GotMead Live Radio Show

6-3-25 Tonight we‘re talking with Peter Taylor, founder and meadmaker at Niddhoggr Mead in the UK. Peter Taylor is the owner and founder of the Multi Award winning Nidhoggr Mead Co. based in the UK. His mead is has won the Mazer cup and Mead Madness cup several times and has a total of 11 medals across his 7 flavours. All his mead is made using 100% honey and natural ingredients and he now has a 12,000 sqft factory and 20 staff in York in the UK. In the heart of York, Nidhoggr Mead Co. has revived the ancient art of mead-making. Founded in 2020 by Peter Taylor, a Viking reenactor, the company began as a hobby in his girlfriend Ellie's spare bedroom before transforming into a thriving business. The breakthrough came when the Jorvik Viking Centre sampled the mead and asked if Peter was selling it. Their interest motivated him to start up a company producing mead commercially alongside his girlfriend (now his wife) and close friends John Bardwell and Severin Gammon. Soon, Peter and Ellie's home was filled with fermenting batches — even their bathtub being used to melt raw honey. Due to demand, the company moved from Acomb to a 4,000-square-foot facility in Pocklington. Nidhoggr mead, made with 100% pure honey, mineral water, and yeast, gained a reputation for their smooth, refreshing taste. Their ambition took Nidhoggr to America, securing £2 million in deals across 14 states, including distribution at medieval fairs and ren fairs. With over 40,000 bottles set for export, the company expanded production further to meet demand. Their dedication to quality has earned accolades, including Drink StartUp of the Year and multiple international medals for their wide range of meads. To listen live, you can find us on Youtube, Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@Gotmead X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GotMead 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! Sponsor: From July 23-August 2, 2025, take a magical meadery tour, and step into the heart of Central Europe on a journey that blends history, culture, and craft in three remarkable capitals — Prague, Bratislava, and Warsaw. Explore vibrant cityscapes and quiet countryside, from medieval old towns and historic abbeys to family-run meaderies and world-renowned breweries. You will visit the Mead Museum in Prague, Strahov Monastery Brewery, Pilsner Urquell Brewery, Apimed Mead, Branislav Novosedlík Mead, Richtár Jakub Brewery, Pasieka Jaros Mead, Corpo Mead, and Apis Mead. This tour is limited to 25 people, reserve your spot now at europeandiscoveriesllc.com/tours/250723cmm  If you want to ask your mead making questions, you can send us a question via email, join to ask a question on the show, or via Twitter @realGotMead and we'll tackle it online! The show runs from 9PM EDT/6PM PDT (United States) for about 2 hours. To join live, you can use this link, and here are instructions on how to join in. Once you enter the waiting room, we get a notification and will bring you in! Upcoming Shows   Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events

5-20-25 Tonight we're hanging out with Joe and Tricia Marshall, owner of Lily Belle Meads in Lancaster, NY. This husband and wife team are kicking it outside Buffalo with their meads! Joe and Tricia's journey into mead was gradual but Tricia definitely led the charge on it.  In 2004 Tricia got Joe a home brewing beer kit for his 26th birthday and got herself a winemaking kit for his 26th birthday!   She made wines, Joe made beers.  Tricia's personal goal was to make a delicious blueberry wine.  She wasn't happy with the results, so she did some research and found that she could replace the white sugar in the wine must with honey.  Well,, that changed everything and she never went back to making wine again.  It was all mead from then on.  Tricia won an amatuer award for one of her meads, that started all this.   Joe was home brewing with a group and they had plans of a brewery but none of them would pull the trigger.  Tricia's meads were great, but they were standard strength or higher…she wanted to start selling them but Joe just couldn't see how when it took so long for them to make. Then in 2012 or so she started making some 9-10% abv meads and it got Joe thinking…why couldn't they make meads that were more like beers along with the honey wine style ones?  From there on in it was a lot of 1 gallon experimental batches for the next 2-3 years as they developed a business plan.  They incorporated in April of 2014. In 2016, Joe and Tricia got their commercial license and started selling at the various farmer's markets.  It was at an indoor Farmer's Market that they met John and Cathy Cimperman from 42N Brewing Company in nearby East Aurora NY and they asked if Joe and Tricia like to be part of the Full Circle Fest.  That led to another brew festival and from there it was a whirlwind and they opened their tasting room on W, Main St. in Lancaster NY on Sept 23, 2017.  Lancaster is about 20 minutes east of Buffalo NY.  Go Bills! (Go Lions! - Vicky) Lilly Belle was the first meadery in Erie County and was embraced by the local craft beer scene where Joe and Tricia found niched out their place and eventually took their 7-8% session meads down to 5% and that has been a game changer for them.  They use a variety of yeasts, including wine and beer styles, and they are not shy to play around with flavors.  They can turn around session meads in 2-3 weeks and most traditionals and melomels in 2-3 months.  They also do some bochet's and those are 2-3 months as well.  They have expanded their food menu and kitchen operations, added more space and entertainment options in the taproom, they expanded production capacity by 5x and probably the biggest change was how much Mead we package in bottles and cans.  Their initial model was to sell more by the glass in our taproom but that all changed with Covid.  Covid was the biggest obstacle they had no way of predicting.  The world is "back to normal" in many ways but the 2 years of Covid changed customer habits, wants, needs and expectations and they've been evolving to meet all of these ever since.  They've also entered a National Mead Competition the past 2 years and taken 2nd place overall and last year 1st place overall. Tricia started her career at Roswell Park Cancer Institute as a floor nurse, then moved onto Research Nursing, onto Assistant Corporate Compliance Officer then Senior Quality Analyst.  She stepped away in 2015 to put time into growing Lilly Belle Meads, but continued to work part-time jobs.  During the pandemic, she found herself working a med-surg floor at BGH.  Such an eye opening experience to witness how the pandemic rocked the healthcare system.  She spent 2 years full time at the meadery but now finds herself back at Roswell, in a job that is 80% remote thanks to the pandemic.  Joe's current role is Budget Compliance Specialist in the Clinical Trials Office and he loves it!   Joe was a Special Education Preschool Teacher for Gateway-Longview...

5-6-25 - Tonight we're talking with Alen RadoŠević with Fool Moon Meadery in Romania. Alen makes excellent mead and has a meadery that sells in Romania only (for now). Alen is owner and meadmaker at FoolMoon Transilvania - Romania. Alen is Certified through the Level 2 Mead Judging Program at the European Mead Makers Association. He is also winner of gold and silver medals at the 2025 Mead Madness CUP (MMC). Alen is relatively new to mead, but it hasn't slowed him down at all. He's been making mead since 2020, and has a long family tradition of making wine and rakija. Somewhere in 2020, Alen switched from sourdough to mead because he wanted to feed his sourdough with honey. There was a small experimental batch and it grew into passion. Fool Moon opened in 2023, but didn't go public until 2024, after wending their way through a mess of paperwork in Romania. I got to meet him and sample his mead, and hang out at the Copa Hidromiel 2024 in Mexico City, where he nabbed a couple medals. Join us to talk mead with Alen! To listen live, you can find us on Youtube, Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@Gotmead X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GotMead 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! From July 23-August 2, 2025, take a magical meadery tour, and step into the heart of Central Europe on a journey that blends history, culture, and craft in three remarkable capitals — Prague, Bratislava, and Warsaw. Explore vibrant cityscapes and quiet countryside, from medieval old towns and historic abbeys to family-run meaderies and world-renowned breweries. You will visit the Mead Museum in Prague, Strahov Monastery Brewery, Pilsner Urquell Brewery, Apimed Mead, Branislav Novosedlík Mead, Richtár Jakub Brewery, Pasieka Jaros Mead, Corpo Mead, and Apis Mead. This tour is limited to 25 people, reserve your spot now at europeandiscoveriesllc.com/tours/250723cmm  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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows May 20 - Joe Marshall - Lily Belle Meads, Buffalo, NY June 3 - Brian Green - Centeur Imports - mead importers Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events May 8 - Kingview Mead, Mt. Lebanon, PA - Day One acoustic music May 9 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Vinyl Rewind live music May 10 - Mr. B's Meadery, Seattle, WA - Charcuterie Making Workshop at Mr. B's White Center May 15 - Nucleus Mead, Lineville, PA - Mead and Read event - bring a book and find new reads May 17 - Sugarbelt Mead Festival, Crown Pointe, IN - Many meaderies with their wares at this festival - live music, food trucks and more! May 17 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - JJ playing live music May 18 - Perry Vine, South Bend, IN - Brews and Bites: Five Course, Small Bites and Mead Pairing May 21 - Kingview Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night May 22 - The Skeptic Meadery, Mount Juliet, TN - Mead Making 101 May 23 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Dungeons and Dragons Mead Up

4-22-25 Tonight we're talking with Arne Defurne, owner and head meadmaker of Clockwork Bee Mead in Antwerp, Belgium. Arne has a nano-meadery that is growing, and makes some pretty ‘ok' mead, producing mostly dry and off-dry meads, which is uncommon. We will dig into this and see what Arne is up to over there. Back in 2019, Arne came to the 2 first European meadmakers conferences and at the end of the second one was told to bring his own mead next time. Little did they know he had started making first batch right before leaving for EMMAcon. Arne is one of the people behind European meadmakers Association and worked on the just launched realmead certification program in Europe. It was 2019 and Arne did not have a pico meadery but a shower meadery (see photo to the right). He had a separate spare shower where he installed a rack where all fermentation was done. In 2020 he entered in the Mead Madness Cup home competition in Poland, but due to covid EMMcon was canceled and the Mead Madness Cup was an online medal ceremony and Arne won 2 gold medals. From then on the hobby became too expensive (he made more than 15 different meads in 1 year) and he started as a gypsy meadery at the Blacksmith's Meadery. From a mead enthusiast to home meadmaking spiraling out of control, and two years ago launching the first Belgian gypsy meadery under the guidance of the Blacksmith's Meadery. Driven by a passion for intricate flavor combinations, Arne's goal is to reintroduce this ancient beverage to modern audiences with a fresh twist. As a mead maker, he focuses on crafting what he loves to drink. He's deeply intrigued by how different flavors interact and how to blend them effectively. This curiosity leads him to explore methods that allows him to elegantly and fully integrate these flavor profiles into his meads. As a result, his products are uniquely positioned as semi-dry and dry meads, setting them apart from the more typical sweeter options. As a certified Belgian craft producer, Arne uses only the finest local ingredients and honey sourced from controlled European origins, resulting in high-quality meads that have already earned several awards. Join us to chat with Christian and explore meadmaking! To listen live, you can find us on Youtube, Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@Gotmead X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GotMead 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows May 6 - Alen RadoŠević - Fool Moon mead, Transylvania May 20 - Joe Marshall - Lily Belle Meads, Buffalo, NY June 3 - Brian Green - Centeur Imports - mead importers Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events

Tonight at 9PM ET, we will be chatting with Christian Mlotschek, a home meadmaker in Ontario, Canada. Christian is a newish meadmaker, and has jumped in with both feet to make meads. Christian's brewing adventures started in 2022 when he joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. He's  brewed about 40 batches of mead, beer and cider including a few historical meads from various manuscripts. This past year he started competing in both beer and mead. His "Mixed up Mel" melomel won gold at the Ales Open in April '24, and he received a Gold for his Semi-Sweet Wildflower Trad. at Brew Slam in December '24. He did my first commercial collaboration this past November with Counterpoint Brewing in Kitchener allowing him to learning experience on larger equipment, bringing his Battered Ram Buckwheat Braggot to the masses. It was well received and mostly sold out in a short period. His current projects are: a period adjacent tradional mead recipe where he conscripted 8 other brewers in the SCA to help him fill a mead barrel that he purchased from Rosewood Estates Winery in Ontario. shared mead with and taught some local Cubans on his recent trip how to make it with the promise he gets to try their attempts when he goes back next. bench trials of various varietals to do a sampling of source honey and fermented mead, including his local wildflower, fireweed, coriander, meadowfoam, blueberry blossom and Ontario Buckwheat. The future is hopefully contuing to build his library, more competitions and experimental archeology making recipes from various sources and creating period style Brewing equipment to showcase at demos. Join us to chat with Christian and explore meadmaking! To listen live, you can find us on Youtube, Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@Gotmead X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GotMead 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows April 22 - Arne Defurne - Clockwork Bee Mead, Antwerp Belgium May 6 - Alen RadoŠević - Fool Moon mead, Transylvania Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events April 9 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex, VT - Mead Series Part 4: Specialty Meads April 10 - Red, Wine and Brew, Mentor, OH - Mead Tasting with meads from Brothers Drake Meadery - Columbus, OHDutch Creek Meadery - Athens, OHFour Fires Meadery - Maumee, OHFeisty Brood Meadery - Northfield, OH April 10 - Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Mini painting April 11 - Artifice Ales and Mead, Mannheim, PA - Line Dancing! April 11 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - Kyle Brown live music April 12 - Cupka's Bee Good Meadery, Auburn,

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 https://news.samsung.com/global/introducing-the-five-latest-startups-to-be-supported-by-samsung-as-spin-offs-from-the-c-lab-inside-program 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.

3-11-25 Tonight we're hanging out with Jason Elder, a home mead maker from Kansas City. His name shows up regularly on the comp results, and I can confirm he makes some pretty ‘ok' mead. Jason has been homebrewing in Kansas City since 2010 and started making Mead and Cider in 2016. He wanted to broaden his brewing experience and found that his love for making mead was higher than for making beer. He's won awards at several competitions such as NHC and Mazer Cup. He's considered the "Honey person" for Kansas City as since he has over 2000lbs of honey in storage and about 110 different varieties. He loves talking and drinking anything mead and enjoys mentoring people that are new to mead and are interested in making it for themselves. Jason is a BJCP Judge in Beer, Mead and Cider and is also a proctor for Cider exams. Jason was President of the Kansas City Bier Meisters for 2 years as well as an officer on their board for 2 years before that. He has also been the First Round site organizer in Kansas City for the past 5 years as well as part of the Mazer Cup staff for the past 2 years. He believes that he brings a unique perspective from his experience and knowledge along with a flair from the Plains! Join us to chat with Jason and talk mead! To listen live, you can find us on Youtube, Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/@Gotmead X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GotMead 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows March 25 - TBD April 8 - TBD April 22 - Arne Defurne, Clockwork Bee Meadery, Antwerp, Belgium Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events March 12 - Cloud City Modern Mead, Leadville, CO - Mindfulness Meadup March 12 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex, VT - Mead Series Part 3: Spiced Meads March 13 - Scale and Feather Meadery, Avondale, AZ - Mead and a Medium March 14 - Blöm Mead and Cider, Ann Arbor, MI - Femme Feedback Mic Night March 15 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary and Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class March 15 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Five Year Anniversary Party and St. Paddy's Day Party March 15 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things: Spirit Dragon Jar Workshop March 15 - Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Minis: Dragons March 15 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - CLAWS Avian Rehab March 16 - Harvest Ridge Winery, Toughkenamon, PA - Mead and Cheese Pairing March 16 - Scale and Feather Meadery, Avondale, AZ - Spring Mead-eval Market March 19 - Cloud City Modern Mead, Leadville, CO - Mindfulness Meadup March 19 - Kingview Mead, Mt Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night

