About Us

Mead Magic (TM) is a product of HoneyApple Hill, a family-run farm business.  We have a modest apiary of nine hives located in the Finger Lakes region, and produce honey as well as log-grown shiitake mushrooms. Our beekeeping philosophy relies on Integrated Pest Management practices: when possible, we physically manage the bees to keep them healthy, and turn to organic remedies if we must.

We’ve been making homebrew mead for over a decade, so we started keeping bees to have the honey to support our habit. (Five gallons of mead requires about 18 pounds of honey.) We’ve made a lot of mead over the years, and we’ve sampled a lot of commercial meads. Most of the time we find the homebrews much tastier!

Mead Magic evolved from our love of mead. We realized that there are very few complete mead making kits out there, and even fewer that provide an easy entree into the craft. Rather than offer up an overwhelming (and very expensive) five-gallon setup, we created a modest, one-gallon kit that lets you sample the process before committing time, space and money to a hobby you know nothing about.

Mead Magic kits are hand-assembled as they are ordered, and packaged with recyclable or reusable packing materials. We’ve been using our beginning mead recipe for years, and we’ve tested each of our speciality booster pack recipes in our own home brews before making them available to you.

2 thoughts on “About Us

  1. Hi Shelley,

    If I would have seen your kickstarter pitch I would have kicked in. Is it still up? Maybe I still can kick in. I’m happy about your new business.

    Will you advise me about yeast nutrient for mead? What do you use? Is there anything to worry about regarding toxics in the mead? Is there a kitchen cupboard substitute for yeast nutrient?

    David

    1. Thanks! The campaign is done, but I appreciate the words of support!

      The nutrient I use is Fermax – the same nutrient as Ithaca Coffee uses in their winemaking section, and what I’ve used since I started making mead. It contains Diammonium phosphate, dipotassium phosphate, tastone, and magnesium sulfate. You can substitute raisins and orange peels for the nutrient, but you’ll have to research the ratios and they will both probably add some flavor to your mead (not a bad thing, but something to be mindful of). We did this with our first mead over a decade ago, but I’ve since lost the notes on that batch so I don’t know what we used or how it tasted!

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