1-18-22 Tonight we're talking with Mike and Cathy Rape, owners of The Ferm Meadery in Conroe, TX. They're making great mead and having a good time spreading mead, music and food around to their customers. Cathy and Mike are native Texans, and grew up in Conroe, TX. They've been married 26yrs and have 3 grown kids and a grandchild. They also own and operate a company that provides temporary power and temperature control mostly for live events. Around the time their kids became teenagers (Because "teenagers") they started home winemaking as a hobby that they could both enjoy together. They were introduced to mead on a business trip to Georgia at the Savannah Bee Co. After that, they were hooked and started focusing almost exclusively on mead making and dreaming of starting a meadery someday. They visited as many meaderies as they could find and attended classes on mead making at UC Davis and the Winemaker Magazine Conference. They also apprenticed ourselves under local meadmakers Bruce and Bridget Leslie of Griffin Meadery (now Punkin Vinyards) as well as Jon Odom of Enchanted Manor Meadery. Once it became apparent that "14 days to slow the spread" was looking more like the end of live events for the foreseeable future & their event business came to a halt they started talking about moving "someday" to now. With lots of time to spare during the lockdowns, they signed a lease on a 1940's building on the Downtown Conroe square and began renovation. They were thrilled to discover they were part of a movement to revitalize the Downtown Conroe food and beverage, nightlife, and live music scene. They opened their tasting room in March of 2021 offering a variety of still meads, sessions, charcuterie boards, and live entertainment. Join us as we talk mead, meadmaking, and starting a meadery (during a pandemic!) tonight at 9PM ET. This player will show the most recent show, and when we're live, will play the live feed. If you are calling in, please turn off the player sound, so we don't get feedback.[break] [break]Click here to see a playable list of all our episodes! Sponsor: Honnibrook Craft Meadery. Rated the very best winery in Colorado! Visit our state-of-the-art meadery and tasting room south of downtown Castle Rock, Colorado, in a converted man cave. Mention the Got Mead Podcast this month for a free draft taster!  Google H-O-N-N-I Brook for hours and directions. They love visitors!  www.honnibrook.com The Ferm: Historic Downtown Conroe's own meadery established in March 2021 serving standard strength mead, carbonated sessions, and charcuterie boards in a nostalgic 1940s building with live local music. Check it out!   If you want to ask your mead making questions, you can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323) or send us a question via email, or via Twitter @GotmeadNow and we'll tackle it online! 9PM EDT/6PM PDT Join us on live chat during the show Bring your questions and your mead, and let's talk mead! You can call us at 803-443-MEAD (6323), or Skype us at meadwench (please friend me first and say you're a listener, I get tons of Skype spam), or tweet to @gotmeadnow.