5-7-24 Tonight at 9PM ET we will be talking with Christopher Clarke, Owner/Meadmaker at Four Fires Meadery and Head Brewer at HEAVY Beer Co. in Toledo, Ohio. 

Chris got into making mead after first getting into homebrewing.  In late 2014  he took up homebrewing, a short half a year after first getting into craft beer. His brewing buddy at the time, Mack Garton, and he would brew every single Monday for a year and a half, and somewhere halfway through that they made their first meads. In the next few months he would meet a new friend group and eventually went in on a mead together. Of that group, 4 of them continued further and began making meads as a collective, to share amongst the group as a whole. The 4, Andrew Lynch, Athreya Rajan, Josh Kirk, and Chris would go on to form Four Fires Meadery!

In 2015, Chris had his first mead, B. Nektar’s Episode 13, and was in love. He jumped in and made his first mead just a month later. That same year, he met the other Four Fires guys at a local craft hideout called the Local. They kept meeting at Chris’s place, and continued their confederation of mead makers who wanted to create a meadery. Their first group project that year was Hail Satin.

In 2016, they made meads, and homebrew beers, and enter contests, taking some awards and started forming the base business plan, and reaching out to angel investors, and worked on looking for a location. 

Chris’s enjoyment of craft beer, and meads intertwined with the fun he was having homebrewing, and eventually professionally brewing, seemed to have been accelerants for one another, so in the time between making his first mead, the meadery opening, and now, a LOT has changed. 

In 2017, Chris was hired as a production brewer at Maumee Bay Brewing Co. with the intent of revitalizing the portfolio. Later that year, Four Fires signed a lease on their building, and work began immediately on converting the space into a production facility. And the first mead found its way into the tanks in early 2018. As they neared their first release, Four Fires gained visibility amongst mead lovers with them getting some of their pre-production mead out there for people to try. 

Join us to check in with Chris and see what Four Fires is up to!

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Sponsor:

Honnibrook Craft Meadery. Rated the very best winery in Colorado! Visit our state-of-the-art meadery and tasting room south of downtown Castle Rock, Colorado, in a converted man cave. Mention the Got Mead Podcast this month for a free draft taster!  Google H-O-N-N-I Brook for hours and directions. They love visitors!  www.honnibrook.com

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
Join us on live chat during the show

Upcoming Shows
  • May 21 – Minnesota Mead Mafia
Show links and notes
Upcoming Events
  • May 9 – Kingview Mead and Winery, Mt. Lebanon, PA – Good Brother Earl live music
  • May 11 – Hickory Tree Farms Apiaries, Kent City, MI – Mead Make and Take class
  • May 11 – Maniacal Mead Company, Ypsilanti, MI – Wax Kings / Echo labs light industries presents Krystal Palace electronic event
  • May 11 – Bløm Mead and Cider, Ann Arbor, MI – 6th Birthday Party!
  • May 11 – Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO – saint chuck live
  • May 12 – Mikkeller Beer Festival at Warpigs Brewpub,  Copenhagen, Denmark – Chicken Maple Brunch and Mead Pairing
  • May 12 – Artifice Ales and Meadery, Manheim, PA – Session 2: Mothers Day – Pottery class
  • May 17 – Mead Meander, Scandanavia, WI – a fun-filled evening of mead tasting, a.k.a. honey wine, and exploration at participating businesses in Scandinavia. Nine venues, 8 in downtown Scandinavia, serving tastes of various Wisconsin-made mead in commemorative glass.
  • May 17 – Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA – Springs and Arrows live music
  • May 17-19 – Bull and Bee Meadery, Albany, NY – 2024 Saint Sophia Greek Festival, Bull and Bee Meadery will be vending their delicious Meads for tasting and bottle sales at this awesome annual event
  • May 18 – Sugarbelt Mead Festival, Crown Pointe, IN – Unlimited tasting of over 20 meaderies from around the country, lagers and other beers from Gnosis, Food Trucks, Live Music from Groovatron, Charity raffles and more! $75 GA and DD tickets available.
  • May 18 – Hickory Tree Farms Apiaries, Kent City, MI – Mead Make and Take Class
  • May 19 – Adesanya Meadery, Grandville, MI – Sourdough social and class
  • May 22 – Beer Barons of Milwaukee, Hales Corner, WI – Modern Mead Making with Mazer Cup Best of Show winner Jason Rohloff
  • May 25 – Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO – Lisa playing live music
  • May 25 – Wye Valley Meadery, Caldicot, UK – Groove Jacks Live
  • May 31 – The Barge Inn, Pewsy, UK – Mead and Cider Weekend
  • June 1 – Battle Axe Mead House, Hickory, NC – 1st Anniversary Party
  • Aug 3 – White Bear Meadery, Maplewood, MN – Mead Day Celebration

You can buy mead online at https://shopmeads.com

If you want to get your event on GotMead Live, let us know at gotmead@Gotmead.com 

Vicky Rowe
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