2-25-25 Tonight we're talking with Rob Ratliff, meadmaker and author of “The Big Book of Mead Recipes”, “Let There Be Melomels” and “Let There Be Session Meads”. An experienced meadmaker, Rob has been studying mead and its creative aspects since 2006. He has won multiple awards during competition with his meads at the Annual Mazer Cup International Mead Competition over the years and is regularly sought out for his input on recipe ideas. As a certified BJCP Mead Judge, Robert also enjoys offering pointers to entrants in upcoming competitions.His extensive collection of meads, and meadr ecipes, has been gathered from around the world. A retired soldier (and former sailor), he is a veteran of the Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars, has lived in 7 states, and visited most of the rest. Between his civilian and military careers, he has lived in or travelled to approximately 20 countries spanning the globe. Wherever he goes, he looks for local meads to sample and local mead makers with whom to share his knowledge with and to learn and unique local brewing techniques from. Come and listen and lets talk recipes with Rob!   This player will show the most recent show.  [break] To listen live, you can find us on Youtube (Youtube starting 1-15-25), Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXObw9sufjUx3NWRX02CxA X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Feb 26 - Cloud City Modern Mead, Leadville, CO - Mindfulness MeadUp Feb 26 - Cupka's Bee Good Meadery, Auburn, IN - Mead Makers Night Feb 28 - European Mead Makers Conference, Kraków, Poland March 1 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary and Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class March 1 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things - Fantasy Drawing Workshop March 1 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - 3 Pints Gone live music March 5 - Kingview Mead, Mt. Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night March 6 - Kingview Mead, Mt. Lebanon, PA - Cover 2 live music March 7 n- Bumbling Fools Mead, Minneapolis, MN - Viking Mead Tour - Party Bus!! March 8 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Mead and Food Pairing Experience March 8 - Four Brothers Meadery, Festus, MO - JJ Live Music March 9 - The Parched Pug, Libertyville, IL - Mead Making Class March 9 - Wild Blossom Meadery and Winery, Chicago, IL - Cookies and Mead Pairing March 10 - Happy Butts Honey, Watertown, SD - Mead Making Workshop March 12 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex, VT - Mead Series Part 3: Spiced Meads March 13 - Scale and Feather Meadery, Avondale, AZ - Mead and a Medium

2-11-25 Tonight we're talking with Kirubell Araya, owner of The Heritage Winery, in New Jersey. Kirubell has taken over the making of t'ej from his father, and is now located in the old location for Melovino Meadery. The Heritage Winery has been open since 1978, making it one of the oldest honey wineries in the US. Araya Yibrehu, Kirubell's father, is a pioneer in bringing Ethiopian cuisine and Tej to the United States. He opened Sheba in 1978, argueably the first Ethiopian restaurant in the US. Over the years he opened several more restaurants, with the most renowned being the Blue Nile in NYC, which became an icon for Ethiopian food lovers. Beyond this, Araya was also a trailblazer in crafting and commercializing Tej n the US, helping to preserve and share this ancient tradition with a wider audience. This would later become the Heritage Winery. Kirubell followed in his father's entrepreneurial footsteps, and grew up immersed in the family business. He graduated from Morehouse College in 2010, and went into commodities brokering, but came back to his roots. He joined the family venture in 2013, bringing a fresh vision and new identity to the Heritage Winery. In 2018 he left his job in finance to dedicate himself to expanding the company. The Heritage Winery meads are made with organic, single-source honey from sustainable farms. Each batch is carefully fermented to highlight the rich floral complexity of the honey, balanced with the earthy bitterness of hops, a key ingredient in traditional Tej. Currently they offer Axum Tej, made with wildflower honey, and Saba Tej, crafted from orange blossom honey. They plan to expand into meads that include fruit, coffee and sparkling Tej, moving an ancient drink into the 21st century. Join us to learn more about Tej and see what Kirubell is doing with this traditional mead!   This player will show the most recent show.  [break] To listen live, you can find us on Youtube (Youtube starting 1-15-25), Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXObw9sufjUx3NWRX02CxA X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Feb 12 - Cloud City Modern Mead, Leadville, CO - Mindfullness Mead Up Feb 12 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - Brews and Brushes: A Valentine's Date Night Feb 12 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex Junction, VT - Mead Series Part 2: Fruit Meads Feb 13 - Hierophant Meadery, Freeland, WA - Mead and Chocolate Paring Class with Sweet Mona's Chocolate Feb 14 - Brothers Drake Meadery - Columbus, OH - Mead and Chocolate Flight Feb 13 - Kingview Mead, Mt. Lebanon,

1-28-25 We're hanging out with Traci Kufuss tonight, and talking about mead making, and putting recipes together. She's brought a couple of her recipes to share, and we'll dig into the mechanics of mead recipes and getting it to come out well. Traci Kuhfuss comes to us from Texas by way of Arizona. She ís been active as a homebrewer and mead maker for 20 years now, participating in brew clubs and competitions in all the places she has lived and traveled.. Traci is a professional graphic designer who loves making mead. Traci got into brewing once upon a time, she was newly divorced and her friends were all getting married and having kids. She was bored with sitting at home with nothing to do. Her friends got her a home brewing kit that year for Christmas. She made her first beer that New Years Eve. She eventually joined a homebrew club and was introduced to mead. She started making mead then and winning more medals with mead than beer. She has been consistently winning awards since 2005 to include many BOS wins such as Great Arizona Home Brew Competitions, Orpheus Cup, Queen of Beer, and Mead Stampede. After moving to Texas, she briefly dipped a toe in the commercial realm but went back to the homebrew scene. She has even helped with Texas Rivers Distilling in advising how to make good mead to make award winning Honey Creek Honey Spirits. Which took a silver medal in February 2023 at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. She has been involved in many competitions including The Great Arizona Homebrew Competition and The Great Arizona Mead Competition when she lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Upon moving to Texas she became involved in the local Houston homebrew scene with her clubs the Cane Island Alers and Sugarland Imperialists, helping to grow the mead community & assisting in Operation Fermentation. Traci also ran the Texas Mead Cup from 2019 to 2023 and has new plans to grow the mead judging pool and assist other Texas clubs in growing mead entries in their competitions. Here are a couple recipes she's made: McNutt Rum Amburana (Multi BOS mead) For 3-4 Gallons 12lbs Macadamia Nut Blossom Honey Water to 35 BRIX (1.153SG) Yeast: D-47 5 grams (If you are in a climate too finicky you can use Lutra or EC1118) Bloom yeast with GoFerm and Fermaid O (Follow dosing for your size batch) Mix your honey and water, start measuring gravity once you have added 1.5 gallons. Keep adding until you get to 34-35 BRIX Add your bloomed yeast and get some oxygen in it. After fermentation is done (I finish at 1.030-1.040, 14-16%) Add your rum soaked amburana wood. Add amburana to white rum; use 5-6 wafers from a spiral. a little amburana goes a long way. Add the amburana to your racked, stabilized and clarified mead. TASTE IT DAILY. Pull when you are almost to where you want the flavor to be as it will continue to bloom flavors. Very little acid adjustments, but adjust to where you like it. Red Pyment (Terroir of the White Box) For 3-4 Gallons 12lbs Orange Blossom Honey 1 Box of Water to 33 Brix (1.1437 SG) Yeast: 5grams 71B Bloom yeast with GoFerm and Fermaid O (Follow dosing for your size batch) Mix your honey and water, start measuring gravity once you have added 1.5 gallons. Keep adding until you get to 34-35 BRIX Add your bloomed yeast and get some oxygen in it. ***add 10-12 cubes of Hungarian Oak to ferment on*** Finish at 10 Brix (1.040 FG) Yes it is sweet, the oak will help offset the sweetness. Rack/stabilize/clarify Join us to talk mead with Traci, and explore making better mead.   This player will show the most recent show.  [break] To listen live, you can find us on Youtube (Youtube starting 1-15-25), Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on!

1-14-25 Tonight at 9PM ET, we're talking with Kyle Ducharme and Bill Boyer Bill is in the Minnesota Mead Mafia, and if you've competed, you know he makes good mead. Kyle is from Vermont and has been tearing up the mead world as well. We're going to be exploring what they've done with their meads, and how they put their recipes together. We'll also be talking about chocolate meads! Kyle Ducharme from Northern Vermont and is a home mead maker that has experience with quality assurance positions in the food and beverage industries. He has been making mead since the fall of 2019, really diving deep during the pandemic. He originally learned from podcasts/youtubers such as Gotmead, The Mead House, Doin the Most, and Man Made Mead. He later joined his homebrew club where he discovered some other mead makers, but mainly beer brewers and judges. He was motivated by the online community to enter competitions and after winning some medals, he entered more competitions to get feedback and improve his skills. That was a valuable step, but becoming a beer and mead judge was really what made him grow exponentially in his mead making. By traveling to learn from others and to judge meads, he could bring that knowledge to others in his homebrew club and online communities. Outside of competing and judging comps, he has started a mead class and small Iron Bee style mead competition to share knowledge/feedback with others. His major goal is to create another major mead competition in New England and to bring up the homebrew mead scene in the area. He is passionate about using foraged ingredients and fruit from local farmers and utilizing honey from all over the world. His parents own a small hop yard and that is what got him initially interested in fermentation. Back in 2010, Bill started brewing with a Mr. Beer Kit and rapidly upgraded to doing all grain brewing. Knowing his wife was not a fan of hops but loved sweet ciders, he started exploring meads & ciders. In 2020, he started expanding his meads & ciders, not only because the shelf life was longer but also because no one was around to drink his beer (Damn COVID). With an abundance of mead & ciders cluttering up his basement, he's branched out from the local homebrew competitions and started submitting to nationwide ones, having won more than 500+ awards since 2021. Bill is an active member of the North Georgia Malt Monkeys, Marietta Association of Schoolhouse Homebrewers (MASH) and runs the Mead & Cider Makers & Tasters group in the Atlanta Area.  He is also the competition organizer of the North Georgia Homebrew Competition.   This player will show the most recent show.  [break] To listen live, you can find us on Youtube (Youtube starting 1-15-25), Twitch, X (Twitter), and Facebook on the Gotmead Page. On our new platform, chat is part of the podcast! Just comment from wherever you are watching, and we'll see it!! If you'd like to call in, we can get you a link to come on! Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/meadwench YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXObw9sufjUx3NWRX02CxA X(Twitter): https://x.com/RealGotMead Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GotMead 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! 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events

12-3-24 We are headed for the warmer climes down in Mexico today for our last show of the year. We'll be talking with Alberto Leyva, owner of Hidromiel Aliens Kaab in Bacalar, Mexico. Alberto has been a Beekeeper in the Riviera Maya, Bacalar, Quintana Roo since 2013,  and founded of Aliens Kaab in 2019. His expertise ranges from hive management to the fermentation of artisanal mead, ensuring a product that embodies the richness of local honey. Alberto is passionate about fermentation processes and wild yeasts, and crafts his mead through cold and wild fermentation, which in his point of view results in unique flavors and aromas while making the mead gentler on the body. His goal is to reflect the natural wealth of our surroundings in every bottle. Alberto has won some medals and recognitions and considers himself an eternal learner. The motto at Aliens Kaab is "let yourself be abducted by new experiences", and they take the term abduct as arousing in someone a powerful attraction and that is what they are looking for, to abduct more people to discover this great world of Mead. Join us to hear more about Alberto and his mead making adventures! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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! 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows On break for the month of December, we're back in January!! Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Dec 4 - Kingview Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Dec 7 - Honeytree Meadery, Nashville, TN - Mead Making Classes Dec 7 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Emma Nobbe Rocks the House live music Dec 7 - Honey & Hops Breworks, Fredricksburg, VA - Winter Wine Festival Dec 8 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Tasting with the Meadmakers Dec 10 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Trivia Night Dec 12 - KingView Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - Good Brother Earl live music Dec 12 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Mead and Cheese pairing Dec 13 - Blom Mead + Cider, Ann Arbor, MI - Permanent Jewelry with BOGO deal for multiple chains! Dec 14 - Crafted Artisan Winery, Mogadore, OH - Mead 101 Class Dec 18 - Kingview Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Dec 20 - Valkyries Horn Mead Competition Entries open! Dec 20 - Midwinter Homebrew Competition Entries open! Dec 20 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Springs and Arrows live music Dec 21 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Blight of Many live music Dec 21 - Mjodgard, Haslev, Denmark - Celebrate the Winter Solstice with a 2 course dinner, mead and a solstice ceremony Jan 25 - Crafted Artisan Winery, Mogadore, OH - Mead 101 Class Feb 6 - Mjodgard, Haslev, Denmark - Mead and Food Pairing at Bregnen You can buy mead online at https://shopmeads.com

11-18-24 Tonight we're headed to Alberta, Canada in the now-frozen north. We'll be chatting with her about mead in Canada, what she's doing with her meads, and what she's seeing for mead's direction. Kristeva's journey into the world of meadmaking began as a humble hobby beekeeper. In her third year of tending to her bees, they produced an impressive 450 pounds of honey. Knowing the incredible labor that goes into producing even a single teaspoon of honey, she was determined not to let this liquid gold go to waste. Prior to this, mead had never held a special place in her heart. In fact, she had often dismissed it as unpalatable. However, on a snowy Christmas Day in 2017, she decided to take a chance. She delved into the world of mead crafting, using her own honey as the primary ingredient. To her surprise and delight, the mead that she produced was unlike any other that she and her husband, Eric, had tasted before. For them, it was a revelation. Their mead was unique, a flavor profile distinct from the offerings found on the commercial market. It left them curious and craving more. Kristeva was not content with just savoring her newfound passion; she sought to share her creation with others. To do so, she needed unbiased opinions from the most discerning critics: judges at a mead competition. With the courage to take a step into the unknown, she submitted her mead to a competition. The anticipation was palpable as the results were announced. To her astonishment and sheer delight, she clinched a gold medal, and the judges provided glowing feedback that lit her path forward. It was a pivotal moment that encouraged Kristeva to follow her newfound dream. With fresh determination, she continued crafting mead throughout the year. The following year, she took her passion even further, entering five distinct meads into various competitions. To her joy, each of these meads earned medals, validating her skills and innovative approach. As she stood before the judges to collect her fourth medal, a voice from the crowd pierced through the room. "We want to come drinking at your place!" The words resonated in her ears, marking a turning point in her journey. It was that precise moment when Kristeva made a life-altering decision: she would embark on the path of making mead on a commercial scale, sharing her unique creations with the world. The Stolen Harvest journey had just begun. Motivated by a daily awareness of the need for change, Kristeva takes action on various fronts, from aiding the homeless to navigating the bureaucratic challenges of the alcohol industry. As a woman in a male-dominated field, she faced many barriers, overcoming them through self-funding and the support of a dedicated group of friends. Located in scenic Grovedale, Alberta, Stolen Harvest Meadery is hand carved from the Alberta boreal forest: it is ten acres of a rural oasis. There are hand planted gardens with a wide variety of vegetables and numerous heritage garlics growing. There is a fruit forest as well as a newly planted orchard (2018) with Saskatoons, haskaps, and prairie cherries. Each spring, the fields come alive with a symphony of wildflowers. Some, such as dandelions and wild roses, are lovingly harvested each year in anticipation of the moment when water, yeast, and local raw wildflower honey come together and magic unfolds. The property is adjacent to a larger forest where mother nature provides a bounty wild edibles, some of which make it into our micro-batch hand crafted meads. Her community involvement extends beyond the walls of Stolen Harvest Meadery, with contributions to charities, fundraising events, and local initiatives. Kristeva's impact is felt not only through financial donations but also in the relationships she builds and the small acts of kindness she executes, such as giving warm meals and clothes to those in need. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live,

