Beer, Mead and Cider with Michael Fairbrother – BeerSmith Podcast #319 – BeerSmith™ Home Brewing Blog

Michael Fairbrother joins me this week to discuss the business of beer, mead, cider and opening a restaurant.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (43:38)

• This week I welcome back Michael Fairbrother. Michael is the founder and head mead maker at Moonlight Meadery and also launched the Over the Moon Farmstead a few years back making cider and craft beer. Michael has won numerous Mazer cup awards for his meads.
• We discuss how Michael started home brewing and then rapidly expanded into mead making which turned out to be his passion.
• Michael expanded his mead distribution nationwide as well as to Australia and Canada. We discuss some of the challenges with large distribution chains.
• He shares some of the things he learned expanding rapidly and distributing through wholesalers.
• Michael tells us about his decision to open the Over the Moon Farmstead as a destination location.
• We talk about his craft brewery and some of the styles he is focused on now, as well as his brewmaster.
• Chris shares his experience launching a restaurant and how it has evolved over time.
• We talk about the breadth of experiences he has had spanning mead, cider, beer and a restaurant.
• Michael shares his thoughts on the craft beer markets which is facing its own challenges.
• We discuss his website, location and Michael shares his closing thoughts.

iTunes Announcements: I launched a new video channel for the BeerSmith podcast on iTunes, so subscribe now! At the moment it will only feature the new widescreen episodes (#75 and up). Older episodes are available on my revamped Youtube channel. Also all of my audio episodes are on iTunes now – so grab the older episodes if you missed any.

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