions of bees disappearing from hives, first seen in 20052006, caught the attention of the media and the honeybee that is responsible for every 1/3 bite of food we eat. The gradual decline of pollinators has been occurring for years, but this was something different, more catastrophic. I remember the day if finally hit me-- the “mysterious die-off” of my name-sake, Apis Mellifera, floored me. In the summer of 2008, my husband and I got our first two beehives, and I began working in encaustics, or painting with beeswax. This crisis or call for alarm spurned a collective “wake up call” for beekeepers, gardeners, artists, and foodies alike. Within crisis lies opportunity for greater awareness, appreciation, and re-focus. By directly participating in beekeeping, we are engaging in this ancient and sacred art—this collaboration between humans and insects and flowers: symbiosis in its highest form.
gans in a body, bees provide different functions for the hive to sustain itself as a whole. An individual bee without a colony cannot survive for long. At the height of summer, a bee colony contains anywhere from 40-60,000 bees. There is one queen, several thousand male bees (drones) and the rest are worker bees (females). The queen spends her day laying eggs, while the worker bees (living a short 6 week life in the summer) has a different job each week of its life. Scientists propose that evolving into this superorganism is what makes possible a whole new level of complexity for the colony. What could we as a community accomplish if we focused on what was good for the hive rather than the individual?
The Alchemist: the last few weeks of her life -- are spent foraging for honey and pollen. Forager bees suck nectar from flowers using a long proboscis and stow the nectar in a special sac called a honey Super-organism: Entomologists consider stomach, where the nectar mixes with the colony as a superorganism. Like or- enzymes; when a forager returns to the
comb where it is evaporated into honey. Simultaneously, worker bees collect pollen in pollen sacs on their rear legs; this is also brought back to the hive to be used as food, but in the process of collecting nectar and pollen, bees inadvertently transfer pollen from flower to flower. Alchemy: turning nectar into honey. Lead into gold. As a teacher and an artist, I feel like my job is also a lot about alchemy: taking everyday materials and resurrecting them as “art”. Teachers, I feel, are also alchemists: we strive to help our students turn the knowledge or nectar into their own honey, their passion.
cine for what we need at our fingertips.
Honeycomb: Young bees are also involved in wax production. Wax is secreted from wax glands, located inside the last four ventral sections of the abdomen, and is used to build honeycombs, either for storage of honey or for use as brood cells. New wax is also needed to repair old cells, and to cap cells (honeycombs as well as brood cells. The perfect geometry of these cells, where the bees grow, and sometimes go to die, is the most efficient use of space. Given a hollow cavity, bees do what is called “festooning”…they link together to measure the space and build Winged Apothecary: Propolis is a sticky their ideal perfect environment. Such eleresin, which seeps from the buds of cer- gance and efficiency of space is something tain trees. The bees gather propolis, to strive for in our lives and communities. sometimes called bee glue and carry it home in their pollen baskets. The worker Which leads me to…. bees then take the resinous material and add salivary secretions and wax flakes to it and use the bee propolis in two ways: The Hive: Home and the hive: I think if firstly to reinforce the hive itself, and we pay attention closely enough, we can secondly propolis protects the hive from only hope to be so efficient and intuibacterial and viral infection. Propolis and tive to needs. Re-using and re-purposing Honey are becoming more commonly spaces to fit our needs is a sustainable used in burn treatment on humans and way of keeping our landscape’s aesthetic wound therapy because of the antibacte- while making it relevant to our needs. My rial properties. The gifts of the hive have husband and I set up our honey house in myriad healthful benefits to humans, the former Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic as the bees are very hygienic and honey Church in Greenland, MI. This space was is the only food that never spoils if har- sitting vacant since 1995, and we have now vested properly. If you ARE interested turned it into our production area for spinin fermenting the honey, so were your ning honey and making mead, while the ancestors. MEAD is the oldest ferment- upstairs has become a community gather ed beverage according to many sourc- space for sharing music, art, and stories. es: honey, water, and some wild yeasts. The potential is overwhelming, and as If the other gifts of the hive don’t heal caretakers of this historical building, this what’s ailing you, this surely will put a hive, we feel an obligation to keep it sasmile on your face! We have the medi- cred and shared, and a place of inspiration.
Swarm: Swarming is the natural means of reproduction of honey bee colonies. A new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming. In the prime swarm, about 60% of the worker bees leave the original hive location with the old queen. This swarm can contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees. It is loud, chaotic, and a bit unsettling at first….until you realize it is nature’s way of dividing the colony: from one you now have 2. Only the bees know why they swarm! We have the pleasure of many of our hives close to our house, so we have witnessed many a swarm. Taking the less invasive style of beekeeping, we often don’t try to artificially prevent them as some modern beekeepers do. Divergent thinking: Some of my biggest breakthroughs have come when I stop trying to make my initial idea work, and instead take a radical approach to solve the problem—just like a swarm. It is good to know when to swarm.