11-5-24 We are abandoning the election stuff (in the US) tonight, and visiting with Raul de la Garza, owner of Freya Brewing Company in Monterrey, Mexico. Raul is also a guest host here on Gotmead Live! We got the chance to hang out with him when Kevin and Vicky went to the Copa Hidromiel mead competition in Mexico City. Raúl de la Garza, meadmaker at Freya Brewing in Monterrey, Mexico started making mead as a hobby in 2008 and later went professional in 2015. Over the years Raul has won several awards (including best in Mexico) in Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica and Panama. They've sold mead all over Mexico and even in San Diego (crossing it through the border the Han Solo way). After a break thanks to COVID-19, they're trying to make a comeback with plans to relocate the meadery and open a taproom. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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! 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) Join us on live chat during the show Upcoming Shows November 19 - Kristeva Dowling, Stolen Harvest Meadery, Alberta, Canada December 3 - Alberto Leyva, Hidromiel Aliens Kaab, Mexico Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Nov 6 - Kingview Meadhouse & Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Nov 7 - KingView Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - Day One (acoustic) live music Nov 7 - The Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Minis Two for One - Painting D&D Miniatures Nov 8 - Adesanya Mead & Microbrewery, Grandville, MI - TYFYS (Thank You For Your Service) Mead Release with Talons Out Honor Flight and Mosher Family Apiary Nov 9 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary & Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class Nov 9 - The Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Metal Artisan Market Nov 10 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Tasting with the Meadmakers Nov 12 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Make Your Own Mead with Us! Nov 13 - Adesanya Mead & Microbrewery, Grandville, MI - West Michigan Pink Boots Society Chapter November Meet-Up Nov 14 - Apis Mead & Winery, Carnegie, PA - Thursday South Hills Group Run Nov 15 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things: Viking Warrior Societies Nov 15 - Bumbling Fools Mead, Minneapolis, MN - Karaoke Mead-Up Nov 16 - Crafted Artisan Winery, Mogadore, OH - Mead 101 Class Nov 16 - Cigar City Cider & Mead, Tampa, FL - Celebrating 10 Year of Cigar City Cider and Mead Nov 16 - Kimmel Orchard, Nebraska City, NE - Mead Making Workshop Nov 16 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary & Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class Nov 17 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - 8th Year Anniversary and Sea Wolf Voyages Mead Release Party Nov 22 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Make Your Own Mead with Us! Nov 23 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Veronica Live Nov 23 - Red Lion Smokehouse, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada - Meadmaking with TBay Mead Nov 27 - The Cellar Wine Bar and Kitchen, South Bend, IN - Perry Vine Wine Mead Tasting Nov 29 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary & Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class Dec 8 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Tasting with the Meadmakers Dec 14 - Crafted Artisan Winery, Mogadore, OH - Mead 101 Class You can buy mead online at https://shopmeads.com

10-8-24 Tonight we're talking with Dominic Roth, a relatively new meadmaker in Australia. Dominic feels he's 'new' in that he thinks there is much more he can learn about making mead. We'll be talking technique, styles, recipes and more! Dominic is a home mead maker in Australia. He started making mead a couple years ago, as a replacement hobby following the birth of his most recent child. A dodgy mead recipe in a cookbook led him to the hobby, and then to more reliable sources! He thoroughly enjoys the 'art and science of mead making'; consuming as much knowledge as possible on the craft, and playing around with different styles, techniques and ingredients. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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! 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 October 22 - Alberto Leyva - Aliens Kaab Mead November 5 - Kristeva Dowling, Stolen Harvest Meadery November 19 - Raul de la Garza - Freya Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Oct 11 - Breeden's Orchard, Mount Juliet, TN - Charcuterie, Mead and Music with Graze Craze Oct 11 - Thistlerock Mead Co,, Charlottesville, VA - Conley Ray and the Joneses live music Oct 12 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Mead Making 101 Oct 12 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary and Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making class Oct 13 - Skal Beer Hall, Seattle, WA - Fall Mead Festival Oc 16 - KingView Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Oct 17 - Combgrown Mead, Auburn, NY - Mead and Whiskey Cocktail Class with Cellar and Folly Whiskey Company Oct 18 - Apis Mead & Winery, Carnegie, PA - 732 the Electric Duo & Mary Spayd-Armstrong live music Oct 19 - Iron Stone Meadery, Erie, PA - Mead and Bleed Craft Fair and Bleeding Disorder Fundraiser Oct 19 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Blight of Many live music - the Halloween Show! Oct 25 - Windchaser Meadery, Williamsburg, VA - HallowMead Oct 27 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - HallowCHEESE: A Mead and Cheese Pairing Event with the Cheese Lady Nov 2 - Amber Dragon Meadery, Abilene, TX - Meadfest 2024 Nov 2 - MeadKrieger, Loveland, CO - The Sogs live music Nov 2 - Honeytree Meadery, Nashville, TN - Mead Making class Nov 6 - KingView Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Nov 7 - KingView Meadhouse & Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Day One acoustic music Nov 8 - Adesanya Mead & Microbrewery, Grandville, MI - TYFYS (Thank You For Your Service) Mead Release with Talohns Out Honor Flight and Mosher Family Apiary 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 

9-24-24 Tonight we're talking with Frederick Rodriguez, Francisco Olachea and Rob Tyrrson in Mexico. Kevin and I were in Mexico for the Copa Hidromiel Mead Competition a couple weeks ago, and got to check out the meads that these folks produce, and we'll be talking about their methods, meads and plans. And bonus, we are bringing in a new guest host, Raul de la Garza, owner of Freya Meadery in Monterrey, Mexico. Francisco Olachea is a biochemical Engineer, and holds general Certificate in Brewing and Spirits by the IBD, is a Certified BJCP judge, Certified Cicerone®, and a Mead BJCP judge, Cider BJCP judge, Unionbirrai Beer Taster, Master Mezcalier, Cigar Sommelier and Sommelier member of the Mexican Sommeliers Association. He is also an instructor at the Mexican Academy of Sommeliers. Finally, he is CEO at I+D CERVEZA SA de CV since 2011. Frederick Rodriguez is a photographer, producer and director with more than 30 years of experience in the audiovisual industry.  He has produced, photographed and carried out various feature film, short film, video clips, corporate, institutional and documentary projects.  In 2012 he edited and post-produced the documentary series “Hallazgos” of the INAH, Partner and founder of La Valija Industriarte, obtaining the PACMyC award for the development of the documentary “Los paths that van” 2014 as director and photographer, In 2012 with the company Museum he developed a 360º mural for the Museum of Music in Puerto Rico and from 2015 to 2017 he developed an interactive table for the exhibition of the Constitution in the National Palace at the same time he developed 2 video walls for the Museum of Constitutions of the UNAM, since 2022 he documents the “Copa Hidromiel México”, creator of the documentary “Fermentos Ancestrales”  (watch the trailer) in which he focuses on mead and pre-Hispanic ferments of Mexico and he is a mead judge (in process) since 2023. Frederick has also done a 2023 collective exhibition “I Feel Then I Re-sisto” UAM- University of Brighton” video art “Viaje sin Regreso”, 2022 researcher of the script “Tierra barbara” mini series. Currently he is the owner of Phocal Photography where he directs, produces, post produces and photography for different companies such as Lincoln Towncar, Laboratorios Decrha, Intervet Schering Plougth, MSD Salud Animal, Sony Entertainment, Municipality of Lerma, Adidas, Nissan, América Express, Sicario, KRBO Bikes, Del Pacifico Sea Foods, US Meat, Crayola and the guild meadery. Rob Tyrsson is owner of Tyrsson Meadery in Mexico City. Rob started in 2019 in the middle of the COVID era, all starts trying to pay some bills and deal with a few problems he had, his first batch wasn't ready for the first Copa Hidromiel México, and he just sold it pretty cheap, fortunately a few friends told him he was making a pretty good thing, and he sent it to Guatemala at Copa Quetzal and won a gold medal. In 2020 he tried to go professional and sell his mead at festivals.  After that everything is history!     This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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! 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 October 8 - Dominic Roth - beginning in mead in Australia October 22 - Alberto Leyva - Aliens Kaab Mead November 5 - Kristeva Dowling, Stolen Harvest Meadery

8-27-24 Tonight at 9PM ET we will be talking with Matthew Chrispen, with the Texas Mead Association and Texas Mead Cup, and we're doing a live demo of the BJCP Mead Exam tasting, and will be talking about getting certified and things to be aware of. Matt started brewing in November 2009 after a gift of Mr. Beer from a buddy and got hooked. He started blogging at Accidentalis.com a year later, focusing more as a journal focusing on personal progress, homebrewing perspectives, the Brew-Magic, Grainfather, and how Brew-Easy gear setups, and brewing water chemistry how-to's. IHestarted making mead in 2014, under the guidance of members of the Austin Zealots and immediately found success with a medal at his first NHC. 2015 was the year Matt started helping with NHC First Round here in Austin, and he passed the original Mead Examination (written and tasting together) with the help of classes with Eric Lowe and Mike Simmons. As he honed his mead-making, he had a little success at various competitions, including The Mazer Cup and the old Masters of Homebrewing Competition. A few years ago, he made BJCP National and has been grading since. After a short stint at Meridian Hive as GM during Covid and the great Texas Ice Storm, Matt has refocused on mead making and working with the Texas Mead Association and Texas Mead Cup to increase mead awareness and qualify mead judges in Texas.He is passionate about writing high-quality scoresheets and providing helpful feedback. Join us to chat with Matt! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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! 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 Sept 10 - Copa Hidromiel competition in Mexico with Vicky and Kevin Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events May 1 - Sept 1 - Copa Hidromiel Mexico Competition Registration - get your entries in now, Copa Hidromiel is offering an entry discount of Aug 28 - Oppegaard Meadery, Seattle, WA - Paint and Sip Class Aug 30 - Adesanya Meadery, Grandville, MI - August Rendezvous Aug 30 - Apis Wine and Meadery, Carnegie, PA - 732 the Electric Duo Live Aug 30 - Lancaster Homebrew, Lancaster, PA - Mead Making Class Aug 31 - Black Mountain Cider and Mead, Black Mountain, NC - 11th Anniversary Celebration Sept 4 - Kingview Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Sept 7 - Dawg Gone Bees Meadery and Apiary, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class Sept 7 - Honeytree Meadery, Nashville, TN - Mead Making Class Sept 12 - Kingview Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - One Ray Live Sept 14 - Maniacal Meadery, Ypsilanti, MI - Annie's Experimental Mead Release Sept 19 - Bumbling Fool Meadery, Minneapolis, MN - Charcuterie Design and Trivia Sept 20 - Green River Bee Company, Hendersonville, NC - Mead Making Class Sept 21 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Blight of Many Live Sept 21 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Meadfest SCA Mead Demo Sept 27 - Standard Meadery, Villa Park, IL - Makers and Mead Friday Fall Market Sept 10-12 Copa Hidromiel, Mexico City - international mead competition for home and commercial mead You can buy mead online at https://shopmeads.com If you want to get your event on GotMead Live,

8-13-24 Tonight we're talking with Kyle Ducharme in Vermont. Kyle has been doing a lot of mead making classes and education and helping more people with the love of mead. Kyle Ducharme is from Northern Vermont and is a home mead maker that has experience with quality assurance positions in the food and beverage industries. He has been making mead since the fall of 2019, really diving deep during the pandemic. He originally learned from podcasts/youtubers such as Gotmead, The Mead House, Doin the Most, and Man Made Mead. He later joined his homebrew club where he discovered some other mead makers, but mainly beer brewers and judges. He was motivated by the online community to enter competitions and after winning some medals, he entered more competitions to get feedback and improve his skills. That was a valuable step, but becoming a beer and mead judge was really what made him grow exponentially in his mead making. By traveling to learn from others and to judge meads, he could bring that knowledge to others in his homebrew club and online communities. Outside of competing and judging comps, he has started a mead class and small Iron Bee style mead competition to share knowledge/feedback with others. His major goal is to create another major mead competition in New England and to bring up the homebrew mead scene in the area. He is passionate about using foraged ingredients and fruit from local farmers and utilizing honey from all over the world. His parents own a small hop yard and that is what got him initially interested in fermentation. Join us to chat with Kyle! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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! 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 Aug 27 - Matthew Chrispin - Live BJCP mead exam mead evaluation and discussion of BJCP certification Sept 10 - Copa Hidromiel competition in Mexico with Vicky and Kevin Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events May 1 - Sept 1 - Copa Hidromiel Mexico Competition Registration Aug 14 - Queen Bee Brews, Denver, CO - Magic and Mead Aug 14 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - Bill Frary live music Aug 15 - Barcade, Detroit, MI - Mead-evil Madness! Aug 17 - Zymarium Meadery, Orlando, FL - First Bee-Day! Aug 17 - McAlpine Meadery, Beach City, OH - Oddmall: Mead and Feed Aug 17 - Apis Wine and Mead, Carnegie, PA - Live Music with Push Aug 17 - Etowah Meadery and Dahlonega Brewery, Dahlonega, GA - Sourwood Honey Extraction on National Honey Bee Day! Aug 18 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - Honey Bee Market Aug 18 - Skäl Beer Hall, Seattle, WA - Viking Faire Aug 19 - Bardic Wells Meadery, Montague, MI - ModPoge Mixed Media art and Mead Aug 21 - Kingview Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night! Aug 22 - Thistlerock Mead Company, Charlottesville, VA - Tacos and Mead Aug 23 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - Delilah DeWylde Live music Aug 24 - DMen Tap, Chicago, IL - Mead Fest 2024 Aug 24 - Haley's Honey Wine and Mead, Fredericksburg, VA - Mead and Read Aug 24 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary and Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class Aug 28 - Oppegaard Meadery, Seattle, WA - Paint and Sip Class Aug 30 - Adesanya Meadery,

Tonight we'll be talking with newer meadmaker Stewart Jacobs. Stewart is in the Seattle area. We'll talk techniques, recipes and mead making in general. Stewart is an aerospace engineer in the Seattle area who has been making mead in 5 gallon batches since 2016. He has made at least a dozen unique batches with a variety of different additives since starting. He currently has a smoked apple mead awaiting bottling and has two unique batches in storage which he made after the birth of each of his kids. Stewart wants to dig into a bunch of things, like: preparing your honey best practices for caramelizing honey Figuring out the appropriate amounts of fruits and herbs in a mead to have good balance How to make braggot Adding nutrients - best practices for timing Yeast strain recommendations We'll have a good time talking with Stewart and trading mead making info tonight! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] Sponsor: Calling all mead lovers and adventure seekers! 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! 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 July 30 - Matthew Chrispin and Kevin Meinstma - live mead judging with proctors Aug 13 - Kyle Ducharme - making mead, classes and mead competitions Aug 27 - Christy Hemenway - Run Amok Meadery Sept 10 - Copa Hidromiel competition in Mexico with Vicky and Kevin Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events May 1 - Sept 1 - Copa Hidromiel Mexico Competition Registration June 15-Aug 4 (weekends) - Honnibrook Craft Meadery, Castle Rock, CO - Colorado Renaissance Festival this summer June 15th-August 4th. At the festival you can find our Black Currant, Huckleberry, Black Cherry, Elderberry, Blackberry and Dragonfruit meads July 19 - Michigan Beer Cup, Kalamazoo, MI - MBC Mead Judging and Social Event July 19 - Three Hands Mead Company, Plant City, FL - Billy Ray Wheaton solo acoustic music July 20 - Haley's Honey Meadery, Fredricksburg, VA - Mead and Read July 20 - Hickory Tree Farm Apiaries, Kent City, MI - Mead Make and Take Class July 20 - Apis Mead and Wine, Carnegie, PA - Springs and Arrows live music July 20 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Blight of Many live music July 24 - Oppegaard Meadery, Seattle, WA - Paint and Sip at the Meadhall! July 27 - Dawg Gone Bees Apiary & Meadery, Hanover, PA - Mead Making Class July 27 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - HK live music July 28 - Bløm Meadworks, Ann Arbor, MI - Body Boost workout July 31 - B.Nektar, Ferndale, MI - Finer Things Mead and Food Pairing Aug 1 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - Lynn Callahan live music Aug 2 - Wyrd Leather and Mead, Portland, OR - A Night of the Seven Kingdoms - House of the Dragon Cosplay and Finale Pre-Party Night Aug 3 - White Bear Meadery, Maplewood, MN - Mead Day Celebration Aug 3 - Helderberg Meadworks, Esperance, NY - Mead Weekend 2024 Aug 3 - White River Mead, Cider and Spirits, Iron River, WI - Mead Day - Legacy Mead Tasting Aug 3 - Honnibrook Craft Meadery, Castle Rock, CO - World Mead Day Celebration with live music all day and Polynesian Fire-Dancer show starting in the evening. For the celebration we will be serving 8 different varieties of mead slushees and 20 d...

