Methods + Ingredients + Research = Mead Project

PROJECT LOG

January 17, 2023

Our first official blog and we figured why not start with a post on how Mead Project came to be.

Mead Project started off as two friends talking about craft beverages and evolved to a creative desire. Austin, for years, had been home brewing anything that you could ferment and David enjoyed trying all varieties of craft beverages. David, one day, asked Austin if he wanted to go pro and make his own beverages which brought us to the discussion of founding a meadery, later to be named Mead Project.  Similar to two entrepreneurs or engineers scribbling notes on a napkin in a coffee shop, Mead Project was born. While craft beer industry was a good market to jump into, we wanted to bring something lesser known to craft beverage drinkers and connoisseurs.  Mead.

Mead, being one of the oldest beverages known to humans, is largely unknown by beverage consumers and even less explored from a craft perspective compared to its craft counterparts.  A new canvas was suddenly in front of us and with that canvas came a limitless arsenal of ingredients and methods in which to make our mark.  Inquisitive neurons began to fire and our path to research was laid out before us. Every weekend and spare time between our day jobs focused on our mead projects. Every corner of every room in Austin’s house was filled with mead, ingredients, tanks, carboys, notes, and more. Years of experimenting and research began to pile up.

What is Mead Project?  We are a meadery that is based on the idea of researching the best ingredients and methods to produce top quality and tasting mead.  We enjoy experimenting with fermentation processes and you could label us as mead geeks. One of Mead Project’s core beliefs is that R&D never stops. Since inception, we have carried out over 100 batches experimenting on fermentation processes and incorporation of ingredients to create new flavor profiles.  Some of our best experimental batches were entered into brewing competitions and, we are proud to say, all won medals.  However, as our core belief states, we were eager to read the judges notes and use that feedback to better our processes.

Our journey so far is short, but our path feels endless.

We leave you with our mission statement:

Methods + Ingredients + Research = Mead Project

Our methods, while ranging from traditional to unorthodox, are always meticulous in process.

We seek to combine ingredients you are familiar with ones that create unexpected flavors. 

We love to experiment with our processes to deliver the next great mead from Mead Project.

June 15, 2023

Starting a company is not easy.

Now it’s not that we thought it would be, it’s just that we didn’t quite think our biggest hurdle would be locating a suitable lease location. From different rules between cities and the counties they reside in, to the variances in zoning, occupancy rules, permit process and costs; it’s been quite the journey.

We don’t exactly remember the date that we decided it was time to start that next huge step to being a real licensed meadery, however, I can tell you we learned valuable lessons getting to where we are today. Neither of us had experience in this process so short of what we googled leading up to it this was largely uncharted territory. We searched for months, toured a variety of spaces, passed on locations that in hindsight would have been preferred all the while keeping up on R&D and refining our plan. Just when we were ramping up the hunt by driving around and looking for open buildings in properly zoned areas; Covid became an unfortunate reality. Like many, we stayed in our respective homes and for months worked both independently and as a team over skype to further Mead Project as best as we could given the state of things. This caused some severe delays in our plans and timeline of what we thought we could achieve.

After some time passed, we were able to slowly get back to trying to find the elusive space to lease. On one of our outings, we located a warehouse space in unincorporated Concord that seemed near perfect. Empty, a good price, and just in time as our R&D facility (aka one of our homes) needed to relocate due to moving. Things started off great and then…. Not so much. After some months working in and preparing the space, we unfortunately came to an impasse with the landlord over permit paperwork. Heartbreaking, we know.

At the end 2022, the equipment we purchased went to storage while in-progress R&D batches were carefully moved to one of our houses. We learned some valuable (and expensive) lessons from this chapter in the journey but remained driven as ever. Neither of us had given up and since we left that lease space, we had gone even further into the hunt for a new lease. LoopNet and Craigslist weren’t favorites in a browser; they were open tabs refreshed multiple times a day in search of that space we needed.

At the beginning of 2023 we went all out and although it took a lot of time and work to find a space that met our requirements and budget; we are pleased to announce that as of June 1^st, Mead Project has leased a production space in Benicia, CA! Our equipment has already moved from storage and there is so much more coming.

We march forward into our passion and more than likely, into more adventurous hurdles. 

More to come about where we are in our journey in our next post.