Spring: survive and thrive. Will the hives survive? Next comes the daunting task of assessing the hives in spring-time, which in the UP can sometimes be April. A sense of loss and guilt comes when we fine a dead hive---the wreckage of winter…maybe they didn’t starve, but maybe the queen died and the colony lost its sense of purpose…sometimes they make it through deep winter, only to perish in March. Nevertheless, some colonies come through strong, and are bubbling over with bees come May. Those that survive, thrive--and can produce lots of extra happy honey because the queen begins to lay eggs in Feb. or March. With the first bloom of dandelions or crocus, they are rocking and rolling, in their already established hive. We too, can survive and thrive through the rough spots and long winters and come out of it stronger having endured.
Wintering: After the honey flow and harvest, the hive begins to prepare itself for winter. The drones (male bees) are kicked out of the hive, the queen stops laying eggs, and therefore the population drops. They need enough bees to keep the temperature high enough through cold winter months, but not too large so they will burn through honey stores too quickly. The honeymoon is over, so to speak, and now it is all about survival. If the hive is healthy, they create a cluster around the queen bee, and circulate from inside the cluster to outside..gathering honey and delivering it throughout the population, and to the queen. This time of repose, quiet, and
You get what you give: Take care of the bees and they’ll take care of us. What Beekeeping Has Taught Me about Alchemy, Sustainability, and Community? I can only hope that this small gesture, this passion of ours, this Keeping the Bees--will help the collective honeybee health. If we start seeing our endeavors, lives, communities, more as a superorganism rather than independent, separate entities, perhaps our greater purpose and organic complexity will emerge as well. If we can see our feeble attempts and daily efforts at life as spinning gold like the alchemist, then perhaps their rewards will be sweet. If we begin to see
“dreaming of flowers” is something that we Northerners have come to expect, need, and secretly love. We thrive in adversity.
the relationships, the underlying webs in nature and culture, like the symbiotic relationship of the bees and flowers, perhaps we will make decisions based on a more sustainable future for our global environment and collective culture. Thank you and Bee the Change‌..
There are as many reasons for entering your mead into a competition as there are mead makers. My own reasons include the judge’s feedback so I can make better mead, but I will also confess to a desire for peer approval. For the amateur it is bragging rights. For the commercial Meadery an award can be used as a marketing tool. Whatever your reason there is no shortage of competitions, from the local County Fair to the Mazer Cup International Mead Competition. Held every March in Boulder, Colorado the Mazer Cup is the Super Bowl of mead competitions. It is the largest Mead only competition in the world. A brief history of the Mazer Cup can be found in the first issue of this newsletter, The Story Behind the AMMA.
If you choose to participate it takes a little planning. We recommend you set aside several unlabeled bottles from each batch. Most competitions require at least two 750ml bottles per entry, while a few require up to six. You should also consider the cost of entry as well as shipping. Most amateur entries run less than $8.00, while the commercial competitions can be upwards of $85.00 per entry. When it comes to shipping you should be aware it is prohibited to ship alcoholic beverages through the U.S. Postal Service. However, it is not against any Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) regulations or federal laws to
ship using a privately owned shipping company For Analytical Purposes. Remember private shipping companies have the right to refuse your shipment. If you are shipping internationally there are international treaties and customs to consider. Your package may be subject to additional documentation, fees and inspections. Find the FedEx rules here: http://www.fedex.com/us/international/wine-shipping/index.html and UPS here: http://www.ups.com/wine. Packaging is very important. You should consider not only the protection of your mead during shipping but how the recipient on the other end will manage your package and shipping material. The easiest way to ship is using wine shippers such as the ones available through The Vintner’s Vault online at http://www.thevintnervault.com/ Look in their Tasting Room Accessories. Box Vendor http://www.boxvendor.com/index. aspx also carries a line of shippers.
most boxes are designed to withstand a certain amount of weight and abuse. If there are tears or creases in the sides and corners it will not provide adequate protection for your Mead. Line the box with a trash bag. This will help keep your mead from leaking out in the event of a broken bottle. Try to avoid using “peanuts”. These cause a bit of a mess when unpacking and many landfills will not accept them. Use bubble wrap instead. Seal each bottle in its own ziplock bag. In the event a bottle is damaged the glass will be contained and maybe even the contents. Do not over pack your box. Six bottles with packing material puts a box at around 20 pounds. Place your paperwork and payment inside a ziplock bag as well. Here is a partial list of competitions that take mead. Good luck and enjoy.