Tonight at 9PM ET we'll be getting together with Francisco Olachea, Elba Copado, Frederick Rodriguez and Andrés Torres, with surprise guest Raul de la Garza. Francisco, Elba and Frederick are the organizers of the Copa Hidromiel México, a BJCP competition in Mexico City. Between them they've an impressive collection of education and experience. We will also have Bob Slanzi, US Mead Ambassador to Mexico. Copa Hidromiel México 2024 is a mead competition organized with the purpose of supporting, disseminating and promoting the production and consumption of artisanal drinks made from bee honey. The competition is endorsed by the BJCP organization based on its official guidelines, widely recognized internationally.The direction and coordination of the 2024 Mexico Hidromiel Cup will be carried out by NINKASI/IBQ. Francisco J. Olachea M. and PHOCAL/Frederick Rodriguez and as Judge Director Elba Copado, with the objective of disseminating the culture of mead. The 2024 Mexico Hidromiel Cup will take place in Mexico City on Tuesday, September 10, Wednesday, September 11, and Thursday, September 12, 2024 and will have both home and commercial entries. The winners will be notified on Saturday, September 14, 2024 on social networks. You can see the 2023 highlights of the Copa Hidromiel México here: Francisco Olachea is a biochemical Engineer, and holds general Certificate in Brewing and Spirits by the IBD, is a Certified BJCP judge, Certified Cicerone®, and a Mead BJCP judge, Cider BJCP judge, Unionbirrai Beer Taster, Master Mezcalier, Cigar Sommelier and Sommelier member of the Mexican Sommeliers Association. He is also an instructor at the Mexican Academy of Sommeliers. Finally, he is CEO at I+D CERVEZA SA de CV since 2011. Elba Copado is a Graduate in Chemistry from the University of Guadalajara and a Graduate of Siebel Institute of technology WBA (concise course in brewing technology / Brewing Microbiology). She has also taken the Specialist Course in Beer by the University of Alicante. Elba is a pioneer in homebrew in Mexico, and is a  commercial beer (2003), mead (2014) and cider (2021) producer. She is a BJCP judge of beer, mead and cider and is a Certified beer server of Cicerone's program. She is President of Ceryder A.C and Founder of Cup San Arnulfo.And she is Adiministrator of BJCP exams of beer, mead and cider in Mexico. Elba is also owner of the Beer Lounge in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, where she and her husband Aguirre sling her unique beers. Imbibe tells her story well here. Frederick Rodriguez is a photographer, producer and director with more than 30 years of experience in the audiovisual industry.  He has produced, photographed and carried out various feature film, short film, video clips, corporate, institutional and documentary projects.  In 2012 he edited and post-produced the documentary series “Hallazgos” of the INAH, Partner and founder of La Valija Industriarte, obtaining the PACMyC award for the development of the documentary “Los paths that van” 2014 as director and photographer, In 2012 with the company Museum he developed a 360º mural for the Museum of Music in Puerto Rico and from 2015 to 2017 he developed an interactive table for the exhibition of the Constitution in the National Palace at the same time he developed 2 video walls for the Museum of Constitutions of the UNAM, since 2022 he documents the "Copa Hidromiel México", creator of the documentary "Fermentos Ancestrales"  (watch the trailer) in which he focuses on mead and pre-Hispanic ferments of Mexico and he is a mead judge (in process) since 2023. Frederick has also done a 2023 collective exhibition “I Feel Then I Re-sisto” UAM- University of Brighton” video art “Viaje sin Regreso”, 2022 researcher of the script “Tierra barbara” mini series. Currently he is the owner of Phocal Photography where he directs, produces, post produces and photography for different companies such as Lincoln Towncar, Laboratorios Decrha, Intervet Schering Plougth,

5-21-24 Tonight we're talking with Adam Bystrom, Josh Mahoney, Al Boyce and Josh Holbrook, members of the aptly-nicknamed 'Minnesota Mead Mafia'. Josh Holbrook has been home brewing for since 2011 and making mead since 2013. He discovered mead at his local homebrew club when a club member brought a bottle of an attempt at Curt Stock's Triple Berry Melomel. Clouds parted, angels sang, and Josh became obsessed with mead. Josh has won numerous medals for beer, cider and mead, including AMMA National Mead Maker of the Year in 2020, and a couple Best of Shows at competitions such as Minnesota Mashout and Hoppy Halloween. He is also a certified BJCP judge and mead judge as well as a novice beekeeper, and one of the organizers for Valkyries Horn Mead Competition. One of Josh's long term mead goals is to make mead with each of the 300+ varietal honeys found in the United States. He has 44 under his belt already and shows no signs of stopping. In November of 2017 Adam Bystrom suddenly got a craving for that sweet nectar we all know; mead. With no meaderies in the area and little to no availability at liquor stores he decided to learn how to home brew. Since then mead has been the exclusive beverage he's fermented with a particular focus on session meads. He's been fortunate to win awards in a number of competitions all around the country and is a proud member of the Minnesota Home Brewers Association. Making mead since 2008. BJCP mead judge, addicted to collecting Mazer Cups, thinks JAOM is underrated, and his favorite spice is vanilla. Al Boyce has been a homebrewer since the early 1990's.  He tasted his first mead at Bunratty Castle in Ireland, and was hooked. Orange Blossom is his favorite honey, Sangiovese is his favorite grape, and 71B is his favorite yeast. He is obsessed with Jamaican Sorrel (hibiscus), and vows to keep making Sorrel meads until he finally gets it right.  He recently moved to a lake home in central Minnesota where he lives with his wife Beth and his Golden Retriever Cooper. Join us for what will most likely be mead madness! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates Upcoming Events 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 - Lilly Belle Mead, Holland, New York - Mead Festival 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 June 1 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things: Japanese Swordsmanship June 7-9 - Brimming Horn Meadery, Milton, DE - Party Like it's 793: 2024 Mead, Metal and Viking Festival Jun 13 - Apis Mead & Winery, Carnegie, PA - Hurry Up, Say Something Funny Comedy night June 15 - Mutton & Mead Tavern and Inne, Greenfield, MA - Medieval Bash: Roads to Revelry with mead from Sap House Meadery and beer ...

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! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates 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,

Tonight we're talking with Bryce and Savannah, husband and wife owners of Fox and Raven Meadery in Carollton, Texas. Fox & Raven Mead is Savannah and Bryce, a husband and wife team, creating Meads inspired by the stories that enchant them. They met at a movie theater eighteen years ago where they worked (mainly for the perk of free movies). They are self proclaimed Bibliophies, cinephiles and just all around big nerds. Bryce initially began homebrewing beer as a hobby but switched to Mead making due to a lack of availability of mead in his area. He's been making Mead for about 9 years now. Savannah is a graphic design school dropout and artist. She mostly handles marketing and design but also has a hand in helping craft flavor profiles as well. Bryce and Savannah are committed to never releasing a mead that they would not be happy to drink themselves. With a focus on balanced flavors, their mead tends to stay on the dry to semi-sweet side. Designwise, each mead label is designed to look like a comic book, book cover, or movie poster to tie back to their love of storytelling, Currently, the meadery is a production only with no taproom but you can find Fox & Raven out at several local markets as well as special events from time to time. Their Mead has also found their way into a few local breweries and bottle shops with more to come soon. Come hang out with us as we talk mead with Bryce and Savannah! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates Upcoming Events April 10 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex Junction, VT - Mead Class - Specialty Meads taught by Kyle Ducharme April 12 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Dungeons and Dragons Meadup April 13 - Mead Judging Programme Level 1 and Level 2 in Olsztyn, Poland by Mate Blasczyk and the Mead Judging Programme April 13 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things: Hearth Broom Making Workshop April 13 - Bumbling Fools Meadery, Minneapolis, MN - Meadiversary - One Year April 13 - Creative Art Center, Battle Lake, MN - Mead Making class - make a Joe's Ancient Orange April 13 - Maniacal Mead Company, Ypsilanti, MI - Kristal Palace electronic music event April 13 - Mead Judging Programme, Olsztyn, Poland - Mead Judging Programme Level 1 and Level 2 April 14 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - Terrarium Workshop with Cottage and Vine April 14 - Ivy League Brew, Alabaster, AL - Mead Talk April 20 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - 4th Annual Sigurblot Viking Festival April 21 - Oppegaard Meadery, Seattle, WA - A Great Shenanigan of Mead, Violence, Music, Art and Feast! April 23 - What's Brewing Supply, Palatine, IL - Mead Making Class April 25 - Kingsview Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - One Ray Live April 25 - Liquid Alchemy Mead, Wilmington, DE - Mead Cocktail class April 26 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Fry Project Live Music April 27 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things - Tree of Life Wreath Workshop April 27 - Kingview Mead,

3-26-21 Tonight we're talking with Bray Denard, creator of the BOMM, Bray's One Month Mead. Bray Denard, PhD is the inventor of Bray's One Month Mead (aka “the BOMM”), one of the more popular mead styles among home mead makers. Bray has continued to refine his methods over the years to create a never fail nutrient protocol that works with any yeast! In addition, Bray continues to provide mead making knowledge through consulting and OmniMead. OmniMead provides a free Mead Making Course as well as recipes and calculators for mead makers. Check it out: https://www.omnimead.com Constantly aspiring for better mead, he eternally experiments with new nutrients, spices, fruits and wood types. As a result, he is in the process of writing a world inspired mead making book complete with food pairings! Join us tonight at 9PM EDT to talk mead shop with Bray! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates Omnimead - https://www.omnimead.com Upcoming Events Mar 28 - Kingview Mead, Lebanon, PA - Live music with the Mingo Creek Trio Mar 30 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Emma Nobbe Live Music April 5 - Kingview Mead, Lebanon, PA - Live Music with Jim and Scott April 10 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex Junction, VT - Mead Class - Specialty Meads taught by Kyle Ducharme April 13 - Mead Judging Programme Level 1 and Level 2 in Olsztyn, Poland by Mate Blasczyk and the Mead Judging Programme April 13 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things: Hearth Broom Making Workshop April 14 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - Terrarium Workshop with Cottage and Vine April 21 - Oppegaard Meadery, Seattle, WA - A Great Shenanigan of Mead, Violence, Music, Art and Feast! April 23 - What's Brewing Supply, Palatine, IL - Mead Making Class April 25 - Kingsview Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - One Ray Live April 26 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Fry Project Live Music 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 

3-12-24 Tonight we're getting together with Laura Angotti, who has written books on mead in history and delved deeply into the writings and recipes of people going back thousands of years to provide information on how mead was made and imbibed in various cultures and at differing levels of society. Laura's most current book, "Wellcome Mead" is available on Amazon, and her new book, "Gold and Sweet, Ensnaring" will be out soon. She has also done a book on cider, "Cider and Perry in Britain to 1700: A Collection of Material from Primary and Selected Secondary Sources - Historical Brewing Sourcebook". Laura Angotti has been making mead for over 30 years. Her focus is on uncovering, understanding, and writing about the history of mead - specifically historical mead recipes and the meads that can be re-created from these recipes. She has cataloged over 4000 mead recipes dating from before 1750 CE and has made and tasted over 100 of these. To better understand the recipes and their context, her research includes broader topics such as genetics of yeast and other microorganisms, the density of hen eggs, and day to day operations of Medieval Abbeys, proving that context is everything and all things are interconnected. Laura uses her training in Engineering and Biology from MIT and Northeastern University, as well as professional experience in techno-economic analysis/modeling, industrial fermentation, and water treatment to weave together the threads of history and connect the past with the present. Laura writes about her work at www.mysteryofmead.com and Mystery of Mead on Facebook. Her books on historical mead and cider are available on Amazon, including the soon to be published “Gold and Sweet, Ensnaring: Mead in Great Britain Prehistory to Elizabeth I”. Laura started making mead because it sounded different, easy, and tasty, and she knew several people who made meads she had enjoyed, including her soon-to-be fiance. She kept doing it initially because it was nice to have something to share, and it was a fun hobby to do with her husband. Their shared interests in history led them to researching the history of mead through Early English Books - now online but then hundreds of reels of microfilm. The hobby lay fallow for a number of years while they raised kids and had careers, then a chance inquiry after the information she had written up years before led her to review it, look for more, and then dive right back into a world of digitized texts and manuscripts. Her books are available on Amazon, under her name, Laura Angotti, Gold and Sweet, Ensnaring will be published very soon, and she's already working on the next two books in what she's calling her Historical Brewing Sourcebook series. For those with either a serious aversion or an inability to access Amazon she can often work out other ways of getting books to them. Join us to dive into history with Laura! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 March 26 - Bray Denard - Mead Experimenting, One Month Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates Upcoming Events

Tonight at 9PM ET, we're hanging out with Bob Slanzi, beekeeper, meadmaker, industry influencer and general all around pretty cool guy. Bob Slanzi has been keeping bees and making award winning meads for years. He is very active in the meadmaking, homebrew and beekeeping communities, having held offices in both his clubs in NY in the past. he is the past president of the Home Governing Committee of the American Mead Makers Association, and very active in helping bring the word of mead to everyone. He was the person who set up and maintained the monthly deals the American Mead Makers Association has for members. Bob was a speaker at the 2022 European Mead Makers Association Conference and judged at their Mead Madness Cup mead competition. He went to the Mead Madness Cup again in 2024 and judged there. He was awarded Mead Personality of the Year at the EMMA as well. He is known for his meads, and isn't afraid to try new flavors, like seaweed or toasted walnuts. Bob likes to experiment, and talks about layering flavors in meads to get the result you want. Join us as we talk with and chat about what he's making, and what he's seen and learned. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 March 12 - Laura Angotti - Historical Mead March 26 - Bray Denard - Mead Experimenting, One Month Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates Upcoming Events Feb 29 - Patriot Homebrew Supply, Elkhorn, NE - Mead Making Seminar Mar 1 - Mar 3 - NC Mead Alliance Beekeepers and Meadmakers, Wilkesboro, NC - 2024 Conference Mar 6 - Green Mountain Mashers, Essex, VT - Spiced Mead Making Class offered by Kyle Ducharme Mar 14 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Thursday South Hills Group Run on PI Day! Mar 14 - What's Brewing? Supply - Palatine, IL - Mead Making Class Mar 16 - The Bee Shop, Toronto, ON, Canada - Mead Making Workshop Mar 16 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Live Music from Veronica Mary-Agnes Mar 16 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Intermediate Mead Making Class - Melomels - Adding Fruit Mar 23 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things - Irish Voyage Tales 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 

