As of August 2017 I became a proud graduate out of the Industrial design program at Wentworth Institute of Technology. What is that? Is that where you design huge machines for factories? Not really but you’re sorta close. The “industrial” part comes from the industrial revolution back when things started getting mass produced. Another term for it could be product design or human centered design or story telling or many many other things depending on what you personally would want to do with it. We help and enrich other’s lives through the objects and interactions experienced regularly.
Anyways, my story picks up at the beginning of my second to last semester and we start brainstorming ideas on what our thesis could be about. My main contenders were rock climbing, meal-prepping, and mead. While my knowledge point on mead was relatively low at the time, a friend had gotten me started on making my own so my interest was running real hot. Anyways, as the semester pushed on, we weeded out meal-prepping and eventually rock climbing as well.
What does this have to do with mead?
Once I had settled on the topic of mead, My next objective was to figure out what I wanted to do. I started out with the broad goal of helping expand the community, but I needed to narrow it down. First I had to talk to people already in the community and see what they feel about the subject and read between the lines. Which, I gotta say before continuing, contacting the community was amazingly easy. I started off with the mead subreddit and got amazing feedback that helped push me into other directions as well, so thanks for helping me get started! From this I was hoping to find out some of the bigger ideas that brought people into the community already:
Hyper Local
Mead has the ability to utilize all local ingredients, from the honey and the water all the way to the fruits and other spices you may want to add later. This can also lead to sense of community and local pride if focused on deeply enough.
Benefits the Ecosystem
Honey Bees account for 80% of the world’s pollination and have now become an endangered species. Drinking and making mead promotes honey sales and apiaries which can help the bees!
Gluten Free
The main ingredients of mead contain 0 wheat, barely or rye therefore lack gluten and allows it to be a beverage that can be enjoyed by all. Speaking off…
There’s One for Everyone
With as large a variety as mead has, varying from dry to sweet, still to sparkling and carbonated, there is a mead out there for all taste profiles.
Who else did I talk to?
I then contacted people who I considered to have a professional stake in mead to conduct interviews and learn about their feelings. I reached out to that old boss of mine who got me into mead before anyone else. Not only was he an interesting guy with a lot of good insights, he also helped me get into contact with all the other people I got to talk to. Here’s some highlights of who I talked to and some key info I picked up from them:
So, after talking to some experts and learning about the current mead climate I wanted to keep a few important take-aways in mind:
- Mead growth is tied to food trends and the craft beverage industry
- Many new consumers are actively looking for something different
- New consumers need to understand what mead is
Next post we’ll dive deeper into what I did with this info!
Special thanks for this post goes to:
Paul Reiss
If you too want to contribute to the Meadist/Mead maker/Mead Drinker community – get in touch on the contribute page.
