Blog - Got Mead? The Largest Mead Resource on the Web

6-6-17 Tonight we're looking forward to talking with Tom Repas. Tom is a soft-spoken guy, and seems quiet and retiring. What you don't know is that a mead making *beast* lurks under that deceptive exterior. Tom is a two-time Best in Show winner at the Mazer Cup International Home Competition in 2015 and 2017. He came in 2nd and 3rd for Best in Show at the Mead Free or Die in 2016 and 2017. He's a...

5-30-17 Welcome to another episode of GotMead Live! We're chatting with Carvin Wilson tonight. In case you've been hiding under a rock, no, Carvin isn't a meadery owner, he's a regular meadmaker. And this year he burst out of the woodwork at the Mazer Cup and took home 4 Mazers. (He's also snagged 3 medals at Mead Free or Die and 6 Midwinter Competition medals). He also rented a big party suite in...

5-9-17 We're tickled to be talking with James Boicourt, co-owner with Andrew Geffken of Charm City Meadworks in Baltimore, MD. James got hooked on bees in college, and has been a honey nut ever since. He and Jeff met after college, and their honey madness turned from a thing, into an annual Viking Fest, and then into a business. Charm City makes some pretty awesome meads, and has rapidly grown up...

5-2-17 Tonight on Gotmead Live we're talking to Alex Gonzalez, owner of Honeypot Meadery in Orange County, CA. Honeypot isn't open yet (they plan to open by the end of 2017), but they're doing custom brews with Frank Golbeck at Golden Coast Mead in San Diego, and just released their first mead. They are one of 5 meaderies in the San Diego area now. Alex is fond of melomels, and we'll be talking ab...

4-25-17 This is our last week in Australia, and we're tickled to have Joel Robinson, owner of Hunter and the Harp, in Wollongong, New South Wales. Joel started out doing some co-brews with a local brewery, but is striking out independently now, and plans to make drier meads, best served chilled. He's active in the Australian mead awareness scene as well, and very active as a home meadmaker, and po...

4-18-17 Welcome to week 3 in Australia! This week we're visiting with Sueann Allworden, owner of Thistle Meadery in Bibaringa, South Australia. Sueann is another home meadmaker who ended up opening her meadery because the meads she was making (all over their living room) were so good, she had to go commercial. They make 16 different meads so far, and use some really interesting honey in their prod...

4-11-17 Greetings from Down Under! We are on week 2 of our digital tour of Australian meaderies, and this week's guest is Sean Johnson, owner of Erosion Meadery in Perth, Western Australia. In 2016 they hit it out of the park with their first Collaboration with Artisan Brewing - Erosion Bier De Miel which happened to be one of the best sellers at the Fremantle Beer Festival in 2016. They also have...

4-4-2017 G'day, mates! Welcome to Mead in Australia Month on Gotmead Live! We have with us tonight (or today for you folks in Oz), Steve Kirby, owner of Stone Dog Meadery in New South Wales, Australia. He runs an artisan meadery and has more than 10 meads (with more on the way) that feature the unique honeys you can only find Down Under. Join us (and Hamish is translating, LOL) to see how they mak...

3-28-17 Weeee'rrrrreeeee BAAAACCCKKK! Sorry for the long hiatus, folks! A.J., Hamish and I headed out to the AMMA Conference and Mazer Cup a week after the last show, and a week later, A.J. headed home to Canada, and Hamish and I headed to Florida for a week where Hamish and his good friend Bruce hung with Manny, and when my hubby John and I got there 3 days later, we did all sorts of fun stuff in...

2-28-17 We are hitting the East Coast tonight, and doing a deep dive into Pyments. Pyments are mead made with grapes as the fruit, and they are gaining in popularity as mead continues to grow. Making a great pyment, whether dry or sweet, takes a bit of doing, and choosing the honey and grapes (or juice) can be frustrating, finding the right combination to hit that 'sweet' spot. We have two guests...

2-21-17 Our show tonight moves to Idaho, the home of Mythic Mead. Shauna and William LeFave are the owners, and have their first mead out, Huck Me, a huckleberry melomel. Shauna will be talking with us about their journey to go pro, and their meadmaking experiences. We're also going to dig into filtration, cold-crashing your meads, and stabilizing meads without adding sulfites. As an added bonus t...