2-13-24 Tonight we're headed to Texas to talk with Traci Kuhfuss, home meadmaker and mead consultant. Traci Kuhfuss comes to us from Texas by way of Arizona. She ís been active as a homebrewer and mead maker for 20 years now, participating in brew clubs and competitions in all the places she has lived and traveled.. Traci is a professional graphic designer who loves making mead. Traci got into brewing once upon a time, she was newly divorced and her friends were all getting married and having kids. She was bored with sitting at home with nothing to do. Her friends got her a home brewing kit that year for Christmas. She made her first beer that New Years Eve. She eventually joined a homebrew club and was introduced to mead. She started making mead then and winning more medals with mead than beer. She has been consistently winning awards since 2005 to include many BOS wins such as Great Arizona Home Brew Competitions, Orpheus Cup, Queen of Beer, and Mead Stampede. After moving to Texas, she briefly dipped a toe in the commercial realm but went back to the homebrew scene. She has even helped with Texas Rivers Distilling in advising how to make good mead to make award winning Honey Creek Honey Spirits. Which took a silver medal in February 2023 at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. She has been involved in many competitions including The Great Arizona Homebrew Competition and The Great Arizona Mead Competition when she lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Upon moving to Texas she became involved in the local Houston homebrew scene with her clubs the Cane Island Alers and Sugarland Imperialists, helping to grow the mead community & assisting in Operation Fermentation. Traci also ran the Texas Mead Cup from 2019 to 2023 and has new plans to grow the mead judging pool and assist other Texas clubs in growing mead entries in their competitions. Join us to talk mead with Traci, and explore making better mead. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Feb 27 - Bob Slanzi - Thinking Outside the Box March 12 - Laura Angotti - Historical Mead March 26 - Bray Denard - Mead Experimenting, One Month Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Monin liqeuer concentrates Upcoming Events https://emmconference.comThe European Mead Makers Conference is coming up, and registration is open until Feb 18. Feb 14 - Bee Well Mead and Cider, Bellaire, MI - Valentines Day Book Fair for Grown Ups Feb 14 - Odin's Alchemy Brewing, Olympia, WA - I'm the One You Mead - Valentines Day Celebration Feb 16 - Hickory Tree Farm Apiaries, Kent City, MI - Valentines Mead Make and Take Class Feb 17 - Harvest, Holland OH - Mead Day Celebration featuring meads from Schramm's, Four Fires and Meads of Midgard. Feb 17 - Perry Vine Mead and Cider, South Bend, IN - One Year Anniversary Celebration Feb 17 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Oddsoul Duo Live Music Feb 18 - St. Ambrose Cellars, Beulah, MI - Love and Cheese: A Mead and Cheese Pairing Event with The Cheese Lady Feb 24 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Casting Runes live music

1-30-24 We're off to Arkansas tonight (where it's warmer) to visit with Tony Fry, owner and meadmaker at Arkansas Meadery in Alexander, Arkansas. Since 2001, Tony Fry has been deeply passionate about the art of fermenting, starting with beer and wine and eventually delving into the world of mead. As a founding member of CAF ("Central Arkansas Fermenters") in 2003, a prominent homebrew club based in Little Rock, Arkansas, he played a pivotal role in fostering a vibrant community of enthusiasts, making it one of the largest homebrew clubs in the United States. In 2014, Tony ventured into beekeeping, which further sparked his interest in mead-making. This journey led him to acquire a small farm in Saline County, Arkansas, in 2015. Serendipitously, that same year, the dry county lifted restrictions on alcohol sales, providing the perfect opportunity for Tony to explore his passion for mead-making and the possibility of opening a Meadery. Tony views this sequence of events as a divine sign, inspiring him to establish Arkansas's first Meadery, opening the meadery in September of 2021. Today, he is thrilled to share his creations with the world, inviting everyone to join the journey. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Valkyries Horn Mead Competition Home and Commercial Entries are open until Feb 2! Enter your Meads! Commercial https://commercial.valkyrieshorn.com/ and home https://comp.valkyrieshorn.com/ https://emmconference.comThe European Mead Makers Conference is coming up, and registration is open until Feb 18. The Mead Madness Cup is taking entry registrations until Jan 31. Registration for MMC https://meadmadnesscup.com/ Registration for EMMcon https://emmconference.com/ Feb 2 - The Green Lady, Chicago, IL - Hey Ciderfriends, Nice to Mead Ya - Mead Happy Hour Hang Feb 2 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things - The English Longbow at War! Feb 3 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - John Jarrett Live Music Feb 4 - Lilly Belle Meads, Lancaster, NY - Brunch at the Meadery Feb 6 - Bee Well Mead and Cider, Bellaire, MI - Antrim Writers Series: Jerry Dennis Book Discussion Feb 8 - Breedens Orchard, Mount Juliet, TN - Mead 101, the Joy of Meadmaking Feb 8 - Adesanya Mead and Microbrewery, Grandville, MI - Open Mic Comedy Night Feb 9 - Clear Skies Meadery, Rockville, MD - Mead in Heaven Valentines Day pop up Feb 10 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Mead and Chocolate pairing Feb 10 - KingView Meadhouse, Harborcreek, PA - Galentine's Shopping Event Feb 14 - Bee Well Mead and Cider, Bellaire, MI - Valentines Day Book Fair for Grown Ups Feb 16 - Hickory Tree Farm Apiaries, Kent City, MI - Valentines Mead Make and Take Class Feb 17 - Harvest, Holland OH - Mead Day Celebration featuring meads from Schramm's, Four Fires and Meads of Midgard. Feb 17 - Perry Vine Mead and Cider, South Bend, IN - One Year Anniversary Celebration Feb 17 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Oddsoul Duo Live Music Feb 18 - St.

1-16-24 Welcome to 2024! GotMead Live is back with Carlos Herrera, owner of the soon-to-be Texas Longhouse Meadery in Wylie, TX, just north of Dallas. Carlos has done a lot in his life so far. He spent 8 years in the army as an airborne infantryman. He was medically discharged in 2011 due to combat injuries and became a Paramedic in 2013. In 2015 decided he wasn't ready for civilian life and went back overseas as a high threat diplomatic security contractor team medic. He then spent 2 years at the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan and a year in Northern Iraq with the US Consulate before injuring his back again. He's had 3 spinal surgeries since then. Thank you for your service, Carlos! Carlos has been solo brewing mead since 2016. He was helping an older gentleman before that who used to make it for his Norse Heathen kindred group's ceremonial purposes. They used to make it what he would call the 'old ways' (open ferment in a bucket or old wood barrel, with no nutrients, and would add the kitchen sink if they could). Carlos thought there was a better way to do it so he started off on his own and learned a lot long the way thanks to people like Carvin Wilson, Tom Repas, Ken Schramm, and others. He decided to go commercial after winning multiple awards and being pushed by his homebrew club and friends to take the leap. Carlos loves bochets, pyments, and barrel projects. Carlos is in the process of building his meadery and is going to be talking with us about his journey in licensing and building a meadery, and also about his meads. Join us to see how he's doing! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] 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 Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Valkyries Horn Mead Competition Home and Commercial Entries are open until Feb 2! Enter your Meads! Commercial https://commercial.valkyrieshorn.com/ and home https://comp.valkyrieshorn.com/ https://emmconference.comThe European Mead Makers Conference is coming up, and registration is open until Feb 18. The Mead Madness Cup is taking entry registrations until Jan 31. Registration for MMC https://meadmadnesscup.com/ Registration for EMMcon https://emmconference.com/ Jan 19 - Lilly Belle Meads, Lancaster, NY - Music with Trever Stribing Jan 20 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Music with Lisa Jones Jan 20 - Meduseld Meadery, Lancaster, PA - Mid-Winter Mead and Music including Music, Magic, Trivia and Axe Throwing Jan 20 - Hickory Tree Farm Apiaries, Kent City, MI - Mead Make and Take Class Jan 21 - Old Station Honey and Mead, New Sarepta, Alberta, Canada - Northern Alberta Mead Makers Meet Up Jan 21 - Lilly Belle Meads, Lancaster, NY - Brunch at the Meadery Jan 23 - J. Bird Wines, Cambridge, MN - January Mead Pairing Dinner Jan 25 - Adesanya Mead and Microbrewery, Grandville, MI - Open Mic Comedy Night Jan 25 - Bumbling Fools Meadery, Minneapolis, MN - Trivia Night Jan 27 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Music with Veronica Mary Agnes Jan 27 - MeadKrieger Old Norse Mead, Loveland, CO - 1st Anniversary Party Jan 27 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville,

12-5-23 Tonight on GotMead Live at 9PM EST we're talking with Brian Galbreath, owner of Unpossible Meadery in Dwight, IL, just off Route 66. Brian started fermenting ciders and then mead in 2013. Pete Bakulic told him to focus on traditionals when he got started. [break]Brian went on to take a Mazer Cup win with his Montmorency Barrel Aged Mead, where he won the 2016 Home Mead Competition in the experimental mead category. Now his commercial meads are still taking awards in competitions. Unpossible Mead is located in Dwight, IL (which is about 80 miles southwest of Chicago).  Just having celebrated 5 years, Brian Galbreath and his small crew are looking forward to many more years of making session, varietal trads, and running their barrel program. Join us on the live chat and don't be afraid to call in if you want to! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 December 5 - Brian Galbreath, Unpossible Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Dec 6 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Mead and Cheese and Cheese and Mead pairings Dec 6 - Kingview Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Dec 7 - Manaical Mead Co, Ypsilanti Township, MI - Thorsday, bring your viking horns Dec 7 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Mead Club Party - Ben's 60th Birthday Bash Dec 8-10 -  Honeygirl Meadery, Durham, NC - Mead and Macaron tasting Dec 9 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Decemberfest Party with 732 The Electric Duo - live music Dec 9 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - John Jarrett live music Dec 14 - KingView Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Day One acoustic music Dec 16 - KingView Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Ugly Sweater Party Dec 17 - KingView Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Chocolate Dip and Sip 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 

Tonight at 9PM ET we'll be talking with Tom Repas. Tom has been on the show before, and we're having him back, as he's an absolute fountain of information! And he makes 'ok' mead. We're going to delve into the bees and their care. What you may not be aware of is that a year ago, Tom started making his 'ok' meads professionally. Apiflora Mead, made and available at Zymurcracy Beer Company in Rapid City, South Dakota. Apiflora is rapidly approaching the anniversary and December mead releases. Tom is a Master Beekeeper and owner of Canyon Rim Honey Bees, providing bees and honey in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Tom speaks on beekeeping all over the country, and has presented several times at the AMMA MeadCon on both beekeeping and meadmaking. Tom has won a large number of awards for his mead as well. Tom is a 4th generation beekeeper, and has been working with bees since he was a kid. He kept bees and sold the honey for extra money in high school. He went into professional beekeeping while he was still active as a medical doctor, and has developed a cross for bees that are gentle, overwinter well, and are mite resistant. On the mead side of things, Tom is a very talented mead maker who consistently wins medals with his meads, and has a skill for thinking outside the box for flavor profiles. His mushroom mead was the talk of the mead community for some time when he brought it out to taste. I got to try it, I was stunned at how good it was. Of course, Tom uses his own honey, as well as honeys from other providers and areas, and they're all good! Tom says his meads are 'ok'. We think they're better than that, lol. Join us on the live chat and don't be afraid to call in if you want to! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 December 5 - Brian Galbreath, Unpossible Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Nov 22 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - Comedy Brews Nov 24 - Maniacal Mead Co, Ypsilanti Township, MI - Black Friday Bottle Release, Serpent's Deed, 14% apple pie inspired mead Nov 24-25 - Scale and Feather Meadery, Avondale, AZ - Mead-ieval Market - Black Friday Nov 25 - Hive Mind Mead/Wye Valley Meadery, Caldicot, UK - Groove Jackes LIVE at Wye Valley Meadery and food by Hungry Monkey Nov 25 - Triaxial Meadsmiths, Lake Orion, MI - Small Business Saturday - 10% off your entire bill Nov 25 - White Winter Mead, Iron River, WI - Holiday Open House Nov 25 - Wye Valley Meadery, Caldicot, UK - Groove Jacks Live Dec 2 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things: Whisk-Broom Making Workshop Dec 6 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Mead and Cheese and Cheese and Mead pairings Dec 6 - Kingview Meadhouse and Winery, Mount Lebanon, PA - Trivia Night Dec 7 - Manaical Mead Co, Ypsilanti Township, MI - Thorsday, bring your viking horns Dec 8-10 -  Honeygirl Meadery, Durham, NC - Mead and Macaron tasting Dec 9 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - 732 The Electric Duo - live music

7-7-23 Tonight on Gotmead Live, we're talking with Will Otte and Jacob Thill, both in Minnesota and meadmakers. They work with high gravity meads, and use several different nutrient protocols in their craft. Will has dabbled in fermentation off an on most of his life, from helping his father and opa make mediocre wines (well, mostly vinegar to be honest) from Texas grapes during his childhood to brewing a bunch of mediocre beer in the late ‘aughts until Tennessee finally repealed it's crazy prohibition era laws that kept most craft beer out of the state. He mostly swore off fermenting things until, after learning that the city he'd moved to in Minnesota allowed him to keep bees, he got a bumper 70lb harvest (leaving plenty for the bees!) his first year keeping bees in 2019. Not knowing what else to do with so much honey, decided to make a couple batches of mead. Fortunately by getting off on the right foot, thanks in no small part to the Modern Meadmaking series on GotMead (thanks Ryan!) and the Reddit meadmaking community, those first batches were to his surprise entirely not mediocre and spawned an obsession. After the pandemic hit, he used the newfound glut of free time to really dive deep into the hobby. As an engineer by trade, he really enjoys digging into technical aspects of the meadmaking process; as a recovering academic, he really enjoys understanding the science behind the process, brewing experimeads, and educating others. You can find Will in The Mead Hall (https://discord.gg/the-mead-hall-627621875408961537) discord community, where he's better known as Chef. He is also the current maintainer of the Modern Meadmaking wiki (https://meadmaking.wiki). Jacob Thill is a passionate Minnesotan meadmaker who is on a journey with a dream of opening his own meadery alongside his wife. His meadmaking style spans from high ABV meads reaching 18% to hydromels and standard strength meads enjoyed at his Dungeons and Dragons table, but most of his showpiece meads are all sack mead. His current goals are accumulating local medals and developing a mead calculator to support both enthusiasts and professionals that will hopefully serve as a functional ERP for batch management, and one dedicated to accuracy in mead math rather than fitting in a solution from related brewing industries. Join us to hang out and talk shop with these gentlemen! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows November 21 - Tom Repas - beekeeping and going pro December 5 - Brian Galbreath, Unpossible Mead Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Nov 8 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Mead Making Class Nov 9 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Hurry Up, Say Something Funny comedy show Nov 10 - Adesanya Mead and Microbrewery, Grandville,

10-24-23 Tonight we're headed to the other side of the world, to New Zealand, to talk with Jay Bennett, owner and mead maker at Beehave! Craft Meadery, on the North Island, in Taupo. Jay lives in the center of the North Island of New Zealand and is the Mead alchemist and owner of Beehave! Craft Meadery. He lives in the bush at the southern end of Lake Taupo and operates the Meadery in the township of Taupo. In Jay's own words, He is an alchemist, a wizard and a guardian of the land. Jay first served product to the public in December of 2020 at NZs largest beer fest in Wellington - beervana……he had two kegs of his lemon and ginger mead, Suckerpunch, and left there with empty kegs and was voted in the top 10 of the peoples choice leader board. Jay had a pretty organic journey with 8 years of beekeeping which started with the capture of a swarm in the wall of his house to running 200 beehive...not enough to be viable, so in the search for products he could make with his honey, he came across mead and started making it in 5 liter carboys. During winter to supplement his non-existent bee income he drove trucks for a friend and listened to every podcast he could find on Mead making, including GotMead, and then put into practice what he was hearing. He made some pretty rough stuff to start with but had a couple of early good results that gave him hope. Jay saw the opportunity to bring something new and exciting into the NZ market place and set up Beehave! Craft Meadery in 2020. Beehave! is a nano brewery with 4000 liters of fermentation space and another 1200 of brite tanks. Jay built the current set up for easy growth with a massive glycol chiller and space for larger tanks. His goal is to have 12000 liters of fermenters. There is no culture of Mead in NZ so he is pacing the growth. This has morphed into being the only Mead brewbar in New Zealand and a range of both session and still meads including a non-alcoholic offering. As of last week, they now have created a collaboration with Texas Petes BBQ joint at the Meadery and as they head into a New Zealand summer they are looking to enjoy a successful time introducing more locals to Mead. Join us to see what Jay is up to and how things are going with Beehave! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows We'll let you know! Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Oct 27 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI - Drink Mead, Learn Things - Celtic Halloween and Spooky Stories Oct 28 The Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Mischief '23, annual Halloween event Oct 28 - White Bear Meadery, Maplewood, MN - Yoga and Mead Oct 28 - Brix Urban Winery, Sainte Genevieve, MO - All Hallows Mead Oct 28 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Mead and Monsters 2023

