MAUMEE, Ohio — Four Fires Meadery is in Maumee off Dussel Drive. Its location is somewhat hidden, but its drinks are not.
Mead is considered a honey wine and it's one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages, dating back to ancient Greece.
"It's a wine that's fermented at least 51% from honey," Chris Clarke, a partner at Four Fires Meadery, said. "We do a lot of different variations of those degrees of percentages, but all the ones we have here are fermented 100% from honey and then aged on fruits and spices."
Clarke said he and his partners have been mead enthusiasts and home brewers for years. He said they all loved drinking mead and that's how they got started with the business in 2018.
"We said what every silly home-brewer says which is, 'we can do this better and cheaper from home,'" Clarke said. "And here we are today."
Mead can be mixed with anything. Clarke said sometimes the ingredients and flavors are intentional and other times, they mix things and see how it goes.
"I feel like a lot of them have come out that way," he said. "There have been times when we've had not enough of any one ingredient to do anything and one of us is just back there playing potions in the kitchen sink, and then it turns out to sometimes be some of our more popular ones."
He said occasionally those flavors have turned around and become larger batches.
For him, it's hard to choose a favorite when there are so many good, rotating flavors.
"That's difficult for me," he said. "My favorite fruits to drink and eat are blueberries. I gravitate toward the blueberry dichro. It's our fermented honey base, nice and clean. Aged on fresh jammy blueberries and then vanilla beans."
He says it leans toward the dessert flavor drink and that you can taste the hints of vanilla in there.
It's one of the sweeter meads they have on tap.
Four Fires features two main styles of mead; stills and hydromels.
Clarke says still are generally above 10% alcohol content and not carbonated.
Hydromels are what he calls, a session version of mead. They are lightly carbonated and have a lower alcohol content.
"Mass-a-peel" is another flavor they have, he says it's one of their flagship flavors.
"It's the same hydromel base that goes blackberries, generally we get those from Oregon. Then there's Valencia orange peel. This doesn't contain any juice so we get all the orange flavor exclusively from the zest," he said.
Sticking with the orange flavors, Blood Orange is another fan favorite according to Clarke.
"That's similar to the blueberry dichro. So it's done with blood orange juice and zest with vanilla beans too. It's very creamsicle-like," he said.
Clarke says blood orange and mass-a-peel are available year-round, along with a handful of other flavors.
Their most popular flavor is "Slappin da Basil" which features blueberries and locally grown basil from Balance Farms.
Four Fires is open Wed.-Fri., 4-10 p.m. and Sat., 2-10 p.m.
It's only a taproom but Clarke says they try to get food trucks there on Friday and Saturday.
You are also welcome to bring food or have it delivered.
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