Kansas City is no stranger to local craft beer or locally produced wine, yet until now there have not been any local commercial producers dedicated to the world’s oldest boozy beverage: mead. Meadmakers and business partners Daniel Bauer, John Zumalt and Sam Suddarth plan to change that as they prepare to open Kaw Point Meadery in Kansas City, Kansas, within the next year. With a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign now behind them, they are one step closer.
CEO and head meadmaker Daniel Bauer first became interested in beekeeping and honey as a child following a trip to Washington state, where a relative showed the young Bauer his beehives and taught him about what it's like to care for bees. Bauer’s interest in mead specifically then came into focus during his time at Oregon State University (he studied botany, chemistry and horticulture) during conversations with a friend who was involved in the university’s fermentation program. He began making his own mead in 2012 while still in Oregon, before moving back to Kansas City in 2013. He has actively been making mead with his friends Zumalt and Suddarth since, and the three have subsequently become business partners. Bauer and his team currently make their mead in a basement.
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Bauer hopes to permanently locate Kaw Point Meadery in Rosedale, perhaps along Southwest Boulevard, if an appropriate space can be found. He’s also considering the West Bottoms and Strawberry Hill as possibilities. Current plans include a production space, a tasting room with dedicated areas for mead as well as honey tasting, and an educational space that will inform and educate guests about bees and the process of making mead.
At Kaw Point Meadery, Bauer explains, making mead is almost a fusion of brewing and winemaking, depending on the variety of mead. Mead is conventionally known as a mixture of fermented honey, yeast and water, but Bauer notes that the process involved with modern mead is much more complex, and the resulting flavors are as varied as the meadmaker’s imagination.
“The flavor of a mead has so many contributing factors,” he explains. “Let's look at a traditional mead – honey, water, yeast – first. There are three main factors. The proportion of honey you're dissolving into solution pre-fermentation will directly impact its final alcohol content and residual sugar; the type of honey you've chosen will have distinct characteristics both before and post-fermentation; and the yeast you've chosen to perform the fermentation has profound character contributions as well. That's just for a traditional mead… you can make any number of additions to that base, and the colors for your canvas are limitless. Mead can truly be whatever you'd like it to be, if you can figure it out.”
Bauer explains that the majority of local honey he plans to use has a clover, alfalfa or wildflower flavor profile – the most common nectar sources utilized by our bees. He also plans to use honeys sourced from around the world to create mono-floral meads (using honeys that are derived from one principal nectar source) as well as meads made with a blend of different honey varieties.
The team at Kaw Point Meadery has been at work developing two lines of mead: sessions and seasonals. The sessions, which will be available on draft year round as well as in cans, have a relatively low ABV (around 5 to 6 percent) and come in a range of local varieties: elderflower, flowers and bark, clover, rose and hopped. The meadery’s seasonal varieties will be made using a range of honeys and additional ingredients like fruit, and have an ABV around 14 percent – closer to most wines. The varieties that Bauer and his team have developed thus far for Kaw Point Meadery include aronia and elderberry, Peach Bourbon Tarnation, Barrel-Aged Caramel Cyser and Meadowfoam Mocha.
In addition to finding a location for their new enterprise, Bauer and his team will spend the coming months solidifying their business plan – all while continuing to experiment with techniques and flavors to create the best mead possible. A long-term experiment that Bauer is particularly excited about has to do with a variety more associated with beer than mead.
“I've begun culturing yeast and bacteria from local indigenous fruit, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, and Kansas wheat fields in order to start our very own sour/funk program,” he says. A sour mead sounds like a contradiction – yet if anyone can figure it out, Bauer, with his education and passion for the product, certainly can.
Kaw Point Meadery, kawpointmeadery.com