Tonight at 9PM ET, we're talking with Ali and Shane Fox, owners of Dragon Meadery in Aurora, CO. Dragon Meadery is a craft meadery located in Aurora, CO. and is owned  and operated by Shane & Alexandria Fox, two former chefs who have spent 20 years each in the restaurant & hospitality industry. Having a deep appreciation for food, and respect for the quality of the ingredients, have extended their passion to mead. They create craft meads that span the spectrum style, flavors, and sweetness. They believe that fresh seasonal produce and honey locally sourced, makes the best meads. Back in the early 2000 A friend of Shane's introduced him to mead, it was one of his new favorite beverages and something lacking in the restaurant industry. Shane met his wife Alexandria in 2004 & introduced her to mead with a trip to a local meadery. After which he explained he had the equipment and honey for two 5 gallon batches. She wanted to know why they weren't making mead “we're chefs, playing with recipes is what we do!” They went and picked up his equipment and honey, took it back to her place to start making their first batch, an orange blossom traditional. They learned a lot from that batch, like the importance of racking, bottling it when it is ready and not still fermenting also to use proper corks not tasting corks. They lost half the batch to “bottle bombs” in the first week after bottling and had a huge mess in their dining room. With lessons learned they made their second batch, a  semi-sweet traditional and even entered into the International Mead Festival home competition 2007. To their surprise the mead took silver. Maybe they were on to something. The recession hit them pretty hard as new parents so in 2012 they decided to start the licensing process for a commercial meadery. Fast forword almost a year and several conversations with the city, they became the first meadery in the Denver metro area. They started their first commercial batches in August 2013. With a focus on high quality, full strength aged meads, and a goal to see othemelves on wine menus in upscale restaurants. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows October 10 - Brian Galbreath at Unpossible Meadery October 24 - Beehave Craft Meadery, New Zealand Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Sept 28 - Apis Mead & Winery, Carnegie, PA - Hurry Up, Say Something Funny - Comedy night Sept 29 - Atheling Meadworks, Roanoke, VA - Viriginia Mead Cup Sept 29-Oct 1 - American Mead Makers Association - East Coast Mead Conference in Roanoke, VA Sept 30 - Honey Wines Australia, Broke, New South Wales, Australia - Honey and Mead Tasting Sept 30 - Nutmeg State Mead Cup, Lebanon, CT - 1st Annual Nutmeg State Mead Cup at the Lebanon County Fair Grounds

9-12-23 Tonight at 9PM ET, we'll be talking with Don Miller, head distiller and owner at Texas Rivers Distilling Company in Freeport, Texas. Texas Rivers Distilling Co. was created in February of 2019 in Brazoria County… “Where Texas Began”.  They are an LLC registered with the State of Texas as a Distilled Spirits Manufacturer and engage in Distillation and Rectification of craft spirits. They make Bourbon, Rum, Sour and Sweet Mash, and Indian Corn (Milo) Whiskey; all sourced from Texas Grains, as well as Honey Spirits.  All their Recipes bear the name of a different river or waterway in the Lone Star State. Don and a few friends were hanging out, back in 2014, and got to talking about the the show ‘Moonshiners'. One of the group mentioned seeing a website that sold stills for a reasonable price. Don pulled the trigger and put up $200 for his share and to get his friends to get on board. They made some pretty awful stuff at first, as they were learning to use a still. But Don was stubborn and kept researching. He found some ‘tried and true' grain bills and they ended up being ‘just ok'. So, Don dove into all the things like water chemistry, yeast healt, brewing, distillation, fluid mechanics, chemistry and esterification. He studied books and online, and got up with uncles and his dad (who's a preacher now), who used to run moonshine back in Tennessee. They started out with five gallon batches, two at a time to fill their 10 gallon still, and netted about 2 gallons of drinkable spirits. They started getting together one weekend a month. Then Don really got the bug, and started distilling throughout the month, mostly so they could have fermented mash to run on the group weekend. That turned into mashing four days a week and distilling every weekend. At that point Don had 20K sunk into the hobby, and he hit up his friends and asked them to pitch in for more equipment and grains. That lost two of the group. They figured Don was delusional and obsessed. But one stuck it out, and he and Don are partners today. Don brought the time and drive, and the friend and partner brought a modern barn and additional cash flow. Flash forward about two years and they were buying grains from a brew and wine supply store in Houston every week. They had a “sample counter” where customers could leave their brews and wines for others to try and leave notes for feedback.Don started sneaking a bottle of our whiskey in and leaving it, picking up the previous week's empty bottle.. One day the owner of the store calls out to Don “hey you!” Don stopped, palefaced, and turned around.. .”me?” And he said “yea, you. Are you the one leaving this whiskey every week?” Don admitted it was he. He asked if they were a legal distillery.. and Don replied “Not exactly..” still unsure where this was going. He replied “I hope you plan to go legal with it. I mean, I don't care what you do wherever you are doing it, but this stuff needs to be in store shelves.” Don replied “do you think it's good enough?” He said “good enough? This is the best Bourbon I have ever tasted, and no I don't mean homemade… I mean THE best.” Don knew Scott Birdwell was a nationally recognized beer judge, and his private spirits collection would make Spec's jealous. Don went back to the barn and talked to his friend Jason Wierzbicki about what had happened. They did a LOT more taste testing with people they knew … more than 300 people and they all agreed with Mr. Birdwell.. so Jason and Don decided to start working on going legit. In January of 2019 they scraped up $7500 to send Don to Moonshine University in Louisville, KY for a six-day distilling course. This was so we would be able to answer the question on the license application of “Where did you receive your training “.. with a straight face. When Don got back from Kentucky, Jason asked him “So… what did we learn?”.. Don replied “that we are already making it better than they are teaching in Kentucky.

8-15-23 Tonight we're talking with Ben Chaney, owner of Scale and Feather Meadery in Avondale, Arizona. Scale & Feather is a small meadery run by three friends, Ben and Tamara Chaney are high school sweethearts who are going strong with 25 years together. Amber DeGiso is a graphic design specialist–creates cool labels and logos. They specialize in using local ingredients to produce their products. Chaney and one of the other founders, Matt Cross, took a class at UC Davis to learn more about honey wine. Their first foray into the mead business was making it for friends' weddings.   Decorated like an ancient mead hall complete with a flickering chandelier, the tasting room's theme is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Chaney says a highlight of the space is a dragon head with glowing eyes that's poised above the bar. Scale & Feather is also located next to a Nintendo-themed brewery called 8-Bit Aleworks. Ben has been making mead at home since 2011, and inspired by friends living their dreams, He decided that it was time to play with the big boys and, along with his wife and friend, opened Scale and Feather Meadery in 2019. A Native Arizonan, Ben graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing degree and has over 18 years of advertising, marketing, and event management experience. Ben completed the UC Davis Advanced Mead Making and Business of Mead Making course and won a silver medal from the Arizona Society of Homebrewers before going pro. Scale & Feather Meadery has received bronze medals from the National Honey Board in 2021 and Texas Mead Cup in 2022. Spicy meads started in 2019 and have since become a focus point for sales as in Arizona sweet and spicy seem to be a winning combination. Join us to see what Ben, Tamara and Amber are up to and talk mead! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows August 29 - Kent Slaymaker at Slaymaker Cellars September 12 - Don Miller at Texas Rivers Distilling Company September 26 - Ali Fox at Dragon Meadery October 10 - Brian Galbreath at Unpossible Meadery Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Aug 17 - MeadKrieger - Old Norse Mead, Loveland, CO - Free Trivia by Geeks Who Drink Aug 17 - Elgin Meadery, Elgin, TX - Beekeeper 'Mead" Up Aug 18 - Leonard Oakes Estate Winery,  Medina, NY - Mulberry mead release Aug 19 - Arthurdale Heritage, Arthurdale, WV - Mead Workshop and Tasting Aug 19 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Honey 5k Fun Run Aug 20 - Wyrd Leather and Mead, Portland, OR - Mead and Magic Saturday Aug 25 - Good Omen Mead, Escondido, CA - Latin Night (Salso, Bachata, Cumbia) Aug 26 - World of Beer, Melbourne, FL - Cider and Mead showcase Aug 26 - B. Nektar, Ferndale, MI - Italian Honey and Mead Pairing by Bees in the D at B...

8-1-23 Tonight at 9PM Eastern we're headed out to Colorado, to talk with Mike and DJ from Honnibrook Meadery. AJ and I met Mike and DJ at the 2019 MeadCon and MazerCup, and I was *blown away* by their salted mango session mead (and all their other meads). These guys are doing something right, and if you haven't tried it, you need to. Kevin visited them in 2022 and loved their meads. Honnibrook Craft Meadery has been open for 4 and a half years now and the guys are really dialing in on serving session meads, refreshing meads below 8% ABV that are easy drinkers. The meadery is located just a little over a mile south of downtown Castle Rock Colorado in a man cave garage unit. They have over 85 approved mead recipes and offer 20 meads on tap along with mead slishees or mulled meads, depending on the season. They're currently up to 15 barrels a week in their production. They are up on Vinoshipper, so you can get their meads for your very own! DJ and Mike are both longtime home brewers that met at church and started brewing beer religiously every weekend for about ten years, experimenting with all the spectrum of styles. DJ even worked part-time as an assistant brewer at a very successful Denver Brewery to learn a lot about the beer business. DJ also has a culinary degree and worked as executive chef at the local country club. Their experimenting was not limited to beer, and they made several meads too. The meads received such a positive response they changed their focus to mead completely. They have attended the mead making classes at UC Davis to hone their craft and understand the commercial side of mead making and tinkered on draft mead recipes for several years with the focus on being professional mead makers. They both have won awards individually and together in the amateur and professional mead competitions. DJ is working full time at the meadery and Mike has his day job working in IT, so the meadery is open Tuesday-Sunday evenings and you can even set up an appointment. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows August 15 - Ben Cheney at Scale and Feather Meadery August 29 - Kent Slaymakers at Slaymaker Cellars September 12 - Don Miller at Texas Rivers Distilling Company Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Aug 3 - Maniacal Mead, Ypsilanti, MI - Mead Hall Thursday Aug 4 - Kinsale Mead, Cork, Ireland - Mead-Ella - Kinsale Mead at BarBarElla Cork Mead Masterclass Aug 4 - Good Omen Mead, Escondido, CA - Latin Nights featuring Salsa, Bachata, Cumbia Aug 5 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - National Mead Day Aug 5 - Honeygirl Meadery, Durham, NC - National Mead Day featuring Kelly Jackson Live Aug 5 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - National Mead Day Aug 5 - Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - National Mead Day

7-18-23 We are back from our hiatus with a new episode of GotMead Live. Tonight we're talking with Brian Woerner, founder of the World Honey Exchange. World Honey Exchange curates specialty honeys from places such as Chile, Columbia, Ethiopia, Mexico and Tanzania. They have provided honeys for meaderies to make unique meads. Brian Woerner is the Founder of World Honey Exchange, a company focused on creating and furthering linkages between honey producers and end makers of many kinds. Brian began beekeeping in 2012 in Guinea, west Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer. He subsequently worked for a small honey startup in Cambridge while doing graduate research at Boston University. While studying and working in the Northeast, Brian worked to further beekeeping relationships in various places, including Tanzania & Colombia, before starting WHE as a wholesale honey company. Operational since 2019, WHE has become known for specialty honeys and worked extensively in the specialty craft beverage with partners including Heidrun Meadery in California, Deschutes Brewing in Oregon, and Lamplighter and Aeronaut Brewing in Massachusetts. Join us to learn more and see what Brian is up to with World Honey Exchange! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows August 15 - Scale and Feather Meadery Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events July 20 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - Dungeons and Dragons and Mead July 20 - Wildflyer Mead, Navasota, TX - Bingo Night July 22 - White Bear Meadery, Maplewood, MN - Yoga and Mead July 22 - Honey Wines Australia Meadery, Broke, New South Wales, Australia - Honey and mead tasting July 22 - Orpheus Mead Fest, Golden, CO - Mead Festival - tasting and bottle sales July 22 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Emma Nobbe music July 22 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Axe Throwing at the Meadery July 25 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Golden Boar release and BBQ feast day July 29 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Making Mead class Aug 3 - Maniacal Mead, Ypsilanti, MI - Mead Hall Thursday Aug 5 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - National Mead Day Aug 5 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - National Mead Day Aug 5 - Viking Alchemist Meadery, Smyrna, GA - National Mead Day Aug 5 - White Bear Meadery, Maplewood, MN - National Mead Day Aug 5 - Alternative Beverage, Belmont, NC - National Mead Day Aug 5 - Hunters Moon Meadery, Severence, CO - International Mead Day open house Aug 5 - Grimsby Hollow Meadery, Middleville, MI -Drink Mead, Learn Things - Celtic Mythology: Where to Begin? Aug 5 - Hickory Tree Farm Apiaries, Kent City, MI - Mead Make and Take class 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 

11-29-22 Tonight we're chatting it up with Manny Elgarresta, friend, mead maker, previous co-host on Gotmead Live and denizen of Miami. Manny has been making mead for quite a while, and has even converted his garage to making mead, enhancing it so he could make mead and beer in the Miami heat. He has cooling systems, freezers as fermentation enclosures and has even decorated his mead cave with a ton of Star Wars memorabilia, much of it due to late nights with mead on Ebay and other sales sites. Manny Elgarresta is a native New Yorker now residing in Miami Beach,  who got into homebrew after moving to Miami in 1987 and finding that the variety of beers was limited to Budweiser and Coors with some exotics like Beck's.  After the craft beer boom made beer brewing kind of moot, he looked for a new way to use his fermenter and found mead.  For a little over 10 years he's been trying to perfect a high heat traditional, making gallons of JAOM for the holidays and annoying gotmead podcasters with yeast questions. Special for tonight, our last show of 2022, Manny has obtained 10 *gallons* of rare Florida Keys mangrove honey, and another 5 gallons of Keys wildflower honey. 180 pounds of rare, organic, unprocessed honey. And here at GotMead Live, Manny is offering these honeys to 10 special folks, to make a really special mead. We will be choosing talented mead makers from our faithful listeners to get a gallon of honey, and make a special mead from it. We intend to feature those meads on GotMead social media and here on GotMead Live in the spring. The rules are simple: receive the honey (there will be shipping costs, Manny is giving the honey for free) create a mead that showcases the honey post to Gotmead (social and/or forum) the recipe and technique be willing to come on the show later to discuss what you did, why you decided the approach you took, and how it turned out be willing to get a bottle (can be like a 375) to us on GML so we can enjoy it with you! (and cheer your mead) So join us tonight to talk meadmaking, combatting the heat, varietal honeys and other great meadmaking info! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows We are off for December, see you January 10! Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Dec 1 - Hierophant Mead, Mead, WA - Spokane Valley Winter Market Dec 2 - Bragging Rooster Beer & Mead, Warrenton, NC - Live music by the Mary Selvidge Band Dec 3 - For You Brewing Supplies, Terre Haute, IN - Mead Competition Dec 3 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Community Solstice Party, including Ugly Sweater Day and the return of Coffee Mead! Dec 3 - Gladheart Wine & Brews, Roanoke, VA - Kinnfolk Mead and Cocktails - music by Kinnfolk Dec 4 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - December First Sunday Sound Bath

