Melchemy Craft Mead

USWY01

An Alchemy of Honey & Place. Small batch, barrel-aged meads from the Columbia River Gorge.

Melchemy is a small-batch, barrel-aged craft meadery located near the town of Carson, on the northern side of the Columbia River, central Cascade Mountains—otherwise known as Skamania County, Washington. We are grateful to call this wondrous region home. Our mead is crafted with a reverence for this place, of cultures past and present, and with a promise to the future. In addition to the highest quality, mostly wildcrafted ingredients, we strive to offer a true taste of place in each bottle.

The process of craft is the intimate connection to all aspects of a thing’s creation. Being a craftsperson means not producing a product, but rather taking responsibility for maintaining a tradition, art, or skill that reflects a personal touch and a connection to one’s community and the land upon which the inspiration and materials originate. Outsourcing transforms creative endeavors into productions, ultimately pushing the process exclusively towards efficiency and profit concerns, often at the expense of the quality and sustainability of a resulting product. Protecting the integrity and longevity of source material is integral to a stewardship process inherent in a craft.

Melchemy meads result from an intimate connection to every part of the creative process, from the gathering and growing of ingredients, to the nurturing of the fermentation process, to bottling, corking, labeling, right down to making sure that our meads end up on the shelves of local retailers who care about their customers and communities.

Country USA
Location Carson, WA

Production

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History

Melchemy Craft Mead originates from a hobby and passion born of beekeeping, herbalism, permaculture, and community. Mazer (maker of mead) Jeffree worked in the beekeeping industry and was a hobbyist beekeeper in Portland, Cascadia for several years. During this time he was also learning about medicinal and healing uses of herbs, deepening his understanding of permaculture principles, and building community with his housemates and neighbors. All of this created a context within which he expanded a general interest in brewing and fermentation to a full-on basement operation of mead and herb experiments. Inspired by the medicinal herb infused meads of centuries and millennia ago Europe and Africa, Jeffree sought to transfer some of those approaches to the use of local and native herbs and berries of the Cascadia Bioregion. Living at the urban homestead of Tabor Tilth, he was able to participate in the cultivation and harvest of many experimental ingredients. For better or worse, Jeffree’s growing community became the taste testers and recipients of many of those early experiments. After an over two year long process of getting to market, Melchemy has set its sights on phase two. In addition to a working commitment to source ingredients in a more local and conscious way, refining fermentation practices, and fostering collaborations with the craftspeople of their region, the meadery is working toward transformation from a business partnership into a worker-owned cooperative. Melchemy is poised to donate a percentage of its profits to place-based education, ecological restoration, and honeybee awareness and health, while also seeking certification as a B-Corp, Salmon Safe, Certified Employee Owned, Triple Bottom-line, and Organic company.