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3-25-25 Tonight we’re talking with Yoo Kwan, owner of Booze and Buzz Meadery in Seoul, South Korea.

Kwan was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1988, but shortly moved out and spent most of the 90s and mid 2000s in Italy, Rome.  There he was able to develop his palate on honey, as it was his first choice as a back sweetener on fruits that were usually to sour to eat (strawberry, apple etc). He also enjoyed making honey water, or sometimes with lemon juice, only to be drank cold as a energizer during hot summer and hot medicinal tea during cold winter.
During his early-life in university he enjoyed not only drinking, but making cocktails with different varieties of booze, and extensively used honey to make honey flavoured wine and beer (also known as honey beer at some point in the late 2010s in Korea)

Such passion for honey grew to a point where he wondered, what if you make a fermented drink out of honey, rather than mixing honey into pre-existing wine & beer? It was at that moment when he discovered mead from a PC game called Skyrim, he decided to make one for himself.

The next year he teamed up with his college buddies to build a local meadery called bebee’s brewery, later renamed to 3 bears Meadery,   Even though they weren’t the first meadery to come up, they gained more fame and popularity through SNS virals, and his passion for mead didn’t stop when he had to step down and quit abruptly due to personal reasons. Kwan’s research on mead continued in his house, day or night, and when he came across the European Mead Maker Association in 2018, he was encouraged to send his first entries to the competition by Mateusz Blaszczyk, who was organising Kings of Mead from Poland. There he achieved 2nd place in Metheglin, then 1st place in Specialty Mead in 2019 and 2nd in Mazercup 2020 while running his personal Mead Laboratory where he taught everything he knew about Mead through more than 120 classes for 2 years.

After realising how difficult it was for folks to make anything back at home, Kwan came up with a business idea to develop the next Gen homebrewing device hoping to expand the culture of homebrewing and promoting mead in Korea.

But before proceeding with hardware manufacturing business, it is important to build a firm brand as an award winning brewery/meadery for extra credibility. Hence his second meadery was founded in 2022, and their latest avenue jumped over 210% compared to the year before.

So far, aside from amateur awards, Booze & Buzz Meadery has won several places in both Mexico and European Mead competition.
2023 MMC : Pyment 1st
2024 MMC : Braggot 1st
Sparkling 3rd
2024 Copa del Hidromiel : Traditional 3rd
2025 MMC : Braggot 2nd
                     Sparkling 2nd
Their mission is to create the best experience in making, drinking and sharing booze around the world.
Booze & Buzz Meadery Inc. is a subsidiary company of Booze & Buzz Inc, which primarily develops and sells smart homebrewing device. But before we advance with our smart homebrewing device, we decided to launch a meadery and introduce mead properly for many strategic reasons. Being recognised as a high quality mead making brand would later help them to bring their products closer to the users, and they want to position their brand as mead artisans who developed smart homebrewing device and not vice versa. (as clearly shown by LG electronics, they have launched their automated beer brewing machine with a little success)
Here is a short article written about Booze and Buzz shortly after they established their company

Located in the northern side of Yong-In city, Gyeonggido Province, their meadery mainly focuses on producing traditional mead with wildflower honey, and from time to time single sourced honey traditionals would be available.

They are also scheduled to make several melomels, metheglin and braggot next year. Their honey is sourced from their beekeeper, who has grown his beehives for more than 35 years while practising no use of chemical agents but only environment friendly-treatment.
 

South Korea would be probably one of the the worst place to introduce mead, or at least it was, when American TV shows (Mi’gook D’rama) is widely known as Mid (or Mead!) as an acronym. It was just devastating when Kwan literally had to grab everyone to explain through customers to retailers.

Now they are starting to see a difference. More and more folks now recognise this new category, whether they are Skyrim/game of throne fans or not (even though there’s no single scene where mead is actually drunk), mead is steadily becoming a thing at last.

There was only roughly one meadery or 0 that opened annually since 2015, but this year they expect 4 meaderies to be operational. (10 meaderies so far)

It’s interesting to see how other beverages,  coffee (Starbucks, 1999-) and Craft Beer (2002-2012) market changed in Korea; it nearly took a decade for one trend to be introduced and customised to meet customer’s needs, and finally to settle in permanently.

Consumers are now more aware of their personal preference and are opting for high quality brands backed with touching stories rather than cheap alcohol just to get drunk. There is a clear sign of this sector growing more as the trend leans towards a niche market as the preferences become more diverse and refined.

Join us to see what’s doing in Korea with mead!

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Sponsor:

Look no further than Honnibrook Craft Meadery in Castle Rock, Colorado, for your go-to destination for wonderful, light, and refreshing mead! We have 20 meads on tap and four seasonal mead slushees. 
Go to honnibrook.com for review our tap list, upcoming events and to order online!

Crafting excellent mead requires excellent honey. Luckily The Honey Jar is here to help. Since 2005 The Honey Jar has been supplying delicious pure raw honey in easy to handle 12-pound pails to hobbyist brewers around the United States. Visit us at TheHoneyJarHome.com/gotmead

If you want to ask your mead making questions, you can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323) or send us a question via email, or via Twitter @realGotMead and we’ll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT (United States)
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Upcoming Shows
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Vicky Rowe
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