11-15-22 Tonight we're headed to Illinois to talk with Luke Goucher and Carson Souza, proprietor and head brewer/meadmaker at Obscurity Brewing and Mead. Obscurity Brewing and Mead was founded 6 years ago, and has been open for the last 2.5 years, with Obscurity Mead Hall being open for about 1.5 years. The brewery side is a brew pub in Illinois that features would class Beer, BBQ, and Braggots. They focus on making the best product they can. The Mead Hall is a small niche tasting room with production. They specialize in ciders, still meads, sparkling session meads, and pyments. Or basically anything they can get weird with. Luke Goucher is a real estate tycoon, restauranteur, and commercial banker with the absolute love and passion for mead and craft beer. He is an alumni of Augustana University. Luke grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago. It's his visionary sight that brought along Obscurity as well as many other things. Father and husband, he never sleeps trying to see the bigger picture. Carson Souza grew up in New Jersey and went to college for music. But he never left food and beverage the whole time. He's been a commercial brewer for the last 15 years on and off. Luke actually got him fermenting mead. His passion grew from there. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows November 29 - Manny Elgarresta - Mangrove honey and mead making challenge Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Nov 15 - Moonjoy Meadery and Bottle Shop, Durham, NC - Mead n' Make: Quirky Tarot Nov 16 - KingView Mead, Lebanon, PA - Name that Tune and Trivia Night Nov 18 - Bragging Rooster Beer and Mead, Warrenton, NC - Flannel Party! Nov 19 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Getting Ready for Turkey Day - mead and Thanksgiving food pairing Nov 19 - Moonjoy Meadery, Lenoir, NC - Mead and Mindfulness Nov 23 - Bootleg Hill Honey Mead, Davenport, IA - Jim & Leigh Acoustic Nov 23 - Haley's Honey Meadery, Fredericksburg, VA - Thanksgiving Food and Mead Baskets Nov 24 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Temecula Turkey Trot - Harvest Honey Run 5k Nov 26 - Honey & Hops Brew Works, Front Royal, VA - Music & Mead - Featuring: Gunner Heathe Nov 26 - Graham Ordinary, Bedford, VA - Drink Mead, Bee Thankful Nov 26 - Wyrd Leather and Mead, Portland, OR - Small Business Saturday Nov 27 - Wildflyer Mead, Navasota, TX - Goat Yoga! Nov 27 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Holiday Artisan Market - Sip and Shop Dec 1 - Hierophant Mead, Mead, WA - Spokane Valley Winter Market Dec 3 - For You Brewing Supplies, Terre Haute, IN - Mead Competition Dec 3 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Community Solstice Party Dec 4 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Holiday Pop Up Market Dec 7 - Over the Moon Farmstead, Pittsfield,

Tonight we're talking with Chad Wiltz, owner and meadmaker at Garagiste Meadery in Tampa, Florida. Chad has been making mead since 2014, and opened Garagiste in late in 2017, after winning the Home Meadmaker of the Year in early 2017. Chad had a life-altering event (though he didn't realize it at the time) in 2014, when he visited a small meadery in Michigan and tried their meads. And that started a quest for him. He wanted to have more mead that was THAT good, and headed back to Tampa to give it a shot, making home meads Having no local meadmakers to draw from, this gave him the luxury of being unafraid to experiment with flavors and ingredients not associated with meads.  Some experiments failed and others worked great, all had a powerful influence on how he saw mead and what he thought mead could be. Like any hobby he dove face first into meadmaking.  His goal was simple, to create memorable experiences through mead using locally produced ingredients to the extent possible.  Soon he was sharing those meads with friends and they shared them with others. A phenomenon of sorts was born and fast forward another year and he was being invited to pour at local festivals. In early 2016 he decided to make Garagiste Meadery a legitimate business.  The original concept was a side job of sorts, he'd make mead between the other day jobs.  In April 2016 he launched a crowdfunding campaign to get started.  Without much expectations or fanfare they put themselves out there.  The campaign closed a month later making Garagiste Meadery the largest publicly funded Meadery in history. After some soul searching we decided that we'd throw our fate to the winds and let the voice of the people be heard.  Garagiste Meadery would be a full Meadery with a Tasting Room and become the family business.  As the Meadery came together they felt the impetus to get better.  Still making home meads as they worked their way towards opening,  and opened in late 2017. Thankfully, some great meadmakers embraced them and helped refine Garagiste Meadery to where they are today. Join us to talk with Chad! And get a 20% listener discount by using GOTMEAD = 20% at Garagiste! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows November 15 - Luke Goucher - Obscurity Mead and Cider/Obscurity Brewing - Elburn, IL November 29 - Manny Elgarresta - Mangrove honey and mead making challenge Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Nov 2 - Over the Moon Farmstead, Pittsfield, NH - Mead and Read November - Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt Nov 2 - Drinking Horn Meadery, Flagstaff, AZ - Mead Hall Trivia Nov 4 - Pye Road Meadworks, Odessa, FL - Murder and Mead - murder mystery event Nov 5 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - 3rd Anniversary Party Nov 5 - Wandering Bard Meadery,

10-18-22 Tonight on Gotmead Live at 9PM ET, we're looking forward to talking with Keith Seiz with the National Honey Board. We usually like to have Keith and Alison on during National Honey Month in September, but this year we're doing October.  We'll be finding out what the Honey Board has been up to, and talking about their Honey20 Project, the Mead Crafters Competition (5th year!), and the Honey Spirits Competition, as well as their other involvement with honey in craft beverages. We'll dig into how it went with the Mead Crafters Competition, and what's coming in future competitions. We'll also be talking with Keith about his MeadCon talk around mead positioning itself as the next big thing, and follow the track of spirits-based RTD. And of course, honey. Seems that the demand for honey in the last year is the largest ever, and it keeps growing. For the last eleven years, Keith has traveled the country educating bakers, distillers, brewers and now mead makers about honey and its many uses. It's his passion, and one that has him working with bees and meads, two of his favorite things. Before working for the National Honey Board, Keith served as editor and associate publisher of a trade publication that covered the wholesale baking industry. Come on in and have a listen! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Oct 19 - Lilly Belle Meads, Lancaster, NY - Mead and Massage Oct 19 - Drinking Horn Meadery, Flagstaff, AZ - Mead Hall Trivia Oct 19 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - Cigar Night! Oct 19-30 - Hierophant Meadery, Mead, WA - Harvest Festival Oct 21 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Autumn Mead Pairing Dinner Oct 21 - Gypsy Circus, Knoxville, TN - Birthday Mead Release: Chai and Cosmopolitan Oct 22 - The Brimming Horn Meadery, Milton, DE - Mead O'ween Spooktacular Oct 26 - Stardust Cellars, Greensboro, NC - Mead Tasting at the Loaded Grape Oct 27 - WildFlyer Mead Co, Navasota, TX - Adult Coloring Night - Halloween Theme Oct 29 - The Viking Alchemist, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Mischief '22 Oct 29 - Brix Urban Winery and Market, Sainte Genevieve, MO - All Hallows Mead Oct 29 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Mead-O-Ween Oct 29 - Trazo Meadery, Clarksville, TN - Mead Mayhem Oct 29 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Halloween Party - Tasting, Dinner and Costumes are Encouraged Oct 30 - WildFlyer Mead Co, Navasota, TX - Halloween at the Honey Farm Nov 5 - Wandering Bard Meadery, Greenville, SC - Guided Mead Tasting - Special Reserve Bottles and Introduction to Mead Making Class Nov 6 - Lilly Belle Meads, Lancaster, NY - Sunday Brunch Nov 12 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Live music with Bacon Nov 12 - Wyrd Leather and Mead, Portland,

October 4, 2022 - Tonight we're headed to the west coast, to talk with Mark Tanner, owner of Seattle Mead Company and Deception Cellars in Washington state. Mark is a Seattle native, and retired Army Lt. Colonel. He's been homebrewing for over 25 years, and making mead professionally since 2018. Mark got interested in mead a while back, and was the first Washington resident to pass the BJCP Mead exam, and went on to teach prep classes for the first two BJCP Mead exams in Washington. Mark opened Seattle Mead Company in 2018, and just opened a tasting room in Anacortes, WA, just north of Deception Pass, as northwest as you can get and still be in the United States. Seattle Mead Co has a flagship mead line that is berry-forward and ranges from off dry to medium sweet. Deception Cellars offers meads designed to mimic dry fruit forward jammy red wines. They age on oak, and are positively made to age for decades (though you can drink them now too!). The Deception Cellars meads are currently taking about 18 months to properly age, oak and blend. He's gone on to take a number of medals with his meads, and most recently picked up a few at the Mazer Cup. Mark is very intense on his meadmaking, and we're going to dig deep tonight on what he's doing. Join us! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows October 18 - Keith Seiz, National Honey Board Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Oct 5 - Hierophant Meadery, Mead, WA - Drink Mead at Green Bluff Harvest Festival Oct 5 - Over the Moon Farmstead, Pittsfield, NH - Mead and Read - "At the Edge of the Orchard" by Tracy Chevalier Oct 6 - Bragging Rooster Beer and Mead, Warrenton, NC - Music Bingo Night Oct 8 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - Open Mic Night and Mead Oct 8 - Ogden City Brew Supply, Ogden, UT - Mead Making Workshop Oct 8 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - Beginning Home Mead Making Class Oct 8 - Apis Mead and Winery, Carnegie, PA - Twilight Queen Release Party Oct 9 - Bragging Rooster Beer and Mead, Warrenton, NC - DIY Workshop! Oct 13 - Wildflyer Mead Co, Navasota, TX - Book Club - this month "The Last Thing He Told Me" Oct 15 - Bragging Rooster Beer and Mead, Warrenton, NC - Poses with Pints - Yoga Class Oct 15 - Graham Ordinary, Bedford, VA - Mead in the Mountains - Honeymoon Edition! Oct 15 - Honey & Hops Brew Works, Front Royal, VA - Music & Mead featuring Bearded Harmony Oct 15-16 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Meadtoberfest! Oct 21 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Autumn Mead Pairing Dinner Oct 22 - The Brimming Horn Meadery, Milton, DE - Mead O'ween Spooktacular Oct 29 - The Viking Alchemist, Smyrna, GA - Mead and Mischief '22 Oct 29 - Brix Urban Winery and Market, Sainte Genevieve, MO - All Hallows Mead

9-20-22 - Tonight is a night of mead and madness, as we welcome the Minnesota Mead Mafia gang to the show. Right on the heels of the Valkyries' Horn Mead Competition, this bunch of maniacal mead makers have a lot of great info to bring, and even more craziness. Matt Weide likes to make mead. He is also on the AMMA home board, Founding board member of the Valkyries Horn Mead Competition, 2014 Mead Maker of the Year and a BJCP endorsed mead judge. However, he mostly likes to drink mead. Nathan Steigman is a Saint Paul resident. He got into Mead making back in 2017. Nate is a recovering competition addict. He appreciate all categories of Mead, discovering “new to him” honey, and experimenting with fruits, yeasts, spice flavors and wood/barrel aging. He still drinks the mistakes and eats his broccoli often. He sometimes asks profound questions and sometimes gets profound answers. Josh Holbrook has been home brewing for since 2011 and making mead since 2013. He discovered mead at his local homebrew club when a club member brought a bottle of an attempt at Curt Stock's Triple Berry Melomel. Clouds parted, angels sang, and Josh became obsessed with mead. Josh has won numerous medals for beer, cider and mead, including AMMA National Mead Maker of the Year in 2020, and a couple Best of Shows at competitions such as Minnesota Mashout and Hoppy Halloween. He is also a certified BJCP judge and mead judge as well as a novice beekeeper, and one of the organizers for Valkyries Horn Mead Competition. One of Josh's long term mead goals is to make mead with each of the 300+ varietal honeys found in the United States. He has 44 under his belt already and shows no signs of stopping. Al Boyce has been a homebrewer since the early 1990's.  He tasted his first mead at Bunratty Castle in Ireland, and was hooked. Orange Blossom is his favorite honey, Sangiovese is his favorite grape, and 71B is his favorite yeast. He is obsessed with Jamaican Sorrel (hibiscus), and vows to keep making Sorrel meads until he finally gets it right.  He recently moved to a lake home in central Minnesota where he lives with his wife Beth and his Golden Retriever Cooper. In November of 2017 Adam Bystrom suddenly got a craving for that sweet nectar we all know; mead. With no meaderies in the area and little to no availability at liquor stores he decided to learn how to home brew. Since then mead has been the exclusive beverage he's fermented with a particular focus on session meads. He's been fortunate to win awards in a number of competitions all around the country and is a proud member of the Minnesota Home Brewers Association. Josh Mahoney has been making mead since 2008. He is a BJCP mead judge, and is addicted to collecting Mazer Cups. Josh thinks JAOM is underrated, and his favorite spice is vanilla. (and extra points if you can tell us who that pic looks like). This show should be both info-rich and a riot. Join us!! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam),

9-6-22 Tonight at 9PM Eastern we're headed out to Colorado, to talk with Mike and DJ from Honnibrook Meadery. AJ and I met Mike and DJ at the 2019 MeadCon and MazerCup, and I was *blown away* by their salted mango session mead (and all their other meads). These guys are doing something right, and if you haven't tried it, you need to. Kevin visited them in 2022 and loved their meads. Honnibrook Craft Meadery has been open for 3 and a half years now and the guys are really dialing in on serving session meads, refreshing meads below 8% ABV that are easy drinkers. The meadery is located just a little over a mile south of downtown Castle Rock Colorado in industrial warehouse space and hosts a 12 tap tasting room in addition to a very modern production facility. They are up on Vinoshipper, so you can get their meads for your very own! Honnibrook is now looking at opening a second tasting room in the area, which should expand their local availability. And now they're doing several braggots in collaboration with some of the local breweries! DJ and Mike are both longtime home brewers that met at church and started brewing beer religiously every weekend for about ten years, experimenting with all the spectrum of styles. DJ even worked part-time as an assistant brewer at a very successfully Denver Brewery to learned a lot about the beer business. DJ also has a culinary degree and worked as executive chef at the local country club. Their experimenting was not limited to beer, and they made several meads too. The meads received such a positive response they changed their focus to mead completely. They have attended the mead making classes at UC Davis to hone their craft and understand the commercial side of mead making and tinkered on draft mead recipes for several years with the focus on being professional mead makers. They both have won awards individually and together in the amateur and professional mead competitions. DJ is working full time at the meadery and Mike has his day job working in IT, so the meadery is open Tuesday-Sunday evenings. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows September 20 - the Minnesota Mead Mafia (the Sugarbelt Gang) Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Sept 7 - Over the Moon Farmstead - Pittsfield, NH - Mead and Read - this one is A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw Sept 10 - Ridge Meadery, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada - Mead & Music Saturdays Sept 9-10 - Valkyries Horn Mead Competition, Minneapolis, MN Sept 10 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - Open Mic night and Mead Sept 10 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Twin City Days Sept 11 - Bragging Rooster Beer and Mead, Warrenton , NC - Woodworking workshop with AR Workshop Sept 13-17 - Mazer Cup International Mead Competition, Kansas City, KS