Arizona Mead Cup http://www.brewarizona.org/meadCup.html Phoenix, AZ If you don’t want to use wine ship- Amateur Mead Only March $8.00 ea pers then here are our recommenda- 2/12oz or 3/7oz tions. Select a good cardboard box that is not all beat up. Keep in mind
Clark County Fair http://www.clarkcofair.com/ Vancouver, WA Amateur Beer/Mead August No fee
Indiana Wine Competition http://www.indyinternational.org/ Purdue U., W. Lafayette, IN ProAM All August
Domras Cup http://www.savannahbrewers.com/ domrascup.php Savannah, GA Amateur Mead Only February 1/750ml or 2/16oz $6.00 ea
International Eastern Wine Competition http://www.winecompetitions.com/ Sonoma, CA Professional Wine/ Mead February 4/750ml or 6/350ml $75.00 ea
The Evergreen State Fair http://www.evergreenfair.org/openclass.asp Monroe, WA Amateur Beer/Mead August 2/750ml No fee
International Women’s Wine Competition http://www.winecompetitions.com/ Sonoma, CA Professional All November 4/750ml or 6/350ml $65.00 ea
Finger Lakes International Wine Competition http://www.fliwc.com/ Mendon, NY 2000 Professional Wine/Mead March 4/750ml or 3/375ml $50.00 ea Homebrew at the W.E.B. Homebrew Competition https://www.facebook.com/ events/304357922926499/ Frankenmuth, MI Amateur Beer/Mead March
Los Angeles Int’l Wine & Spirits Competition http://www.fairplex.com/wos/wine_ competition/ Los Angeles, CA Wine/Mead May $75.00 for 6 entries The Mazer Cup Int’l Mead Competition http://www.mazercup.com/ Boulder, CO Pro-Am Mead Only March 2/375ml
Comps Continued: Mead Free or Die http://www.meadfreeordie.com/ Londonderry, NH Amateur Mead Only August 1/750ml $6.00 ea
NextGen Wine Competition http://www.winecompetitions.com/ Santa Rosa, CA 2008 Professional All September 4/750ml or 6/350ml $65.00 ea
Meadlenium http://www.cfhb.org/meadlennium/ Sanford, FL Amateur Mead Only May 2/750ml $6.00 ea
Puyallup Fair http://www.thefair.com/site-information/page/how-to-participate/ exhibit-entries/ Puyallup, WA Amateur All September 2/750ml $3.00 ea
Michigan Mead Cup & Honey Festival http://www.michiganhoneyfestival. org/ Metamora, MI 2012 Pro-Am Mead Only July
San Diego Int’l Wine Competition http://www.sdiwc.com/ San Diego, CA Professional All April 6/750ml or 8 375ml$75.00 ea
Midwinter Homebrew Competition http://midwinterhbc.beerbarons.org/ index.phpMilwaukee, WI Amateur Beer Cider Mead February 2/12oz $8.00 ea
San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition http://winejudging.com/index.html San Francisco, CA Professional All February
Muse Cup http://muse.liquidpoets.com/ Ft Collins, CO 2008 Amateur Mead Only September 2/22oz $6.00 ea
San Francisco Int’l Wine Competition http://www.sfwinecomp.com/ San Francisco, CA Professional All June 5/750ml $85.00 ea
Texas Mead Festival https://www.facebook.com/ events/381800068528305/ La Grange, TX Amateur Mead Only September
West Coast Wine Competition http://www.winecompetitions.com/ Sonoma, CA Professional All July 4/750ml or 6/350ml $55.00 ea
Tri-Cities Wine Festival http://www.tcwinefest.com/index. html Kennewick, WA Professional All November
Wine Maker Int’l Amateur Wine Competition http://winemakermag.com/competition Manchester Center, VT Amateur All April 1/750ml or 1/22oz for meads$25.00 ea Limit 15
U.S. National Wine Competition http://www.winecompetitions.com/ Sonoma, CA Professional All March 4/750ml or 6/350ml $75.00 ea Valhalla-The Meading of Life competition http://www.valhalla-mead.com/ West Chester, PA 2004 Amateur Mead Only October 1/750ml or 2/22oz $7.00 ea Washington Mead & Cider Cup http://www.gebl.org/articles/2012washington-mead-cider-cup/ Everett, WA Amateur Mead & Cider December 2/12 oz, 2/375ml or 1/750ml $7.00 ea
When you win a medal in one of these competitions, send us a photo of you, your mead, and your recipe. We will be happy to publish the results of your success!
Now go make some mead!
Enjoy this parting image by Melissa Hronkin...