Today we’d like to introduce you to Suzanna and Billy Beltz.
Suzanna and Billy, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We are a husband and wife team that share the same dream of celebrating life through mead. When we decided to open a meadery (about 3 years ago), we were working together at American Council on Exercise, a San Diego based nonprofit. Billy was heading up the marketing department there and I was business development, and although we enjoyed our jobs we enjoyed our side hustle of making mead much more. With our combined experience of business/marketing/public relations we believed we were uniquely qualified to open our own business and make mead professionally. Billy has been home brewing for many years and is a national and international award-winning mead maker.
In just the last two years, he has won 28 medals for his meads, making him the most awarded mead maker in San Diego during that time. Our research on mead making techniques has been published in Zymurgy Magazine and American Mead Maker, the official journal of the American Mead Maker Association. After years of research, planning and determination we have finally opened our business of making modern style, delicious meads and sharing it with the masses. Lost Cause Meadery is located in Mira Mesa, off of Miralani drive.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The last year, in particular, has been the most tiring (and I know it’s just the beginning!) as we have been preparing to open our business. We are learning a ton everyday, from how to run a tasting room, making mead on a large scale using unfamiliar equipment and how to best communicate with one another as we work through this. We have the title of husband wife but we are so much more than that too. We are best friends and now business partners which can be complicated, but if we have learned anything so far communication is key.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Lost Cause Meadery – what should we know?
We are a San Diego meadery committed to crafting ridiculously good mead. We focus on crafting unusually complex and flavorful carbonated meads that showcase local honey varietals and are unlike any other meads out there. We are unique in that we use a lot of dark honeys; many of our meads are made with local buckwheat honey, which is a rich and intense honey with notes of caramel, toffee, and bourbon. Honestly, we think our meads are the best expression of what a mead can be: really complex and packed with layers of flavor and aroma, yet at the same time sparkling and light enough to be enjoyed by everyone here in San Diego. We’ve developed a unique mead making technique that allows us to control a slow, steady and healthy fermentation and keep the extremely delicate honey flavors and aromas intact, which is not easy to do. Our meads range in sweetness from off-dry to semi-sweet (everything we make is still drier than most “traditional” meads that are often cloyingly sweet and more like desert wines).
Our current lineup of meads are:
I. Excellent Program’: made with local orange blossom honey, hops, and grains of paradise (11% abv, off-dry)
II. Condor Attack: made with local orange blossom honey, grapefruit and hibiscus (11% abv, off-dry)
III. Buck it All: traditional mead made with local buckwheat blossom honey and aged on oak (11% abv, semi-sweet)
IV. Zydeco Buzz: made with local buckwheat blossom honey, coffee, chicory, and bourbon vanilla beans (11% abv, semi-sweet)
V. Consensual Chocolate: made with local buckwheat blossom honey and cacao nibs, aged on oak (11% abv, semi-sweet)
VI. FresYes: made with local buckwheat blossom honey, Fresno peppers, Chipotle peppers, and Ancho peppers (11% abv, semi-sweet)
Pricing:
- We offer a tasty sampler flight of 6 unique meads for just $12
- A full 6oz pour of mead is $7
- A 2oz taster is just $2.50
Contact Info:
- Address: 8665 Miralani DRive #100, San Diego, CA92126
- Website: www.lostcausemead.com
- Email: suzanna@lostcausemead.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lostcausemeadery/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lostcausemeadery/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lost-cause-meadery-san-diego-2
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