A new beverage is brewing in the rolling hills east of Springfield, and it is not beer.
Rogersville-based Hellbender Meadery LLC is developing a line of carbonated mead to market when it opens later this fall, according to co-owner Caitlyn Franklin.
Hellbender’s mead, which is wine fermented with honey instead of grapes, will be made with a mixture of Pennsylvania honey and local fruits and spices. The 24-year-old Franklin said the company has developed four carbonated mead varieties that will be packaged into 16-ounce cans. It also plans to develop a hard cider, said Todd Rock, the company’s head mead maker and a longtime home brewer.
Negotiations are ongoing with distributors Heartland of America Beverage Co. and Wil Fischer Distributing Co., Rock said.
To start, Franklin said the company plans to produce mead in flavors of orange blossom, mixed berry, green tea mint and ginger. The carbonated beverages will contain 6.5 percent alcohol by volume.
“What we’ve found is that mead tends to be either super sweet or super dry,” Franklin said. “It’s kind of like a wine, and kind of like a beer, but is classified as a wine.”
The business, a partnership between Franklin and her brother Brandon Franklin, is operating on a 60-acre family-owned cattle farm at 3820 State Hwy. KK in Rogersville. The startup meadery is named after the Ozark Hellbender salamander, an aquatic species native to this area of the country, according to
HellbenderMeadery.com.
Bolivar-based general contractor Bermel Corp. has nearly completed construction of an 8,000-square-foot production facility, minus some trim and infill, Caitlyn Franklin said. Hellbender purchased seven tanks for production from stainless steel manufacturer Custom Metalcraft Inc. – three 750-gallon tanks and four 350-gallon tanks, according to Franklin. With investments approaching $1 million, she said Arvest Bank and U.S. Bank have approved loans for the project. Hellbender Comptroller Trasi McCart said financial support from an unnamed private investor and the Franklin family also is helping to make the business a reality.
Franklin said the company, which has received county, state and federal licenses to produce mead and is working on test batches and completing labels for cans, currently employs four.
Hellbender named Rock, who worked previously as the packaging manager at Mother’s Brewing Co., its head mead maker in January. Rock earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Alaska before completing the master brewers program at the University of California-Davis.
After word got to Rock that Hellbender was looking for an experienced mead maker, he inquired about the position. He already was experienced in home brewing and worked with a top mead producer in Alaska, Celestial Meads.
“Working in packaging is not necessarily what I was trained to do. I like working in production, and I like designing and working in beverages,” Rock said.
He said the owner of Celestial Meads had a side project with a carbonated mead that Rock thought the owner could mass produce, but due to costs and production issues, it never materialized. When Rock understood the vision of the Franklins, he realized he could manufacture products similar to the ones he fell in love with up north.
“It is a rare product within a rare product, but I knew exactly what they were talking about,” Rock said.
Walnut Grove-based 7C’s Winery has been producing mead since 2009, and this year co-owner Dwight Crevelt expects to purchase more than 1,000 pounds of honey to produce its line of eight meads. He said the winery should produce 2,500 gallons of the traditional wine-style mead.
“They are making mead in a beer style, so it is different,” Crevelt said of Hellbender’s plans. “I wouldn’t call it competition. More of us out there doing it brings a bigger awareness to us all.”
A local interest in mead helped to double attendance at 7C’s 2011 Mead Fest Renaissance Festival, which attracted 600 people, and the third-annual event last month drew 700 guests.
At Hellbender Meadery, Franklin and team remodeled an old milk barn, which she expects to use as a tasting room and a space to store traditionally aged mead in barrels.
Franklin, who has worked eight years in administrative support for local and national companies she declined to name and had a brief stint working for Arc of the Ozarks, said the meadery is planning to produce 2,500 barrels of mead through January, and she aims to produce more than 10,000 barrels in its first full year.
“I know it is ambitious, but what’s the point if you’re not ambitious?” Franklin said.
