A meadery is a business that makes mead. Mead is an alcoholic drink fermented from honey and water, so a meadery sits closer to a winery than a brewery, even though plenty of them look and feel like taprooms.
That is the whole answer. The rest of this page is the detail that usually comes next.
What actually happens inside one
Honey gets diluted with water, yeast goes in, and the yeast turns the sugar in the honey into alcohol. That mixture ferments for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of years depending on the style. Then it is filtered, sometimes aged in barrels, and bottled or kegged.
No grapes, no grain, no hops required. Honey is the whole sugar source, and it is the reason the flavour of a mead tracks the flowers the bees worked. A wildflower honey and an orange blossom honey make noticeably different drinks from the same recipe.
Most meaderies buy honey by the barrel from apiaries rather than keeping their own hives, though some do both.
Meadery, winery, brewery, cidery
The names all describe what the place ferments:
- A winery ferments grapes.
- A cidery ferments apples.
- A brewery ferments grain.
- A meadery ferments honey.
In the United States mead is usually classified as wine, and meaderies are licensed as wineries. That is why so many carry “winery” somewhere in the name, and why you will find meaderies in this directory whose Google listing says Winery.
What it is like to visit
Most meaderies open to the public run a tasting room. You sit at a bar or a table, you order a flight of four or five small pours, and someone talks you through them. A flight usually runs somewhere between ten and twenty dollars.
Expect a wider range of styles than you would guess:
- Traditional mead is honey, water and yeast, and nothing else.
- Melomel has fruit in it. Blueberry, raspberry and cherry are common.
- Metheglin has spices. Cinnamon, vanilla, chai and hot pepper all turn up.
- Cyser is made with apple juice, so it lands somewhere between mead and cider.
- Braggot is made with malt as well as honey, which puts it next door to beer.
Strength varies more than most drinks. A session mead can be five or six percent and drinks like a cider. A traditional or barrel-aged mead can be fourteen percent or higher and should be treated like wine.
The thing most people get wrong
Mead is not automatically sweet. It is the assumption almost everyone brings through the door, and it comes from mead’s reputation as a medieval drink rather than from what is actually in the glass.
How sweet a mead ends up depends on how much of the honey the yeast was allowed to eat. Let it finish and you get a dry mead that can be as crisp as a white wine. Stop it early, or add honey back afterwards, and you get something sweet. Most meaderies make both and will point you at whichever end you prefer.
Are meaderies rare?
Less than they used to be. This directory lists 376 meaderies across 49 states. Texas, Pennsylvania, Washington, California and New York have the most.
There is a good chance one sits closer to you than you think, particularly near wine country, because the same climate and the same licensing make it easy ground for a meadery to start on.
How to find one
Start with your state. Every meadery here carries its address, opening hours, phone number and a link to its own site, so you can check whether a place has a tasting room before driving out to it.
One practical note: opening hours at small meaderies change often, and plenty open only Thursday through Sunday. Call ahead.