Sometimes we report on things that are not strictly beer-related, but are more beer-adjacent. Quarter Celtic shared some news with the Crew and invited us to the brewery at 1100 San Mateo NE to join in a tasting of their latest offering: mead. I asked co-owner/head brewer Brady McKeown just what made him venture into one of the oldest forms of alcoholic beverages. In fact, as their Facebook page shows, they are now “Quarter Celtic Brewpub and Meadery.”

Brady said he wanted to do like other breweries do, and offer a different option for people who don’t necessarily want beer. But, he just was not interested in going the cider or seltzer route. Being a Celtic-themed establishment, it made sense to him to try his hand at mead. Brady reached out to his friend Jeff Giese from Dukes of Ale homebrew club to get ideas and tips and tricks for Quarter Celtic.

Most often, we only think of the base of honey when we think of mead. Like beer, it is possible to produce many different styles of mead, with many flavor components, for a product that ranges from on the drier side to sweet. The ones Jeff brought to try were made with prickly pear juice. There were six different bottles from different years’ batches with varied yeast strains, some oaked and some not, and acids such as lemon juice or citric acid.

Right now, Quarter Celtic has two meads on tap to check out. Gaelic Gold as the name suggests, is a golden, and is their base mead. Although Brady wasn’t sure about keeping the base on tap, I actually quite enjoyed this one for its pure honey flavor and slight carbonation. They also have a boysenberry/blackberry flavored lower ABV one, which Brady referred to as a “session” mead. This was also very drinkable, and very fruity. Brady started offering customers the mead in March and it has done pretty well. His plan to start is to do 5-gallon test batches of different flavors and put them in kegs.

I had not seen Brady in quite a long while, so it was great to chat with him. Thanks Brady and Jeff for the fun hang. And, also, thanks to Brady for the to-go crowler of the berry mead (yup, I guess that’s a thing).

Cheers!

– AmyO