Producer Spotlight: Golden Coast Mead
The Ancient Tradition of Mead
Although it has been around for centuries, a new and sustainable drink is becoming more and more popular. Mead is an alcoholic drink made from honey. Frank Golbeck from Golden Coast Mead is working to expand the market for this ancient beverage. Golden Coast Mead has spent the last 10 years perfecting their own take on mead for a product that is sustainable as well as delicious.
Mead, the first alcohol in history, is a type of wine made from honey and water. Mead was the first alcoholic drink of the Egyptians and even from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. It has similar effects as regular alcohol, but with many more benefits.
”We have taken a traditional beverage and have spent the last ten years and over 10,000 hours, evolving our own niche product,” Golbeck explains. Mead has a strong taste of honey, and when fermented long enough it tastes similar to white wine. “We make meads that are an epic balance of tart and sweet, complex and quaffable. Drinking our mead is a delightful experience–full-flavored, lots of complexity. They leave your body feeling different than most other alcoholic beverages,” explains Golbeck.
The Origin of Golden Coast Mead
A little over ten years ago, Frank Golbeck, along with friends Joe Colangelo and Praveen Ramineni, founded Golden Coast Mead. Golbeck’s grandfather gave him his last bottle of homemade mead from the attic. They took it and began making small batches of mead for their friends. The original fermentations led to fun gatherings and spontaneous dance parties. Soon the men launched their own kind of mead, Orange Blossom Mirth. They released one of their original batches in June of 2011 after hiking the first three bottles from Valley Center to be plunged into the Pacific Ocean. People loved the taste and the buzz. Today, a decade later, Golbeck and Golden Coast Mead are flourishing.
Health Benefits of Mead
Because it comes from pure honey, which is a type of traditional medicine, mead has numerous health benefits. Honey has enzymes, vitamins, and minerals and may help with everything from sore throats and digestive disorders. It helps with skin problems and hay fever. Honey is the only food that contains “pinocembrin”, an antioxidant that may improve brain functioning. Golden Coast Mead products are all gluten-free, preservative-free, and synthetic or added sugar-free as well!
Mead & the Environment
On top of the health benefits, mead is also good for the environment. Wait. Drinking mead is good for us and the environment? Sign us up!
Golbeck explains, “By purchasing mead and building the mead market, mead drinkers are helping increase biodiversity, increase soil health, sequester carbon, sequester groundwater, and support beekeepers. Mead is the only alcohol that doesn’t require you to rip up nature to produce the sugar source at the base of the alcohol.” The mead making process actually leads to a more healthy and sustainable planet and way of life. So go ahead and drink up!
Mead: The Buzz of the Future
This is only the beginning for Golden Coast Mead. Golbeck and his company are hopeful that the mead industry will increase the use of sustainable agriculture and improve individuals’ health. “With mead, we can help restore personal, communal, and pollinator health.”
Golden Coast Mead believes that by building the mead industry, they can create a demand for high quality, ecologically responsible honey. This demand will help incentivize a middle class of professional beekeepers. They have some big plans in the works. They will begin sourcing organic honey from Brazil and plan to create an organic “Honey Bee Sanctuary” in California.
Golden Coast makes hopped meads, coffee meads, strawberry ghost pepper meads, sherry meads, banana bread pocket meads, and more. Their plan is to continue making even more creative mead flavors.
Discover their current selection of mead.
