Guild Member Spotlight: The Colony Meadery

For many of us, “going out” usually means visiting our local breweries, heading out to a local winery, or stopping for a cocktail at a bar or distillery. However, the Lehigh Valley offers an additional outlet for those looking for a craft beverage! Since 2012, the Lehigh Valley has been home to The Colony Meadery! For this week's Lehigh Valley Brewers Guild spotlight, we sat down with the owners of The Colony Meadery, Greg Heller-LaBelle and Mike Manning, to talk about their honey-based beverage!

 The Colony Meadery currently has two taproom locations. In Allentown, you can find them at 905 Harrison St, which is also their production facility. You can also find them on South Side Bethlehem at 211 E 3rd Street. Both locations offer a great atmosphere to sit down, relax, and enjoy some meads!

Allentown Location Above; Bethlehem Location Below

While we, at the Lehigh Valley Brewers Guild, are familiar with the great meads that Colony produces, we had many questions about the mead industry as a whole and the approaches a meadery must take in a diverse beverage market. Thankfully, Greg and Mike had plenty of knowledge to share and taught us that there are multiple avenues in which the mead consumer base is driven.

Sometimes called “honey wine”, mead is a alcoholic beverage resulting from fermenting honey mixed with water, in combination with adding other spices and ingredients to give the mead additional flavors. Mike and Greg pride themselves on the variety of mead that they offer. With more than 30 kinds of mead, Colony offers a mead for everyone, in both session and still meads.

Their commitment to finding a mead for everyone also changes some of the common misconceptions that people regularly hold about mead. Many first impressions of mead are formed at a renaissance fair, maybe from a batch their roommate made in a college dorm room, or an experimental batch that their father fermented in their basement. In the past, mead was not as accessible, making many first-time mead experiences very underwhelming or just not enjoyable. That’s where The Colony Meadery has your back!

Besides variety, accessibility is a goal at The Colony Meadery. Honey is dramatically more expensive than grain, which drives up production costs compared to other beverages. Therefore, Greg and Mike are committed to producing mead efficiently in order to keep their product at a reasonable price point. Colony has accomplished this and are currently in 50 PA state stores, 10 Wegmans, and 2 Giants, and have a wholesale operation in South Carolina. In addition, you can find their product at several other businesses around the Lehigh Valley.

Being such a unique product, of course we asked the question, “How does one get into the mead industry?” Like any great business, you need a great team to get things started, and the partnership between Greg and Mike is the foundation to The Colony Meadery.

When Greg Heller-LaBelle returned to the Lehigh Valley, he revived an old Facebook group called the Lehigh Valley Beer Society. The group would meet up regularly and share different beers. In 2012, Mike Manning joined the group, and during one of the meeting’s, Mike noticed he didn’t have any notable beer to bring. Instead, he decided to bring some homemade mead. Greg really enjoyed Mike’s mead and an idea sparked.

Owner Greg Heller-LaBelle and Owner/Meadmaker Mike Manning

Greg asked Mike if he had any interest in being a professional meadmaker. Mike originally showed little interest. He enjoyed making beer and mead on the side but had no intentions of learning how to run a business. On the other hand, Greg had been a longtime beer blogger and, in the past, had the intentions of opening a brewery. In addition, Greg has an MBA from Lehigh and tons of entrepreneurial spirit. Seeing a great opportunity in the beverage industry for an alternative to beer, along with knowing that Mike was a great meadmaker, Greg wrote up and business plan and presented it to Mike. Shortly after, the two shook hands and began their journey.

Since then, The Colony Meadery has been growing its notability as a Lehigh Valley staple. Mike has continued to win awards all over the country for his meads. You will also see lines of people wanting to sample Colony’s meads at local markets, including the yearly Christkindlmarkt. Their most recent addition is their South Bethlehem Taproom, which opened in 2019. The taproom is in a prime location, offering walkability to several restaurants, bars, and breweries. Technically, this location never had an official grand opening, which was planned for Spring of 2020, but we all know how that story goes. With that being said, we know the team over at The Colony Meadery plans on eventually making up for this with an event in the future. However, that should not stop you from going there this weekend!

I also got the opportunity to sit down and experience their South Side Bethlehem location and chat with the manager, Ian Mondrick. We had a great time chatting about mead, movies, and comic books. At the Lehigh Valley Brewers Guild, we are proud to have a meadery as a Guild member and look forward to everything coming out of The Colony Meadery this year and beyond!

Check out The Colony Meadery Website for hours of both locations and more details!
https://www.colonymeadery.com/neighborhood-1-2

Cheers!

Research by: Leila Kaczmarek and Jerry Collins

Written by: Jerry Collins

Photography by: Jerry Collins