Local Live Wild Mead

[Boho Mead Maker]

We're making an apple-orchard and bee-friendly honey wine for Sonoma County, CA.

Hello Gotmead community, we're opening a meadery in Sonoma County, CA and ran across this forum. Excited to read about others' experiences in the process, stepping it up from kitchen brewing to larger scale community offering. Looking forward to engaging in the conversation, asking questions and sharing our experience as we go. Here we go...

We’re honoring ancient methods while developing a modern twist. The result is an innovative version of a pre-historic drink, perfectly suited to the flowers and hives of Northern California: a semi-sweet beverage of around 11% ABV, with a tangy, fizzy mouth-feel like ginger beer.

Currently in R&D phase to test our process and marketability before investing in the other expenses of opening this business. Our first, limited-run batch will be ready for the holidays.

This mead is good for the bees and good for the spirit!

Our mead is innovative in three main ways:

It’s WILD: fermented with the yeast already present in the alchemy naturally created by combining honey and water.

It’s LIVE: our mead is bottled “live” in re-useable swing-top bottles to make a naturally effervescent beverage without artificial carbonation.

It's RAW: most modern mead-makers seek to standardize the final product by boiling or pasteurizing the ingredients in order to kill the "wild" yeast in the honey. Our mead is made without boiling, so it preserves the natural, live micronutrients in raw honey.

Additionally, as honey is our main ingredient, we encourage and support the development of bio-diverse bee-friendly habitats, perfectly suited for the apple orchards and other landscapes of Sonoma County. Unlike grape monocultures, we can save the apples, promote bee-friendly habitat, and get our inebriation from our backyard! It’s a win-win-win for the apples, the bees, and the buzz!

The Vision

We have more than 60 test batches under our belt, and now we are ready to test the process at a full batch scale. After these test batches prove successful, we will move on to Phase Two: The creation of a mead business in Sonoma County, including licensing, bonding, branding, and facility capitalization. Phase Three will focus on a retail location showcasing our product as well as other select artisan creations from the region. Along the way, we will establish relationships with bee stewards and fruit growers to pay fair prices for these local ingredients while also supporting bee-friendly habitat and apple orchards.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/local-live-wild-mead

Boho Mead Maker

 

[WVMJack]

I have to ask if you guys have done your homework how are you just finding GotMead? We are making a whole hive mead, from foundationless frames, including wax, the pollen and beebread, propolis and whatever stray drone larva that ended up in there Might be a style that would be much more like old time meads, minus the boiling part (but we add yeast and nutrients). Good luck, WVMJ

 

[Chevette Girl]

Welcome to the forum, good luck with your endeavour!

Just be forewarned, most of us on this forum do generally try not to heat our honey, not only might it destroy micronutrients and enzymes etc., but it can also blow off some of the more delicate aromas and flavours.

Now, semi-sweet AND bottle carbonated, you say? How do you plan to pull that off without making bottle bombs? Seriously, it's a challenge a lot of us have been working with for years... If there's any residual sugars in with live yeast that is not maxxed out on alcohol at the time you bottle, the yeast won't just stop at a certain pressure, they'll keep on going till the sugar's all gone, so unless you've got a magical technique to make the yeast stop at a safe pressure, you'll have to go dry before you prime and bottle it, or you're going to have a mess on your hands if you're lucky, lawsuits if you're not...

Usually, we have to stabilize, backsweeten and then force-carbonate, or use a nonfermentable sweetener, or do something really challenging that involves bottle carbonating it and then chilling it down to almost freezing, and transferring into a bottle with backsweetening and stabilization chemicals...

 

[fatbloke]

Well that's a nice idea.

Yet I don't follow the need to post as if it's an advert.....

Appreciate Jack and CG's responses......

Hence, I'll just add welcome.....and of course, good luck with the enterprise......

 

[Squatchy]

I know this is an old thread, but I doubt a wild yeast could take anything to 11%. I have made 2 wild one's and they stopped way short of that. I even feed with SNA'S

 

[Stasis]

well actually this was an advert Fatbloke. It was an advert to an indiegogo campaign. I wonder if such posts should be removed by admin in the future since this could be a free way for budding breweries to advertise without actually paying for the advertisement space on these forums.
I also think the process was not exactly as advertised because of bottle bombs...