Schramm's Mead

SSBrew - 728
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bwcampbell said:
DIBS
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axeman9182 said:
Hey Naegerbomb, who can I talk to about buying up the rest of that pilot batch with jaclyn raspberries that Ken brought to NHC this year? So good.
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It's gone - and it was homebrew, so you couldn't have legally purchased it anyway. Have you had our commercial 'Raspberry' mead? It is made with mostly Jaclyn and a small percentage of Caroline red raspberries (both from our raspberry supplier Michael Hunt). The NHC mead was basically our Raspberry mead but Ken made it at home.
 
Naegerbomb said:
It's gone - and it was homebrew, so you couldn't have legally purchased it anyway. Have you had our commercial 'Raspberry' mead? It is made with mostly Jaclyn and a small percentage of Caroline red raspberries (both from our raspberry supplier Michael Hunt). The NHC mead was basically our Raspberry mead but Ken made it at home.
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Ah, OK. Yes, I've had your commercial raspberry mead before. Always a favorite. Cheers!
 
FLBeerFan said:
Hot damn. My family lives in Detroit if you ever need a mule back to Houston. Not sure how that all goes down for you, figured I'd offer
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Appreciate it but I have the best damn trustee in the world already.

You should have received a PM or message about a bottle share going down tomorrow. Can you PM me if you haven't already?
 
Beerontwowheels said:
How big was this batch of Apple? Why such a dramatic price increase?

Love your meads, but I feel I'm getting priced out of this club soon.
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We've really learned the true cost of producing this particular mead; in order to keep Ken and our business healthy and alive we have to factor in all the time spent grafting, spraying, pruning, hand harvesting the apples, transporting them to the cider mill, making the mead, fermenting/aging the mead, etc. We used to get Ken's time in the orchard for free; moving forward to the future, I realize that our business can only grow if we pay full-time employees (and pay them well). We are building a plan to take our business from half an acre to 100 acres, and this will require that we treat our current and future employees like more than unpaid interns.

There are also a number of other factors that make this particular mead risky to our business (e.g. it is spontaneously fermented with native yeast) and so we take a number of steps to insure that this mead is delicious but won't compromise our other products. Honestly, we made a mistake pricing the estate cyser at $26. We treated the cider's cost of production as negligible or free (especially compared to quality honey). This isn't the case - and moving forward and growing our business we have to factor in the real costs of these kinds of things. We will make a version of 'Apple' with sourced cider at the $26 price point, because buying cider consisting of 4-5 different commercial cider varieties is relatively cheap, compared to 20+ years of grafting hard-to-find varieties and cultivating them intensively and professionally.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you ever have any other questions or concerns. We value your support greatly.
 
Naegerbomb said:
We've really learned the true cost of producing this particular mead; in order to keep Ken and our business healthy and alive we have to factor in all the time spent grafting, spraying, pruning, hand harvesting the apples, transporting them to the cider mill, making the mead, fermenting/aging the mead, etc. We used to get Ken's time in the orchard for free; moving forward to the future, I realize that our business can only grow if we pay full-time employees (and pay them well). We are building a plan to take our business from half an acre to 100 acres, and this will require that we treat our current and future employees like more than unpaid interns.

There are also a number of other factors that make this particular mead risky to our business (e.g. it is spontaneously fermented with native yeast) and so we take a number of steps to insure that this mead is delicious but won't compromise our other products. Honestly, we made a mistake pricing the estate cyser at $26. We treated the cider's cost of production as negligible or free (especially compared to quality honey). This isn't the case - and moving forward and growing our business we have to factor in the real costs of these kinds of things. We will make a version of 'Apple' with sourced cider at the $26 price point, because buying cider consisting of 4-5 different commercial cider varieties is relatively cheap, compared to 20+ years of grafting hard-to-find varieties and cultivating them intensively and professionally.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you ever have any other questions or concerns. We value your support greatly.
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ISO: job at schramms
 
Naegerbomb said:
We've really learned the true cost of producing this particular mead; in order to keep Ken and our business healthy and alive we have to factor in all the time spent grafting, spraying, pruning, hand harvesting the apples, transporting them to the cider mill, making the mead, fermenting/aging the mead, etc. We used to get Ken's time in the orchard for free; moving forward to the future, I realize that our business can only grow if we pay full-time employees (and pay them well). We are building a plan to take our business from half an acre to 100 acres, and this will require that we treat our current and future employees like more than unpaid interns.

There are also a number of other factors that make this particular mead risky to our business (e.g. it is spontaneously fermented with native yeast) and so we take a number of steps to insure that this mead is delicious but won't compromise our other products. Honestly, we made a mistake pricing the estate cyser at $26. We treated the cider's cost of production as negligible or free (especially compared to quality honey). This isn't the case - and moving forward and growing our business we have to factor in the real costs of these kinds of things. We will make a version of 'Apple' with sourced cider at the $26 price point, because buying cider consisting of 4-5 different commercial cider varieties is relatively cheap, compared to 20+ years of grafting hard-to-find varieties and cultivating them intensively and professionally.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you ever have any other questions or concerns. We value your support greatly.
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Thanks, James. I truly do appreciate the information and thoughtful response. I know a lot of care goes into your products and that's why I'm willing to spend the $60 once. Doesn't mean I don't wish it was still $26 or maybe just a bit more.

