Today we’d like to introduce you to Suzanna Beltz.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My husband (Billy) and I opened a meadery in the Miralani Makers District, a booming craft beverage community nestled in San Diego’s Miramar area. We make complex, slightly carbonated, delicious meads that show case unique honey varietals and a range of flavors. We share our tasting room with Serpentine Cider and the Good Seed Food Co. and are open Wednesday through Sunday starting at noon. We currently have 10 different meads on tap and also offer many take-home bottles. In just the 6 shorts months of being open, we have taken home several awards for our meads, including a silver medal for our “Devilish Grin” mead at the Mazer Cup International, the worlds largest mead competition. We are pretty stoked!
Prior to opening the meadery, Billy and I worked together at American Council on Exercise, a San Diego based non-profit. Billy was heading up the marketing department there and I was working in business development, and although we enjoyed our jobs we enjoyed our side hustle of making mead much more. With our combined experience in business/marketing/public relations, we believed we were uniquely qualified to open our own business and make mead professionally. We had been homebrewing for many years and earned several national and international awards for our meads. In just the last few years, Billy had taken home over 28 medals for our 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.
Has it been a smooth road?
Its always a challenge when you jump into an unfamiliar industry, especially an industry as young and fast-growing as the mead industry. However, I wouldn’t trade the challenges for anything and the one piece of advice for young women thinking of opening a business is to jump right in if you if you feel you can do it and to not allow fear of the unknown hold you back.
We’d love to hear more about Lost Cause Meadery.
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 bold flavors. We are unique in that we use a lot of dark honey; 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.
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, CA 92126 - Website: www.lostcausemead.com
- Phone: 760-840-0428
- Email: suzanna@lostcausemead.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lostcausemeadery/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lostcausemeadery/
Image Credit:
James Tran Photography
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