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Local guy finds market for mead
By Kalea Hall
POLAND
The year is 1000 A.D., and chances are your cup is filled with mead. Especially if you are dining in Heorot, the great mead hall, with Hrothgar, king of the Danes.
Characters in the Anglo-Saxon Epic poem “Beowulf” love their mead.
And soon you might, too.
“People are really open to the idea,” said Michael Fairbrother, president and founder of Moonlight Meadery in New Hampshire and president of the American Mead Makers Association.
Mead is a malt beverage derived either from honey and water or from a mixture of honey and water with hops, fruits, spices, grain, or other flavors.
Reading about mead in “Beowulf” is actually how Poland resident Rocky Singh got inspired to start his own meadery. When he made white wine in a biology class at Youngstown State University, his inspiration grew.
Singh then started to research mead and learned of its unique, dated history.
“It’s considered, by many, to be the oldest fermented beverage,” Singh said.
In Northern China, pottery vessels filled with a mixture of honey, rice, fruits and organic compounds of fermentation that dated back to 6500 B.C. were found, according to AMMA. In Europe, the drink was found in ceramics from 2800-1800 B.C.
As the story goes, the Greeks considered mead, what they called ambrosia or nectar, a drink from the gods believed to have magical properties such as prolonging life.
When grapes became cheaper than the honey used in mead, production of the once popular drink declined in some parts of Europe and in others it continued to flourish, according to the Washington meadery Sky River Brewing.
Mead is referenced in Celtic mythology, Norse/Aryan mythology and Anglo-Saxon culture, where it was considered a drink that would bring immortality.
The term “honeymoon” comes from the tradition of giving married couples honey wine, also known as mead.
Somewhere in time the need for mead slowed, but in recent years has returned. Singh is on his way to grow the mead movement. One month ago he bought 70 acres outside of Zanesville, where he will build a steel structure for agriculture, bee keeping, brewing and tasting.
Singh, who has his own hives to make honey, soon will apply for a license to sell his product, which comes in 20 different flavors.
The process, he says, shouldn’t take too long – not like the process of making the mead.
Singh experimented in the beginning with how much honey and water to use to make the perfect mead. His business, Brookstone Meadery Brewing Co., became an official company in 2013.
Singh decided in 2014 he needed his own bees to make the honey for the mead, so he got some hives for his backyard and became a beekeeper. He wanted his product to have top-notch honey.
“You have to be really careful with your honey,” Singh said. “Without the bees you cannot have a good mead.”
Today, he has eight hives.
“I have lost the number of times I have been stung,” Singh said.
After he gathers the honey and makes the mead, he has to wait a year and a half for it to age to perfection.
His current inventory is about 200 gallons at various ages. One gallon makes 31/2 bottles.
In December, Singh started to sell some of the honey from his hives. He’s about out now.
Once his mead makes it to market, Singh will be ready for rapid growth.
An annual survey from AMMA members released in 2014 showed mead sales increased 130 percent from 2012 to 2013.
Fairbrother, who started his meadery in 2010, went from making 3,000 gallons to 20,000 gallons in 2015. This year he expects to make 35,000 gallons. Sales of his mead have spread to 34 states and a list of other countries.
“I think we are the fastest growing segment of the business at this point,” Fairbrother said.
The flavor is what keeps people coming back, which Fairbrother says lasts longer. The quality of mead has improved greatly over the last few years.