Mead is an alcoholic beverage made primarily from fermenting honey in water. By default, it is usually like a mildly floral white wine. But like beer, mead can have a lot of range. It can be as strong as fortified wine, or as weak as a shandy. It can have fruits and spices in it. Sometimes it is carbonated, sometimes it is served still. Sometimes it is as sweet as honey, and sometimes it is bone-dry. Mead might taste like champagne, or like soda, or like something completely different. The one thing they all have in common is honey. The best way to find out if you would like a mead is to ask the bartender about it, and then try a sip.
A pyment is a mead made with grapes! A cyser is a mead made with apples, a metheglin is a mead made with spices, and a traditional is a mead made with just honey and nothing else! Bochet is mead made with honey that’s been boiled. Melomel is fruit mead, but some fruits have more specific style names, like rubamel for raspberries, bilbemel for blueberries, capiscumel for peppers, etc. Hydromel, or short mead, is a mead that is below 12%. That -mel at the end means honey. Braggot is mead fermented with grain, but we can’t produce that here at Arcane. There are a variety of special style names for meads, but if we use one we’ll try to put it in context for you on the label.
‘Cantrips’ are Arcane session meads- anything 5% or under, we call a cantrip. If you’ve never heard the term, a cantrip is a kind of magic that isn’t limited by the number of times you can cast it per day. These are served in 8 oz pours.
‘Arcana’ are any meads between 5% and 10%, the range we associate with craft beer. This is our primary category of meads. Light enough to drink rather than sip, but strong enough that you should keep close track of how many you have. Like Cantrips, the Arcana are generally served in 8 oz pours.
Major Arcana are meads 11% and up- that which we usually think of as wine. Most will be around 12%, while a few may be much bigger. Major Arcana are meant to be sipped and savored, and are sold by the 5 oz pour.
This is wildly divergent from batch to batch. Some of our recipes take little more than a month to brew. Others need up to a year to fully mature before we share them. Usually, the stronger the recipe, the longer we need to give it to mature. If you’re making full-strength traditional mead, I’d recommend aiming for a full year, but you could crack a bottle after 6 months to check if you’re impatient.
Probably! I love to experiment with different ingredients and flavors, so whatever you’re thinking, the answer is likely yes. Maybe I’ve already brewed with it! Catch me at the bar and ask.
We have small, prepackaged snacks, like crackers and chips, intended as palate cleansers. We do not have a kitchen or any prepared food, but you are welcome to bring outside food into our taproom so long as you are mindful of our other customers.
Usually, no. Some mead, like braggots, may contain some glutinous grain, but none of the ones at Arcane do.
Sometimes. Meads that are sweetened after fermentation often have sulfites to prevent refermentation, especially if it is sold in bottles. Our dry meads generally will not. If it’s a concern ask the bartender; they will know which individual meads contain sulfites.
There are differing schools of thought, but the general consensus is no. We don’t consider any of our honey wines vegan. That being said, we’re open to making some wines without honey! Once we have some vegan wine available we will update this section to draw attention to it. Our wine already is, at least, vegetarian (we do not use isinglass).
Some of it is from New Hampshire. Much of it comes from Florida, because I really like Orange Blossom Honey. But we love to brew with a variety of varietals at Arcane. We’re always looking for affordable sources of local honey, so if you are an apiarist looking to sell 40+ lbs of your honey, reach out to us at info@arcanemead.com and we’ll see if we can reach a price to brew a batch with it!
If your dog is chill, they are welcome in our taproom. We only ask that if your dog does not respond well to other dogs, that you are prepared to calm them or take them for a walk if another dog arrives. There’s a park just down the street!
Kids are allowed under adult supervision, though they cannot sit at our bar due to state laws. We have nonalcoholic soda and water available on request. However, we do have TV screens in our taproom and we cannot promise the content shown will always be appropriate for children.
The TV show? Not yet, no. I’m sure it’s good though. I just never played League of Legends so I’ve been slow getting around to it.
We have 3 or so parking spots adjacent to Arcane, but you can also park on the street along Aleppo, a little up on the sidewalk.