Same batch size as last time? Fermented in glass again?
 
Beerontwowheels said:
Thanks, James. I truly do appreciate the information and thoughtful response. I know a lot of care goes into your products and that's why I'm willing to spend the $60 once. Doesn't mean I don't wish it was still $26 or maybe just a bit more.

Same batch size as last time? Fermented in glass again?
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516 bottles total, always fermented on glass 5.25 gallons at a time (this helps with the final blend, since each carboy is unique/spontaneous). Usually we dump 1-2 carboys because of funkitude. This release was a blend of carboys from the 2014 and 2015 Apple crops; the crop in 2014 was too small for a release in 2015. It takes 9-10 months to ferment and clear naturally, so we release them about a year after harvest (usually).
 
Naegerbomb said:
We've really learned the true cost of producing this particular mead; in order to keep Ken and our business healthy and alive we have to factor in all the time spent grafting, spraying, pruning, hand harvesting the apples, transporting them to the cider mill, making the mead, fermenting/aging the mead, etc. We used to get Ken's time in the orchard for free; moving forward to the future, I realize that our business can only grow if we pay full-time employees (and pay them well). We are building a plan to take our business from half an acre to 100 acres, and this will require that we treat our current and future employees like more than unpaid interns.

There are also a number of other factors that make this particular mead risky to our business (e.g. it is spontaneously fermented with native yeast) and so we take a number of steps to insure that this mead is delicious but won't compromise our other products. Honestly, we made a mistake pricing the estate cyser at $26. We treated the cider's cost of production as negligible or free (especially compared to quality honey). This isn't the case - and moving forward and growing our business we have to factor in the real costs of these kinds of things. We will make a version of 'Apple' with sourced cider at the $26 price point, because buying cider consisting of 4-5 different commercial cider varieties is relatively cheap, compared to 20+ years of grafting hard-to-find varieties and cultivating them intensively and professionally.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you ever have any other questions or concerns. We value your support greatly.
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simple economics of supply and demand also say that you guys should be charging more. I hate to say it as an avid fan, but I know plenty of people who dabble in the grey secondary markets and a lot of your amazing mead is swapped like commodities for prices that make me question if I really want to open a bottle vs sell it (I always fall on the side of open...I'm always amazed that anyone is willing to trade anything that you make let alone sell). I appreciate you doing what you can to keep prices down, but if it means production growth with the same quality, I'm all in favor of getting there sooner than later.
 
cosmicevan said:
simple economics of supply and demand also say that you guys should be charging more. I hate to say it as an avid fan, but I know plenty of people who dabble in the grey secondary markets and a lot of your amazing mead is swapped like commodities for prices that make me question if I really want to open a bottle vs sell it (I always fall on the side of open...I'm always amazed that anyone is willing to trade anything that you make let alone sell). I appreciate you doing what you can to keep prices down, but if it means production growth with the same quality, I'm all in favor of getting there sooner than later.
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That's kind of a double edge sword. I love hod but will I pay $200,$300 , or a $1,000??? No. But some freak living in his parents basment will and will flip it for world of Warcraft hand jobs. Supply and demand only go so far until you push away the people who created the demand, thus the supply. I love schramms more than the next guy but at some point there has to be an end. Will all mazer club members also own European cars at some point ?
 
Jb123 said:
That's kind of a double edge sword. I love hod but will I pay $200,$300 , or a $1,000??? No. But some freak living in his parents basment will and will flip it for world of Warcraft hand jobs. Supply and demand only go so far until you push away the people who created the demand, thus the supply. I love schramms more than the next guy but at some point there has to be an end. Will all mazer club members also own European cars at some point ?
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I think you're being a bit critical. Firstly, not a single American-made car has made the IIHS "death proof" list (out of nine, three are european - one of which I purchased when I realized that every driver on the road is an idiot and I want my two kids to outlast me). One could argue that the Tesla Model S is actually the safest and most well-built car in existence, but as we've seen recently it's "level 3.5 autopilot" isn't quite ready for the mass market. I anxiously await the day when we are all riding around drinking tHoD in death-proof American-made cars with a level 4 autopilot; I think we have some painful economic and political decisions to make before my dream of fully-automated luxury communism can be realized, but that's an aside.

Secondly, I googled "World of Warcraft hand jobs", and boy, was that a rabbit hole. However, these people seem genuine and down-to-middle-earth. A little strange, but if they're also enjoying tHoD, then more power to them, I say!
 
Naegerbomb said:
I think you're being a bit critical. Firstly, not a single American-made car has made the IIHS "death proof" list (out of nine, three are european - one of which I purchased when I realized that every driver on the road is an idiot and I want my two kids to outlast me). One could argue that the Tesla Model S is actually the safest and most well-built car in existence, but as we've seen recently it's "level 3.5 autopilot" isn't quite ready for the mass market. I anxiously await the day when we are all riding around drinking tHoD in death-proof American-made cars with a level 4 autopilot; I think we have some painful economic and political decisions to make before my dream of fully-automated luxury communism can be realized, but that's an aside.

Secondly, I googled "World of Warcraft hand jobs", and boy, was that a rabbit hole. However, these people seem genuine and down-to-middle-earth. A little strange, but if they're also enjoying tHoD, then more power to them, I say!
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I drive a Prius. I am a different kind of stuck up.
 

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