Our area is filled with local breweries, so I think a meadery as a local business would work.
We do! We’ve been doing ~1 gallon batches which gives us 5 or 6 bottles of finished product. We’ve been buying honey from the big box grocers but I want to switch to buying from a local beekeeper.
I’ve never tried using not honey, do you mean like Agave nectar or similar?
If any of the small time beekeepers I’ve met are anything to go by, they’ll be happy to make a deal where you take some of their honey to make mead with, a portion of which they’d sell.
The beekeeper I dealt with was a moron. He texts me and says he’s got a bucket of honey that he thinks started to ferment with wild yeast. So I offered a reasonable price for the bucket and he counters with full price, like I’m just gonna take a full risk on his fuck up. I finished up what dealings I had with him and haven’t talked to to him since. They’re just people, in other words.
Maybe even a beekeeper who also could retail your mead, if they already have store space and customers and an assortment of honey-related products…!
Yeah, I don’t eat honey so haven’t even thought about mead in a decade, but the one time I had it, it was delicious! I suppose the market of buyers with allergies or dietary restrictions against honey is too small, but I wonder if it could be possible for home use (where no one cares that it’s not “real mead”).
Depending on where you are, selling booze is a massive financial undertaking. In the US, you better have 6 figures hanging around to blow. And years to wait.
Where I live you can sell like small batches of self-produced stuff (like a bottle or two after a tour or tasting), so it’s not very expensive to get such a permit, but too much paper work for my taste.
The little bit of looking into it that we’ve done, we know anything sold must be produced in a commercial kitchen, and that would be a big expense because real estate around here is ridiculous. It’s really a pipe dream at this point but gives some hope to hang onto that there is something else out there for us.
Our area is filled with local breweries, so I think a meadery as a local business would work.
We do! We’ve been doing ~1 gallon batches which gives us 5 or 6 bottles of finished product. We’ve been buying honey from the big box grocers but I want to switch to buying from a local beekeeper.
I’ve never tried using not honey, do you mean like Agave nectar or similar?
If you make alcohol out of agave, you’re just making tequila at that point
Youd still have to distill it to get tequila. I am kinda interested in trying a fermented agave batch now.
If any of the small time beekeepers I’ve met are anything to go by, they’ll be happy to make a deal where you take some of their honey to make mead with, a portion of which they’d sell.
The beekeeper I dealt with was a moron. He texts me and says he’s got a bucket of honey that he thinks started to ferment with wild yeast. So I offered a reasonable price for the bucket and he counters with full price, like I’m just gonna take a full risk on his fuck up. I finished up what dealings I had with him and haven’t talked to to him since. They’re just people, in other words.
Maybe even a beekeeper who also could retail your mead, if they already have store space and customers and an assortment of honey-related products…!
Yeah, I don’t eat honey so haven’t even thought about mead in a decade, but the one time I had it, it was delicious! I suppose the market of buyers with allergies or dietary restrictions against honey is too small, but I wonder if it could be possible for home use (where no one cares that it’s not “real mead”).
Depending on where you are, selling booze is a massive financial undertaking. In the US, you better have 6 figures hanging around to blow. And years to wait.
Where I live you can sell like small batches of self-produced stuff (like a bottle or two after a tour or tasting), so it’s not very expensive to get such a permit, but too much paper work for my taste.
The little bit of looking into it that we’ve done, we know anything sold must be produced in a commercial kitchen, and that would be a big expense because real estate around here is ridiculous. It’s really a pipe dream at this point but gives some hope to hang onto that there is something else out there for us.
Yeah… And in the meantime you always have something to gift people.