Bud Light got a few laughs at the expense of mead earlier this year with a couple commercials that were part of its “Dilly, Dilly” ad campaign.
Autumnal mead, anyone?
But, with beer sales decreasing and mead sales increasing — thanks, in part, to increased visibility from those very commercials — mead makers could have the last laugh.
“It was kind of a declaration of war against the mead industry, because they were trying to poke fun at it,” Marc Johnson, co-owner and mead maker at Stonekeep Meadery, said of the Bud Light commercials. “What they ended up doing, however, was boosting everybody's sales and raising awareness. They helped us out more than they did anything else.”
Berks County is now home to three commercial mead makers: Stonekeep, which has a meadery in Birdsboro and a tasting room in Ruscombmanor Township; Rebel Hive Meadery in Reading; and Deerfoot Vineyard and Winery in Maidencreek Township, which produces Goblin Alchemy mead.
Pennsylvania's first
Stonekeep was the first licensed commercial meadery in Pennsylvania when it began operations in 2009. Johnson, however, has ben making mead for about 30 years.
“I spent a while making the federal limit for homebrewers, which for two adults in a household is 200 gallons per year,” he said. “I was giving it away and taking it to parties and that kind of stuff. I was making that much mead, and I never had any, and as you can imagine it can get expensive.”
He looked into opening a commercial meadery, but a legal quandary prevented meaderies in Pennsylvania.
“Before 2004, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board defined wine as an alcoholic beverage made by fermented grapes or fruit,” Johnson said. “By that definition, you couldn't make mead commercially in Pennsylvania, because the federal government classifies it as a wine, and the state said it wasn't a wine.”
After the state law was changed in 2004 to classify mead as a wine, Johnson developed a business plan, got license in 2007 and released his first mead in 2008.
He and his business partner, Sheree Krasley, opened Stonekeep in 2009 in Birdsboro and opened the tasting room along Route 73 in Ruscombmanor Township in 2018. Stonekeep also has a tasting room in Jim Thorpe.
Johnson and Krasley are planning to build a new 5,000-square-foot production facility behind the Ruscombmanor tasting room to replace the Birdsboro facility. They hope to have it up and running in 2020.
“Sales are great, which is why we're building the new building because we can't keep up with our production in our current facility,” Johnson said. “It's too small.”
New meaderies on the block
While Stonekeep has been in business for a decade, Rebel Hive and Goblin Alchemy only began making mead this year as the drink's popularity increased.
Lower Heidelberg Township resident Ryan Ludwig opened Rebel Hive Meadery in April in a former manufacturing space on Butler Street in north Reading.
Rebel Hive is not open to the public. Instead, Ludwig sells to sell the mead at the Shillington Farmers Market and the Fairgrounds Farmers Market, as well as at events such as West Reading's Fall Fest. He is planning to open a tasting room within the next few months.
“Business for us is going extremely well,” Ludwig said. “We're having a hard time keeping up with demand. That's how much we're going through right now. It's a good problem to have.”
Ludwig said he was planning to about 1,000 gallons in the first year, but he's on track to make closer to 2,500 gallons.
“We're looking to expand production going into next year,” he said.
Goblin Alchemy is a partnership between Deerfoot Vineyard and Winery owner Dan Brown and mead maker Jason Heaslet.
Brown, started making mead on the side a few years ago and decided to start making mead for release at the winery. It took too much of his time, so he brought on Heaslet, whom he knew through work.
Their mead brand, known as Goblin Alchemy, launched in May. Business has been very good since its release, Brown said.
“Part of it is something new,” Brown said. “Part of it is an appeal to people who aren't traditional wine drinkers. We get a lot more men, generally. A lot more younger people are interested in it. They've heard about mead through things like Game of Thrones and they've never tried it. They want to try it, they want to see if they like it.”
Thank you, Bud Light
Meadery growth isn't unique to Berks County. The number of meaderies in the U.S. has grown from less than 200 to about 600 in the last 10 years, said Vicky Rowe, executive director of the American Mead Makers Association. And, Rowe said, there are about 200 more meaderies in development.
“It's difficult to pin down, but I think part of it is just that more and more people are hearing about it,” Rowe said. “We're seeing quite a bit more news coverage on it, and larger companies are starting to pay attention to it.”
All agree that the Bud Light commercials greatly increased mead's visibility.
“The general consensus within the industry is we couldn't possibly have afforded to get as much coverage for mead as Budweiser did for us,” Rowe said. “I'm not sure why they decided to do that, but it didn't hurt mead at all.”
Ludwig believes the Bud Light commercials turned more people onto mead.
“A lot of people who never heard the term before at least now know what it is,” he said. “Sometimes when you say mead to people, they say, ‘Oh, like from the Bud Light commercial.’ It's kind of a talking point for us.”
Brown said the Bud Light commercials were great, because many people never heard of mead before them, and now they want to try mead.
“When a company the size of Budweiser actually references it in a commercial, people stand up and take notice a little bit,” he said.
The buy-local movement is also increasing mead's popularity.
Even though the number of meaderies has grown, Rowe said the average meadery is very small and most distribute locally.
“They're not big, state-spanning things,” she said. “More often than not distribution is in their own state and within their region of the state.”
Whatever the reason, Ludwig said the mead industry is growing very rapidly.
“I think it's people looking for something new,” he said. “It's kind of riding the craft beer wave, and now people are looking for new drinks. It's just a new and unique drink for many people.”