The team from Hiveworks Mead is in the studio for Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras to talk about their way of making mead. Alexander Mendoza, CEO and Head Mazer, Sean Duckworth, COO and Julian Frank, CFO, are taking turns on the two guest microphones in our small converted train car.

They will be at Beer City this Saturday, Feb. 24, in Courthouse Square.

The Hiveworks Mead team all grew up in Sebastopol together and now they are partners in the company.

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First they taste Skyborne, a simple recipe of honey, water and yeast, plus carbonation. They just wanted to make a beverage that they could enjoy with any food. The more honey you add, the higher the ABV. A lot of traditional mead could be 2-3 pounds of honey per gallon of mead. Their mead is lower in alcohol so they can use less honey.

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The partners started Hiveworks Mead in Sebastopol in a shed with one fermenter, and experimented until their product was a hit at some parties. That was when it was time to go pro. Even though it is classified and taxed as a wine, mead is actually made on equipment that is much more like that of a brewery. The aluminum cans use a lot less carbon dioxide, than glass bottles.

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Alexander carries the title Head Mazer. Some meadmakers fancy the term. A mazer is a type of traditional medieval wooden cup, low and wide, with a rise in the middle. There happens to be a well-known annual mead competition called the Mazer Cup, based in Colorado, whose logo is shaped like a mazer. This may have suggestee the idea for that term. *

* ‘Mazer’ as a meadmaker has no root word history in English nor in any of its contributing languages. Given that mead can be drunk from a mazer, calling a meadmaker a ‘mazer’ could be compared to calling a vintner a ‘glass’ or a brewer a “mug” or a Kombuchist a “tightly capped bottle.” But if people like the term, they will use it, and if enough people adopt it for enough time, it will become documented.