140: Jeff Herbert of Superstition Meadery on Envisioning and Making Best-in-Class Craft Beverages

While technically considered wine, mead has long had a stronger affinity with the world of beer and home brewing than it has with the wine world, and the growth of flavor-forward ingredient-laden meads has in many ways mirrored the rise of similarly-designed craft beers. Superstition Meadery, in Prescott, Arizona, has been one of the leaders in that new-school approach, stretching the definition of mead and widening the relevance of one of the world’s oldest fermented beverages. Inspired by innovation in the craft beer space, and in the culinary world, they’ve brought flavors and approaches to the mead world that excite and delight, from white chocolate-inspired fine bottled meads to milkshake meads in cans.

In this episode, Jeff Herbert (who founded and owns the brewery with his wife Jennifer) walks through the steps that brought them to where they are today—early homebrewing, mead inspiration, technical evolution, and current innovation. He walks through their approach to quality, testing concepts, solving the mead making problem of time, healthy fermentations, honey flavor and mechanics, yeast management in the meadery, methods of adding fruit, improving extraction efficiency, fine tuning fruit expression for complexity, the impact of aging, and more.

As brewers and craft beverage drinkers stretch out and explore adjacent fermentations, mead is increasingly finding its place in their repertoire. Herbert makes a great case for its relevance, driven by a creativity, enthusiasm, and ambition that you can hear in his voice.

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