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8-19-21 Tonight we’re ‘across the pond’ visiting with Ann Farrell and Gordon Baron at Lancashire Mead in Horwich, Lancashire, Great Britain. They make meads in a natural fashion, without stabilizers or finings.

Gordon is a Druid and uses mead in ritual.  He wanted a pure mead for this purpose (and didn’t want to put chemicals into the earth) so in 2009, he decided ‘how hard can it be?’, emptied his local supermarket of honey, dumped it in a bucket with some yeast…… the rest is history! 
Three years homebrewing, whilst being a tramping trucker, and an ever increasing circle of friends (strange that!) and then he met Ann in 2012.  Easter 2013, Ann figured she earned enough (self employed teacher) to keep both of them and suggested he start the meadery.  Three months later, Ann was laid off from her job, and joined Gordon at the meadery.
Lancashire Mead was started in Nov 2013.  Their first mead was available for sale Feb 2014.  They expanded their space by 50% Sept 2014.  In Oct 2014 they were asked to supply Michelin restaurant L’Enclume (Owned by Michelin starred chef Simon Rogan) – and are still supplying them.  In October 2015 their product was used on BBC’s Great British Menu (women’s institute).  They expanded again by 100% in 2016.  They were ranked second in the UK mead chart in the Independent Newspaper.  And won their first Mead Madness medals in 2019 and second medals in 2020. Their premises are currently 5x bigger – they started with 1034 sqft, and now are at 5170 sqft.

The philosophy that Gordon and Ann have at Lancashire mead is ‘be natural’.In line with their spiritual beliefs, they wanted to keep their Mead as natural as possible. This means, firstly, that the honey they use is raw, unpasteurised, and un-sterilised. For the technically minded, throughout the process at their suppliers, the honey has never been heated above 44 degrees Celsius (112 Fahrenheit). It also means that throughout their process it has never been heated above 40 degrees Celsius.Secondly, it means that there are no chemical additions throughout the whole process, with the exception of the yeast nutrients which are digested along with the sugars in the honey during fermentation. They do not use “fermentation stoppers” or “stabilisers”, the yeast naturally dies off and sediments without the aid of any finings (usually animal products like isinglass).

Join us as we hang out with Gordon and Ann to explore their mead!

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Vicky Rowe
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