25 years ago, living in Tewksbury MA, I had just finished a hike in the White Mountains with my first boss after college, Bob, now a life long friend.  He shared with me some homebrewed beer that he had made.  I was struck by how good it was relative to the junk that was readily available at the time.  I had never really had a beer that I liked.  This homebrew was flavorful and interesting and I never knew that beer could be like that.  Even more intriguing to me was that Bob has made it himself.  I told Bob all of these things.  He gave me another one and disappeared after saying he’d be right back.  He returned a few minutes later with a big bin full of his homebrew equipment and said “Here, you’ll probably use it more than I will, it’s yours now.”  I’ve been fermenting ever since, starting with beer, and eventually branching out to other beverages.  I still use some of the same equipment.

In 1999 I was living with housemates in Somerville MA.  We were planning to have a party at our apartment.  My housemate Jon, another life long friend, thought it would be fun to make it a Druid themed party.  We don’t even know why.  Just seemed like a fun idea, without even really being sure what that meant.  Jon thought we should make a batch of mead for the party.  Neither of us had ever had any, but had heard of it.  I let Jon borrow my homebrewing equipment.  I was pretty hands off with the whole process.  We got some local honey, and he mixed it with water and yeast and waited a few weeks.  Then came the day of the party, and the mead was served.  It wasn’t particularly good, but everyone drank it.  It had a rough taste, very strong, alcohol forward, with some background sweetness.  By the next day everyone had their very own negative association with mead.  Terrible hangovers.  We didn’t care to think about mead ever again.  The last remaining bottle was placed on top of the fridge, tucked behind bottles of other things we probably wanted to forget.  And there it sat, unnoticed and unremembered for years.

Five years later we were heading in different directions.  Moving in with girlfriends, later to be wives, buying houses, and generally moving on.  I found that hidden bottle of mead on top of the fridge while cleaning out the old apartment.  I thought we should drink it.  Sort of a moving on ceremony, celebrating the next phase of life.  I poured 4 glasses.  One for Jon and his now wife, and another for me and my now wife.  We hesitantly took our sips…and it was delicious!  It had aged wonderfully.  The harshness that had been there before was gone, replaced by a silky smoothness.  The alcohol notes had disappeared, replaced by notes of floral honey.  The taste was appealing, and refreshing, and I knew then that I needed to know how to make this again.

I spent many years after that making batches of meads.  At first without much science behind it, resolved to wait a year or longer for each batch to see if they had matured nicely.  Eventually I grew tired of the mix and wait strategy and started researching better fermentation science, particularly as it related to mead.  Instead of one big batch a year I would make several smaller batches, changing small things between batches.  Soon I’d have up to 20 different experiments going at a time, each with a single controlled variable like temperature, yeast type, yeast nutrients, honey type, water type, and more.  What was once a multi year wait to get to an enjoyable product evolved into months, even weeks in some cases.

Once I got to that point, where I could reliably make a good mead without waiting years, I began to wonder if this would make a good products.  Could I build a business around this?  And thus Blisspoint Meadery was born!  It’s been about five years since I first had that thought.  Lots of product development, business development, and COVID related delays later, here we are…