Here at Starrlight Mead, we have always felt that supporting each other and the industry is what makes all of us better and more likely to succeed. Sometimes, that support and working together leads us outside of the mead industry to collaborate with friends at other businesses.
Ben has been a big fan of collaborations and has done several in the past. He’s worked several times with Thomos Vincent at his previous breweries and now at Hatchet Brewing in Southern Pines to make a braggot, honey with hops or grains. Ben likes to take an established beer style and come up with a honey that goes well with it. “It gives me a chance to make beer, to play in that realm,” Ben says. Of course, if it contains grains, we can’t make it here under our wine license.
We’ve also collaborated with other, non-beer, companies. Many of you have tasted our Honeyed Coffee mead which is a mead with coffee added. We start out the batch of the honey and water and about 3 days into fermentation, add 15 gallons of cold-pressed coffee to a 100-gallon batch. Our first version of this was made with coffee from Aromatic Roasters and our current version has Costa Rican coffee from Vortex Roasters. An amazing surprise to taste wine that tastes like coffee!
“As someone who likes to drink, I like being able to try different flavors and things than I usually do. ”
Another popular collaboration is our Cloer Pyment. Cloer Family Vineyards is down 64 in Apex. They grow the Nobel grapes, press them for their own wine, and we take the leftovers – pulp and skins. We then put the grape “mush” in with the honey and water to flavor and color the mead. If you haven’t tried our Cloer Pyment, you are in for a surprise! The light taste of the Nobel grape, a type of muscadine, combined with the honey is delightful.
“Noble is the most popular red muscadine grape for wine and juice production. The grapes are medium-sized with dark skin and, like most muscadine varieties, have relatively high sugar content. The resulting sweetness yields a rich red wine…. ”
Our latest collaboration is with bmc brewery here at the Plant. They are calling their braggot Starr Bite Braggot and it’s a combination of their stout and our Little Dipper session mead.
“We finally got a collaboration going with Starrlight.... a combination of a malt beverage and mead which we think is the best of both worlds.... a braggot!! We usually have a mead on tap, so on a whim, we mixed a bit of a stout with a bit of Little Dipper Mead. DELICIOUSNESS! Using a stout recipe, we added honey into the brew, fermented it out dry, added some dark cherry juice, and VOILA! Starr Bite Braggot was born.
We've been sitting on this lightly carbonated beauty until the perfect time to release a collaboration with a meadery...... Mead Fest, of course! It's a small batch and we're not going to can it, so if you're interested in a pour of this, mark your calendars! We'll tap it on September 23rd and we’ll pour it until it's gone!”