Tonight at 9PM ET, we will be talking with Dan Kesterson at Antelope Ridge Mead in Colorado Springs, CO. Dan is the father of 2 boys, and he is an Army Veteran, Mechanical engineer, and the mead-maker at Antelope Ridge Mead. He started making mead when he received 30 lbs of local honey from hives on his Father-in-law's ranch in South Dakota. He immediately switched his focus from brewing beer to making mead after his first batch was a success. In 2019 they started planning to open a meadery where they live in Colorado Springs. Antelope Ridge Mead focuses on pyments, whole-fruit fermentation, and session meads. They pride themselves on high fruiting rates and strive for balance and drinkability in each mead - using only natural ingredients. Their most popular mead is their PB&J Grape session mead, which has already earned two medals (Orpheus and Mazer) in their first year in business. Dan has racked up some impressive wins with his meads: Gold Medal - Candy Crush - Pyment -2021 Orpheus Cup International Gold Medal - Conflux: PB&J Grape - Session Mead - 2021 Orpheus Cup International Bronze Medal - Direct Current - Melomel - 2021 Orpheus Cup International Gold Medal - CC Crush - Pyment - 2021 Mazer Cup International Silver Medal - Conflux: PB&J Grape - 2021 Mazer Cup International BEST OF SHOW MEAD - Sangria Azteca - Fruit Mead - 2022 Colorado State Fair Commercial Wine Competition Bronze Medal - Solstice - Spiced Mead - 2022 Colorado State Fair Commercial Wine Competition Gold Medal - And Then He Served Us Blueberry Pancakes - Anything Goes - 2022 Orpheus Cup International Silver Medal - Sangria Azteca - Specialty Mead - 2022 Orpheus Cup International Silver Medal - Winter Cranberry - Fruit and Spice Mead - 2022 Orpheus Cup International Bronze Medal - Conflux: PB&J Grape - Sweet Session Mead - 2022 Orpheus Cup International Bronze Medal - Solstice - Fruit and Spice Mead - 2022 Orpheus Cup International Come on and listen and hang out with us as we talk mead and explore what Dan's up to, and maybe find out how he's kicking medal butt with his meads! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Aug 13 - 14th Annual Mead Night - Temecula, CA - home and commercial mead sharing, backyard fire and a honey tasting. Bring bottles to share! Aug 13 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Fairy Hair for Everyone Aug 19 - Bragging Rooster Mead, Warrenton, NC - Dog adoption event Aug 22-23 - American Mead Makers Association - MeadCon 2022 in Baltimore, MD - tickets on sale now! Aug 27 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - A Visit with CLAWS - bird rescue Sept 4 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - First Sunday Sound Bath Sept 9-10 - Valkyries Horn Mead Competition, Minneapolis,

7-12-22 Tonight we're chatting with Jeremy Kyncl, co-owner of Hierophant Meadery in Washington with Michelle, his wife, with two locations on the Green Bluff loop in Mead, Washington and a tasting room on Whidbey Island. Jeremy and his wife Michelle have a background in herbs and are focused on local-sourcing their mead ingredients and creating a uniquely local product. They love the 'back-to-nature' aspects of mead making, and all the nuances that plants can add to the mix at various stages of growth. Jeremy is a trained herbalist and behind the deliberately crafted lineup of off-dry meads, and uses responsible sourcing practices and regional honey (often from fellow producers who work along the lush Green Bluff farming loop), both playing fundamental roles. Originally from Colorado, Jeremy Kyncl began homebrewing in college. He was making mead, gruit and beer – including saisons, doppelbocks and wormwood-infused ales – when he met his wife, a Central Valley High School graduate who had grown up in Liberty Lake, in 2008. They were both working on bachelor of science degrees in herbal science at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Washington, where they began to dream of starting a meadery. Michelle Scandalis is an Herbalist, Ayurvedic Practitioner & Meadmaker specializing in ancient herbal preparations and blending techniques. She holds a degree in Herbal Sciences from Bastyr University, where she met Jeremy. Her favorite meads to make are complex metheglin styles. She considers the act of making them, "Guerrilla Herbalism," and hopes to bring appreciate of plants back to the human palate. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows July 26 - Dan Kesterson at Antelope Ridge Mead in Colorado Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events July 15 - Big Lost Meadery and Brewery, Gillette, WY - Mead and Greet July 16 - Batch Mead, Temecula, CA - Viking Night with mead and cider July 17 - White Winter Winery, Trego, WI - Great Northern Railroad Mead and Cheese Train Ride July 23 - Orpheus Mead Fest Tasting and Awards Ceremony, Golden, CO July 23 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Intermediate Mead Making Class July 27 - Over the Moon Farmstead, Pittsfield, NH - We Mead to Paint July 30 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - A Visit with CLAWS Aug 6 - Honey Girl Meadery, Durham, NC - Mead Day Aug 6 - Hunters Moon Meadery, Severence, CO - Mead Day Aug 6 - The BottleHouse, Cleveland, OH - Mead Day Aug 6 - Hierophant Meadery, Whidbey Island, WA - Mead Day Aug 6 - Amrita Park Meadery, Winter Mead Festival, Kin Kin, Queensland, Australia - Mead Day Aug 6 - Laurel Highlands Meadery, Greensburg, PA - Mead Day Aug 6 - Wandering Bard Meadery, Greenville, SC - Mead Day Aug 6-7 - B. Nektar Meadery, Ferndale, MI - Mead Day

Tonight at 9PM ET, we're hanging out with Bob Slanzi, beekeeper, meadmaker, industry influencer and general all around pretty cool guy. We're going to ramble around and talk mead both here in the US and in Europe. Bob Slanzi has been keeping bees and making award winning meads for years He is very active in the meadmaking, homebrew and beekeeping communities, having held offices in both his clubs in NY in the past. he is the past president of the Home Governing Committee of the American Mead Makers Association, and very active in helping bring the word of mead to everyone. He is the person who set up and maintains the monthly deals the American Mead Makers Association has for members. Bob was a speaker at the 2022 European Mead Makers Association Conference and judged at their Mead Madness Cup mead competition. He is known for his meads, and isn't afraid to try new flavors, like seaweed or toasted walnuts. Bob likes to experiment, and talks about layering flavors in meads to get the result you want. Join us as we talk with and chat about what he's making, and what he's seen and learned. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Let There Be Session Meads by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events May 25 - Oppegaard Meadery, Tukwila, WA - Mead Tasting at Mariblu Southcenter - Active Adult Living 55+ May 25 - KingsView Mead & Cider, Lebanon, PA - Lebo Fun Run May 26 - KingsView Mead and Cider, Lebanon, PA - music by Derrick Beattie May 27 - KVLT Mead, Tacoma, WA - Beyond the Grid - music May 28 - KVLT Mead, Tacoma, WA - Safeword! Kinky Queer Comedy Show May 28 - Starrlight Mead, Pittsboro, NC - A Visit with CLAWS - Wildlife rehabilitation May 28 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Memorial Day Party May 29 - WildFlyer Mead, Navasota, TX - Social Knit - knit, crochet and crafting (and mead) May 30 - Bryant's Dry Cider, Richmond, VA - Magic and Mead Mondays - play Magic The Gathering and drink mead May 31 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - Tuesday Night Trivia! June 1 - KingView Mead, Mt. Lebanon, PA - Buzzworthy Trivia Night June 3 - 1912 Brewing, Tucson, AZ - Mead and Music, featuring Superstition Mead June 3 - Windchaser Meadery, Williamsburg, VA - Advanced Meadmaking class June 4 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - Zoe Vox music June 9 - WildFlyer Mead, Navasota, TX - Book club - Jurassic Park June 10 - Wyrd Leather and Mead, Portland, OR - Wyrd's Moving Castle - a themed ambiance organized around the works of Miyazaki and the beloved Japanese culture June 10-13 Kvlt Mead, Tacoma, WA - Legions of the Order - Metal Band Festival - 3 day convocation for the Order of the Black arts June 13-19 - Maine Mead Works, Portland, ME - Mead and Cheese Pairing all week June 15 - KingView Mead, Mt. Lebanon,

4-26-22 Tonight on Gotmead Live, we're talking with Rachel Lipman, owner of Loew Vineyards, in Mt. Airy, Maryland, one of the oldest vineyards in Maryland. The mead production in the Loew family dates back to the mid-1800's in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with a few prominent meaderies and distribution all over Europe. Rachel is one of the youngest winemakers in Maryland (if not the youngest), and she's pushing the boundaries in a male-dominated industry. Rachel is the granddaughter of Wolfgang Loew, and he adopted the name William when he came to the US after World War II, having been the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust, and he did so by being in the Underground. William ended up in Maryland after some time in Indianapolis, and when he arrived, he felt compelled to start making wine at home, remembering his childhood and the smell of the barrels in his family's meadery. He practices and tweaked, and became very well versed in creating a palatable bottle of wine. He kept this up, and when he retired from his 'day job', Bill found a great 37 acre piece of land in Frederick County and planted grapevines. At the time there were only a handful of grape growers and wineries in Maryland. Now the torch has passed to the next generations, and Rachel, the eldest granddaughter, has taken over. Rachel grew up learning about the family history and the winery, and immersed herself in the industry, getting a Bachelor's of Science in Plant Science and a Bachelor's of Arts in Communication. She also studied in France, interned at an organic vineyard in the Loire Valley. She also completed the Washington State University Enology Program. Rachel now manages most aspects of the operations for the vineyard, winery and tasting room. Including winemaking. Rachel makes her families' mead. They have a dry, semi-dry and semi-sweet mead, and make a cyser and a pyment (which has multiple vintages). She spent quite a bit of time uncovering her families mead-making past. While things were shut down during Covid, she dug through Polish documents, magazines and newspapers to learn more about the family business. She learned that her families' meadery was in a district that had warehouses, vodka distilleries, several other meaderies, and a beer garden. Her families' meadery took up an entire city block! At the time in the 1800's when the Loew family were meadmaking, they distributed internationally. And of the ten kids that they had, two of them started meaderies of their own. The rest got into winemaking. One son established the first national meadery and beeswax facility in Poland. He and his wife had three sons, one of which was Wolfgang, Rachel's grandfather. Rachel is now carrying one the family winemaking, and has updated the winery with all new equipment, and is looking to a future of providing her family's wine and mead to the customers of the future. Join us as we talk with Rachel and explore the rich mead (and wine) history she is part of. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and ...

4-12-22 Tonight at 9PM ET we'll be getting together with RJ Cassle, head brewer and meadmaker at Bragging Rooster Beer, Mead and Cider in Warrenton, NC, just a half hour from Vicky's place. RJ is hard at work in getting Bragging Rooster to opening, which should be very soon! Robert J. Cassle aka RJ is a level 43 character in this game called life. He calls himself a jack of many trades and master of some. RJ spent 10 years in the military, 4 years in law enforcement, a few years as a Subway sandwich artist, and 20 plus years as low voltage/security technician. RJ has a love for growing plants, throwing axes, and bringing people together. About 9 years ago he was told that the alcohol budget was too high and that he needed a hobby. Enter mead! RJ's best friend was doing home brew beer at the time, and they really didn't need another excuse to hang out, but brewing became one. Except, the friend asked if RJ was interested in brewing mead. RJ had no idea what he was talking about, so he did some research. He absolutely fell in love with it. He thought the history was amazing, and wanted to learn more. He and his friend started brewing on weekends and RJ started volunteering at Honeygirl Meadery in Durham on bottling nights. Diane at Honeygirl was the best mentor to get him from homebrewing to commercial brewing. RJ imagined the whole Bragging Rooster as just a meadery until the day he was introduced to some people who wanted to open a brewery but had no commercial brewing experience. He partnered up with them and they took Bragging Rooster from just mead to beer, mead, and cider and that is what they are opening in Warrenton, NC. Join us to talk with RJ and find out what he's done with meads, and where he is planning to take Bragging Rooster when they go live! This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows April 26 - Rachel Lipman - Loew Vineyards Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events April 13 - Drinking Horn Meadery, Flagstaff, AZ - Mead Hall Trivia Night April 14 - Wildflyer Mead, Navasota, TX - Book Club - April book is 'Britt-Marie Was Here' by Fredrik Backman April 15 - Kings Beer and Wine, Phoenix, AZ - Mead tasting featuring Celestial Artisan Meadery, Scale & Feather Meadery and Schramm's Mead April 16 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Mead and Making Floral Hair Wreaths April 16 - Build Guild, Ft. Wayne, IN - Mead Making workshop April 20 - Wyrd Leather and Mead, Portland, OR - DJ Lordfiregiant Metal - Rock and Roll night April 21 - Wildflyer Mead, Navosota, TX - Watercolor Basics April 22 - Three Leg Run!, Chester, VA - Blue Guitar Trio is playing (beer, wine and mead) April 22 - KingView Mead, Mount Lebanon, PA - Day One, playing acoustic music April 23 - Potter Township VFD, Monaca, PA - Knights of the Round Table Mead Tasting Fundraiser

3-29-22 Tonight we're talking with Pierre Rodrigue, home meadmaker in Alberta, Canada. Pierre has been with us before, he's an  award winning meadmaker  who likes to work with juice, and like us, is a flavor maven. Pierre has been fermenting wine since 1985. Early batches consisted of kits, and fruits and berries. As there weren't a lot of publications then and zero internet, he learned a lot by trial and error. Pierre began mead making in the fall of 2016, and has won several medals and Best of Show at Canada's Mellarius Cup. His penchant for all juice meads is fairly well known on social media, where he moderates GotMead, Modern Mead Makers, Home Made Wine Making, and his own page, Mead and Wine Crafting. In his spare time you can find him drawing, baking, cooking, curing and smoking meats, or long distance target shooting. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! 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 @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow. Upcoming Shows April 12 - RJ Cassle - Bragging Rooster Meadery in Warrenton, NC April 26 - Rachel Lipman - Loew Vineyards Show links and notes Let There Be Melomels by Rob Ratliff The Big Book of Mead Recipes by Rob Ratliff Upcoming Events Mar 31 - HoneyGirl Meadery, Durham, NC - Queen Bee Virtual Mead Tasting of 3 meads from HoneyGirl. Order your tasting kits to join in! April 1 - Holter Museum of Art, Helena, MT - Spring Mead and Read April 2 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Sip and Paint with Cateleya Jewelry Studio April 2-3 Mountain Run Winery, Culpeper, VA - Mead and Mayhem 2022 - 2 day full contact armored combat fighting event April 3 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Honey and Mead Tasting Class April 3 - Skål Beer Hall, Seattle, WA - Spring Mead Festival - seven local meaderies on hand to pour: Æsir Meadery - Everett, WA Artivem Mead - Bellingham, WA Ethereal Mead - Battleground, WA Hierophant Mead - Freeland, WA Contrivance Mead - Tukwila, WA Oppegaard Meadery - Tukwila, WA Thunderland Mead - Duvall, WA April 3 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - Sunday Sessions: Mead and Music April 6 - Starrlight Meadery, Pittsboro, NC - Mead and Chocolate Class April 9 - ARTifice Ales and Mead, Manheim, PA - 2022 Central PA Kiltcon! April 9 - Meadiocrity Mead, San Marcos, CA - Viking Raiding Party! Walk MS Fundraiser April 10 - Firefly Gathering, Barnardsville, NC - Magical Mead Making Class April 12 - Battle and Brew, Sandy Springs, GA - Mead and Minis - paint minis and drink Viking Alchemist mead April 23 - Potter Township VFD, Monaca, PA - Knights of the Round Table Mead Tasting Fundraiser April 23 - Northerns Beekeeping Association, Pretoria, South Africa - Mead Making and Bee Venom Therapy Training Day April 23 - Four Brothers Mead, Festus, MO - 2nd Annual Sigurblot - 40 vendors, live combat, blacksmithing, belly dancing, food trucks, live music April 24 - American Mead Makers Association - Mead Matters #8 - Making Mead with Kveik