Northshore Magazine

May / June 2015

Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.

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199 An avid home brewer, Dan dove into researching meads and mead- making after trying it for the first time, tinkering and experiment- ing in his basement with differ- ent methods and recipes until he was happy with the mead he was producing. Family, friends, and neighbors loved it too, so Dan and Deb decided to take a leap of faith and go into business. "We figured if we didn't try it now, we'd never try it," Deb says. The couple was inspired in their business venture not only by the delicious mead they were produc- Opposite, Dan pours a glass of the sweet elixir; Above left, The mead is fermented in stainless-steel casks; Above right, The final step in the process is to bottle and seal the mead. ing but also by the tremendous, explosive success of another local meadery, Moonlight Meadery in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Since starting production in 2010, Moonlight Meadery has be- come one of the country's premier meaderies, selling its products in 33 states and Australia, with Mon- golia and the United Kingdom soon to come. It's also a great example of mead's endless possibilities, producing more than 70 different varieties ranging from traditional meads to ones infused with cof- fee or rhubarb to "Kurt's Apple Pie," made from local apple cider, Madagascar-Bourbon vanilla, and Vietnamese cinnamon. "It was a flavor like none other that I had had before," Michael Fairbrother, Moonlight Meadery's founder and mead maker, says of the first time he tried mead. "It has all the richness of honey…it's so versa- tile, it's unlike any other fermented beverage that's in the marketplace." Like Dan Clapp, Fairbrother was a home brewer when he started making mead. After winning sev- eral top prizes at mead-making competitions, he went into business.

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