Eight Hooves Meadery

10/28/2025

High everyone! My name is Morgan and my husband is Robby, and we are Eight Hooves Meadery! We are looking forward to serving our local community in New Bern with fantastic meads, wines, and several other surprises. Like and follow to keep up with our updates, as their will be plenty more to share in the future.

08/13/2024

Been a busy bee today! Started the Meadowfoam traditional, can't wait to taste the marshmallowy goodness, and something a little different.

A tea based mead made out of butterfly pea flower tea mix, making it a gorgeous purple color, appropriately named Fea Mead, for its mystical properties!

And finally, a hopped blueberry meadjito! A session mead consisting of wildflower honey, fresh homegrown mint, and some local blueberries, topped off with some dry hops and lightly carbonated. Defenitly makes these summer days cool and refreshing!

03/21/2024

The North Carolina Mead and Cider Competition seeks to promote awareness of state commercial producers.

03/15/2024

We won Best In Show for the hobbyist entry with our Peary Spicy mead!

Results have been calculated and audited! The 2024 North Carolina Mead & Cider Comp announces our Best-in-Show winners! 🏆

Our overall Best-in-Show and top-scoring mead with 93 points is the Sweetheart Mead from
World's Edge Meadery in Hendersonville. 🥇🥇

Our Best-in-Show Cider is Susie's Strawberry Cider with 90 points from Dingo Dog Brewing Company in Carrboro.

Our Best-in-Show Hobbyist entry is Peary Spicy Mead with 90 points from Eight Hooves Meadery/ Morgan Leach Andersen!

Congratulations to our Best-in-Show award winners! 👏

03/11/2024

Can't wait to hear the announcements! We entered 3 of our homebrew meads including Peary Spicy, Yuletide, and Cherry Blossom! Will be keeping you posted!

10/08/2023

It'd always crazy to see what yeast do in just one night, and the differences in how all the other yeasts react!

10/08/2023

Doing some mad science!! 🤓🧪🍻

03/17/2022

Found a very interesting honey at a local farm store and brainstorming ideas. Thinking about doing small 1/2 gallon batch and oaking it 🤔😏🍯🥃

02/17/2022

Making something new, and a little . . . magical HINT: Who wants to join me at the Three Broomsticks?

02/16/2022

What are the different types of meads? What can you do to meads to make them unique? Another great question class! Meads can be as unique as your creativity.

I love making this drink because its a fun experiment of creativity. I can use all kinds of different flavors, processes, and quantities, and the final result can be so different with even the tiniest adjustments.

But as far as a generalization, these meads are categorized by there ingredients:

Traditional - do not contain any additional ingredients, just honey, water, and yeast

Melomels - made with any fruit (berries, tree fruits, citruses)

Metheglin - made with spices or botanicals (cinnamon, nutmeg, rosemary, lavender)

Rhodomel - made with flowers or flower teas (rose and hibiscus)

Cyser - made with apples or apple juice

Pyment - made with grapes or grape juice

Bochet - made by cooking or toasting the honey to add a caramelized flavor

Acerglyn - made with maple syrup, usually sweet

Capsicumel - made with chilli peppers or spicy peppers

Black Mead - made with black currants

Braggot - made with malt, hops or grains, or by mixing with beer. More closely resembling a beer, a mead with an identity crisis!

Then you also have meads that are categorized by alcohol content:

Hydromel - also known as a session mead, this is a light, low alcohol content, around 3.5% - 7.5% ABV, they should drink like a light beer.

Standard - contain more alcohol than hydromels, but usually are no more than 14% ABV

Sack - contains the highest amount of alcohol (+14%) they pack alot of flavor and are compared to a full bodied desert wine or even some red wines

Other meads include a Sparkling mead, which are drinks that have been carbonated, and Oaked meads which have been aged or fermented using oak chips, or in an oak barrel.

So there are many different kinds, combinations, and flavors than can be made! There are even some flavors not mentioned in this post and new flavors, ingredients and process combinations are being made everyday by homebrewers like me!

So which flavors or ingredients sound good to you in a mead? Which ones would you be willing to try? You never know what you might like, at least, not until you try it! Let me know your thoughts in the comment below!

02/12/2022

So what exactly is Mead? I get this question alot, and I love answering it every time! Mead is fermented beverage using honey, water, and yeast. Also known as honey wine, it is unlike any wine, beer, or even cider!

Like any alcoholic beverage, mead starts with fermentation. Water is added to honey to dilute the thick liquid, then yeast converts the sugars in the honey to alcohol. Once this primary fermentation is complete, the mead is moved into another fermentation vessel for further clarification.

It sounds simple, but just like wine, mead can be incredibly complex. Honey itself shows a wide range of flavor profiles — just like wine grapes — depending on the type of flower pollen used. The thought of a honey wine may conjure up the idea of sweetness, but mead can be brewed in a range of styles, from dry to semi-sweet to sparkling.