Today we’d like to introduce you to Noah Stein.
Hi Noah, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
About a decade ago, Skot and I happened to be trying our hands at homebrewing mead separately. We shared bottles, shared stories, then put it down. About a year later we decided that it was fun, and should give it another go. Together and bigger this time. Then we did more, then more. We started having tasting parties among our friends.
We caught wind of a homebrew competition (Massachusetts Renaissance Festival) that was being judged by proper mead judges who know the games but don’t know us. We figured we’d get some great feedback about why our mead was so terrible and what we could do to fix it. So we sent in a few bottles.
Covid-19 hit, and both of us ended leaving our jobs. Later that week the results came in, and apparently we swept it. Our Traditional Mead won Best Traditional and Best In Show, our Bee Sting (Jalapeno Lime Mead) won Best Experimental and 3rd Place overall. So we looked at each other and realized we were doing something right, and went in search of a closet with a floor drain to try our hands at making this thing legit.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We’ve had a great deal of bumping up against bottlenecks, hardware, sifting though archaic alcohol laws. It’s been baby steps the whole way, but they’ve always been forward.
One of our biggest issues was in finding a distributor that would give us the time of day. Since we’re classified as wine, we cannot self-distribute like a brewery or distillery can. But mead has never really been a product that flies off the shelf and is quite niche.
After about a year of looking though, we did manage to partner up with Rue38, and they’ve gotten us onto the shelves at a few local liquor stores.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We’re weird and welcoming. People seem to really enjoy hanging out in our taproom.
Our mead is different from the other brands that produce mead in the area. People who are not familiar with mead hear the term “honey wine” and think that that means it is going to be sweet, but we disagree with that notion. In fact, we feel like mead really shines when it is allowed to be nearly fully dry. We’ve heard a lot of “oh, no thanks, I don’t like mead” from people in the past, and we’ve made converts of a lot of them.
Our other large focus is to represent the idea that no single culture has dibs on mead. Literally every place in the world that had honey bees made mead or something mead-like, so we like to cast a wide net to look at what people enjoyed drinking.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Oh man. If Covid didn’t happen, we never would have taken the plunge and tried to start this as a real business.
Pricing:
- $8 for a glass of mead at our taproom
- $25 for a bottle to take home
- $12 for a flight
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bumblingfools.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bumbling_fools_mead/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bumblingfoolsmead
- Other: https://mailchi.mp/766a0c8cb5ad/bumbling-fools-mead
