Sustainability

We, at Starrlight Mead, are striving to do things in a way that is gentle to the earth and as close to home, as possible.

Honey

Just in case you missed it on our home page, we use all local North Carolina wildflower honey that we buy directly from the beekeepers! We love meeting with the beekeepers, hearing their stories, and tasting the delicious honey!!

We strive to mix honeys in each batch to give you a more complex and interesting flavor of mead. We use wildflower honey (which means the bees haven't gone to one specific species of flower) because of its variety. We also get honey from the East, Center and West of the state, because the honey from each area tastes just a little bit different.

Bottles

We are required by NC law to recycle all of the empty bottles that we use at the bar for tasting purposes. We are happy to say that we haven't recycled ANY bottles yet, because they have all gone to new homes!

We work with the local artists to provide our lovely blue glass bottles for free to anyone who would like to come pick them up. Our bottles have been made into numerous bottle trees, retaining walls, glasses and pitchers, and decorative bottle walls. Most reciently, we have heard about people burying them neck down in the ground to line a path (apparently, this was done at the NC State Fair).

If you make something pretty with our bottles, we would love to put up pictures of your projects!

Corks

We have partnered with Terracycle to recycle not only our synthetic corks, but natural corks that customers have brought in. These corks are then sent in and used to make other items, like wine cork corkboards. You can drop your corks, of any type, off here at the meadery, or at Chatham Marketplace!

Paying it Forward

We have been so lucky and blessed to have had experienced professionals help us as we strived to open our meadery. In that spirit, we are excited to help out the next generation of home mead makers and possible meadery owners as much as we can!

Beekeeping Associations
We have presented mead making demonstrations to beekeeper's associations across the state in the last couple of years.

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association - Sustainable Agriculture Conference
Ben presented a workshop on "Making Fabulous Mead" that was well received by over 40 attendees at the 2011 conference.

Rockingham Community College - Continuing Education Classes
We are teaching two classes in the Spring of 2012: "Beginning Mead Making" which will focus on mead styles, sampling meads and home mead making, and "Starting Your Own Winery, Brewery, or Meadery" which will present some of the considerations to opening your own place, based on our experience with Starrlight Mead.