2-14-17 We're headed to New Mexico tonight, to visit with Greg Menke, the chef owner of The Beestro Group of Businesses: The Beestro and The Hive Market located in downtown Santa Fe New Mexico as well as The Root Cellar Mead Taproom & Gastropub and Falcon Meadery both coming online in fall/winter 2016. These businesses encompass Greg’s passion for community, high quality local and sustainable food...

2-7-17 We're having way too much fun with this! Tonight we're talking with Billy Beltz, winner of 32 medals over last 2 years, including 2 Mazer Cup medals, for meads under 6 months old. Most were even younger than that! He's also won a number of medals for his capsicumels, coffee meads and traditionals. He definitely knows his stuff! Billy has been homebrewing for over 10 years, and has a lot of...

1-31-17 Tonight we're going to talk about making session meads with Jason Scott Phelps from Ancient Fire Meadery. If the mead gods are good, we'll also have Chris Herr from Golden Coast Mead as well What, might you ask, is a session mead? A session mead is a lower alcohol mead, often carbonated, that is gaining popularity. It's an easy drinker, and not terribly hard to make, once you know how. Oft...

1-24-17 We've a new meadery tonight, in Delaware! Joining us will be Jeff and Terri Cheskin, owners of Liquid Alchemy Beverages, a new meadery open in Delaware. Jeff and Terri fell in love with mead a while back, They found mead on a trip to Maine to visit family, and fell in love with a lavender lemonade mead from Maine Meadworks. That was when they realized that people love mead as much as they...

1-17-17 Today's GotMead Live takes us to the New England states. Connecticut to be exact. Gary Ellis, owner of Mad Moose Mead, will be joining us. Gary fell in love with mead several years ago, and after seeing that you don't have to start big to make a splash in the mead world, he took the plunge (enough metaphors for you?) Mad Moose will be opening in summer of 2017, and they've hooked up with a...

1-10-17 Tonight we're back from our holiday vacation!! We hope you all had a great holiday, and a fun New Year! We'll be talking with Rob Ratliff. Those of you who listen to the show might remember we had him on earlier in the year on Back to Basics. Rob is an intuitive mead recipe designer, and his meads are top notch. (He's also a good friend!). Rob decided to put his recipes, and his skills, in...

We are meeting with Bob Slanz - NY Home meadmaker and beekeeper, and winner of a BoS for his ghost pepper mead. We'll talk bees, honey and mead

11-22-16 - Today I'm tickled to have a 'home-boy' on the show, Kirk Jones, beekeeper and, owner of St. Ambrose Cellars in Beulah, MI, just 30 miles from my family home in Onekama, MI. I visit them every time I go home. Kirk and his wife Sharon, also an experienced beekeeper, are 'back to earthers' who met when Kirk moved to Northern Michigan to live a simpler life. They ended up making mead in the...

11-15-16 - Tonight we're talking with Jason Phelps, an aspiring meadery owner in the process of opening Ancient Fire Meadery in Southern, NH. Jason hopes to be open sometime in 2017, and is currently wending his way through the mire of federal paperwork and local licensing. Jason has a few medals for mead under his belt (108 at last count!) and hopes his mead will be as well liked by consumers as...

POSTPONED TO THURSDAY NOV 10 DUE TO EQUIPMENT ISSUES (THE COMPUTER DIED) - PLEASE COME LISTEN THEN!! 11-8-16 - We are tickled to be talking with Michael Jordan, the Bee Whisperer tonight on GotMead Live. Michael has traveled the world to learn beekeeping, from Turkey and India, From Poland to Ireland. He was also asked to join a team to teach orphans around the world beekeeping and to do classes a...

11-1-16 - Our show tonight gets us together with Erik Newquist of Aesir Meadery in Everett, WA. Aesir is all about creating small batch meads using sustainably produced ingredients from the local area, and they're distributed all over Washington. Erik is himself a microbiologist and chemist, and has experience in engineering, so we're looking forward to hearing more about his outlook and process....

Tonight we're talking with Ash Fishbein of Sap House Meadery in New Hampshire. Sap House has been around since 2011, and makes a lot of award-winning meads. Ash is also something of a mead nerd, digging deep into mead making as a science, and has some interesting insight to offer fellow mead makers.

9-27-16 - Our guest tonight is Amy Hasle with HoneyRun Winery in Chico, California. HoneyRun has been around for a while, since 1992. We also check in with David Webb on the Texas Mead Fest.