Come on Keith, tell us what you REALLY think. 
I could believe it. Mead is more expensive to produce due to the cost of honey (although the process takes considerably less effort than brewing beer), but then again, you could sell it for more. And if you make a very high quality, well aged one, you can sell it for considerably more.
A good mead is as good as the finest of fine wines. But the very best meads do definitely benefit from a long aging.
I’m a very recent mead enthusiast. Schlafly Brewing in St Louis made a sparkling mead for their taproom. AFAIK it was just a one-off thing, but it was really, really good. Mead doesn’t have to taste like cheap white wine, but it usually does. The mead world just needs some beer brewers to show them how it’s done. That’s part of why I think selling a good mead might be a relatively untapped market, whereas good beer is fairly abundant and doesn’t sell for much.
The biggest downside would be having to have a lot more cellaring space for all the stuff while it ages.
I certainly don’t hate wine but I only drink it maybe 3 or 4 times a year. I certainly don’t get jazzed up about drinking it. I can honestly say I’ve never had a mead I really liked, but I understand not all people have the same taste as me. But brewing jazzes me up. I love drinking beer and I love making beer. If I could not make a brewery work and had to open a meadery/winery up it would be like a consolation prize. I’d personally rather go back to graphic design the to have to dick around with something I don’t truly love. Obviously that’s just me talking. But dig deep down because it may be you too.
Hmmm.
There’s good and bad mead. From what I’ve learned it is at least if not more as complicated to make excellent mead as beer.
One of the things I really enjoy about homebrewing is being able to brew to taste, not to style, and being able to try a lot of different flavor combinations. I think the attitude with craft beer is changing, and I’m seeing a lot more small batch, one-off brews from breweries, but the bread and butter is the “regular” lineup. I think beer drinkers in general expect a lot of consistency from one batch to the next. Wine drinkers seem to enjoy the fact that different vintages taste different.
Ideally I’d like to have a brewery that only makes small-batch, one-off beers and gets like $40 a bottle for them, but ideally I’d have a draft system built into my rocket car. I’m not holding my breath for either one.
I think the hardest part of opening a meadery is getting people to try the product. Most people have no idea what it is and fewer people like it enough to actually buy it.
Maybe there’s good and bad for you, but I just don’t really like it. It’s the honey flavor I don’t care for. I love honey on biscuits but I don’t like to drink it.
I hear you. It is a good chunk of cash. Still, I would bet he has saved as much as he spent on the course in being able to set the brewery up right the first time. There is so much he did that he said he would not have thought to do had he not taken the course. He was running a law practice while he was taking the course by correspondence, mostly late at night after putting his three kids to bed. I don’t know how he did it all.
Huh, I didn’t look closely enough at their website. I didn’t know they did correspondence courses. I thought I was going to have to go to VT or CA for the course.
I’m REAL cheap! 
You can make good mead that is ready to drink in excellent condition in less time than it take to make a lager. It doesn’t have to take a long time. Ken Schramm has shown the world how. He started making homebrewed beer, became fascinated with mead, and wrote the book on mead making. So yeah, he showed the world how its done.
Beer brewers really get the short end of the stick in this country. I’m sure this varies by state, but in Missouri it seems way easier to get a winery up and running than a brewery.
State Winery license fee- $5/500gal - includes being able to make, distribute, and sell retail by the bottle and by the glass on the same premises.
State microbrewery license - $5/100bbl - may not distribute, or own a distribution company.
State 22%-and-under alcohol manufacturer license - $200/year, requires you to buy separate wholesale license for $200 to distribute, additional $300 retail-by-drink license if you want a tasting room.
The winery license allows you to ship direct-to-consumer. For any type of malt beverage, you have to go through the 3-tier system. Even if you go the route where you’re technically a “manufacturer” and own your own distro company, you still have to pay the taxes for selling it to yourself. Wineries also have more lax regulation, more like an agricultural product, than breweries, which are more like a food manufacturer. As far as I’ve found, wineries are not regulated by the FDA, while malt breweries are.
Hopfen: I actually ordered Ken’s book. It should get here tomorrow. I can’t wait to read it.
Ken had a Zymurgy article published after the book where he talks about staged nutrient additions.
Steve Piatz covers making mead under the meadmakers Panel. Find and open it, no direct link.
http://www.ahaconference.org/past-presentations/2010-presentations/
Some of the staged nutrient additions are in the recipes from Ken’s talk at the 2011 NHC. Direct link here.
but most of those people stop at bars and not restaurants
He spent a weak at Harpoon in VT as an internship after the course was complete, but did the rest of it in his living room in Texas. Just got off the phone with him. He said the cost of the course has paid for itself 10X in what he probably saved in setting up his brewery with the knowledge gained from it versus what he knew before. That may be a mathematical exaggeration, but I get his point.
Here’s a link to the “distance education” American Brewer’s Guild course. You need to be really focused to take this on by correspondence, but he certainly does vouch for its value.
As a Pro Brewer…You would be very wise to hire a brewer who has experience with startups…There are brewing consultants out there for this particular purpose…but you said you would be buying a Brewpub, so that tells me it is already up and operating…if that is the case, keep the current brewer on staff, invest in a quality 10 gallon pilot system ($3k), and have him/her adjust the beers to what your vision is until you are up to the task. Don’t then drop the brewer who helped you get to where you are…Keep them and pay them well…it takes more than one person to run a brewhouse, even in a brewpub.
My story, I started as a homebrewer, never went to Siebel (its intended for larger breweries, with more technical equipment, not brewpubs), got into the industry by volunteering at a 10 bbl startup on the West Coast, moved to the East Coast and now work for one of the top 10 CRAFT (under 50k bbls) breweries in the US.
Cheers and Goodluck!
Dont let the downers get to you, if you have a vision, believe and pursue!
About the food…I interviewed at Portsmouth Brewing Co. and they run a 7 BBL system and have 15 BBL FVs. What the Brewmaster, Todd Mott told me was that they make about $8k per tank. Think about it man, it might cost ~ $800 (on the very high end) to brew 2 x 7 BBL batches Some people said you will make all your money off food…bogus and very wrong…you’ll make about .30 cents a plate off food…but beer wise, if your charging about $4-$5 per pint and it cost $1 to produce that pint, your making 80% profit…and thats being conservative. I worked at a 10 bbl Production brewery with a tasting room and we made about 90% profit margin on pint sales.
Just do the math man…
And look up RePublic Brewing - they were in the planning stages, never got their funding together, but shared a lot of great resources with folks…
I don’t think anyone said that. Several people have pointed out that a brewpub will do most of its sales as food, though.
The rule of thumb for casual dining restaurants is an 80-85% margin. About the same as draft beer.
I saw one comment on the first page that said “you will make most of you $$ of food”, (didnt read the 5 pgs in between) so I generalized…but I agree that food is an entirely different biz then just selling beer.
As a craft beer enthusiast though, I could care less about the food as long as the beer is good and you have some decent apps. I like having a few beers and a few different appetizers on a Friday or Saturday…Never have I have gone to a brewpub because of their food. For me, its food second. Its all about your money maker, the beer man!