# Economic Problems of Brewing Mead in D&D...



## Fergus (Dec 7, 2004)

In a D&D game that's going to be starting up in the next month or two I thought that it would be fun to play a character with brewing skills and have his "day job" be brewing and selling mead.  Running a meadery could be quite fun in general and the hired help could always run it while my character is off adventuring.

Before deciding whether or nor to go for this I wanted to see how much money there was to be made in mead.  Here's my analysis:

*Step 1: Finding out how much honey costs and how much mead sells for.  *

The SRD doesn't list a price for honey and mead, so I did some poking around for medieval pricings.  This site has a large list of prices of items in England around 1450 with a list of references at the bottom of the page:

http://www.amurgsval.org/feng-shui/prices.html

According to the site, we have the following prices:

Honey 2 pence/pint
Mead .25 pence/pint
Ale .25 pence/pint

We can convert this into D&D currency by using SRD's price of ale as 4cp/pint, and when we do that we get:

Honey 32 cp/pint
Mead 4 cp/pint
Ale 4 cp/pint

*Step 2: Calculating the cost of making a batch of mead.*

A medieval recipe recommends 36 lbs. of honey for 10 gallons of mead mixture (which is consistent for modern day recipes, too).  A medieval "cask" is 32 gallons in size, so let's say that we're brewing a cask of mead.  For 32 gallons of mead mixture we'd need 115.2 lbs. of honey.  Honey is 12 lbs. per gallon, so that's 9.6 gallons of honey, which is 76.8 pints of honey, which is 2457.6 cp.

This assumes that we're only using honey and water, which is possible as raw honey has enough yeast in it to ferment into a low alcohol content mead without adding anything.  (This further assumes that you don't heat the mixture as heating will kill the yeasts in the honey, though this is acceptable for mead because the risk of something potentially infectious brewing in mead is much less than in beer, for example, but I digress...)

*Step 3: Calculating the sale price of a batch of mead.*

During the fermentation process the brewer "racks" the mead a few times.  Racking is where you pour/siphon off the liquid from the sediment (stuff from the honey, dead yeast, etc.) that's collected at the bottom of the container.  According to a friend who's been home brewing for 10 years, a good brewer can end up with 90% of what they start with being consumable at the end.  This 90% was for beer, which is racked less frequently than mead (for flavor reasons), so let's say that of the 32 gallons of initial mead mix we have 28 gallons of consumable product (87.5% of initial amount).

28 consumable gallons of mead = 224 consumable pints of mead = 896 cp in selling mead.

*Step 4: Economic analysis of mead.*

It costs 2457.6 cp to make a cask of mead and you only get 896 cp for selling it.

*Step 5: The problem.*

How to mead makers stay in business given these numbers?  Historically mead was phased out because certain grains (like hops) were much more economical to use in brewing than honey, so I can understand why an economic model would want to have either mead cost consumers more or for the brewer to make less of a profit.  But mead has been around for thousands of years and I'm having a hard time seeing how mead brewers stayed in business given these numbers.

I welcome and encourage any thoughts about this...  I'd like to think that brewing in D&D is something that people can make a living doing.


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## Speaks With Stone (Dec 7, 2004)

Well, the easy solution is not to get caught up in the details and say that you can make a very modest living from brewing mead and let it go at that.

As far as possible modifiers to your math (since I get the feeling you will not be satisfied with the first solution) you can assume the mead brewer is also a beekeeper and gets his honey for some fraction of the retail cost.  At the very least he should have some longstanding deal to get honey for less than retail.
Also, the units of measure in those days were not as standardized as we tend to expect these days.  Perhaps the wholesale pint is larger than the retail pint at the bar.  This was common practice in those days and one of the ways traders made a lot of easy money.  So perhaps your calculations are based on two different meanings of a pint and therefore further flawed.


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## Dr_Rictus (Dec 7, 2004)

Well, don't worry about ale.  It's okay for two products that aren't exactly the same to have different prices, and mead drinks more like wine anyway.

Fundamentally, though, your data has honey selling for 8 times as much as mead but you're only cutting your honey by less than 1:4 to make the mead.  So that's never, ever going to work.

You need to either cut it more (I've seen recipes running 1:6) or get cheaper honey.  It seems likely that your 2p/pint price for honey isn't raw honey (which contains beeswax, bee parts, and other gunk), for example.  But raw honey is in fact fine for mead, because of the racking process you mention.

It's either that, or giant bees.  Economy of scale.


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## Pyrex (Dec 7, 2004)

I recommend skipping trying the real world to d&d conversion, it's just not going to work.

Instead, just buy ranks in Craft(Brewing).  Using the craft skill, you can then turn any arbitrary xGP worth of ingredients (honey, spices, etc) into 3xGP of finished Mead.

Done.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Dec 7, 2004)

OK, I have no idea about the history of meaders, but I would guess that one simple way that meaders stayed in business was to have their own hives and collect their own honey.  Of course selling the honey itself would be worth more than the mead, but perhaps they did both, making good profits from honey and poor profits from mead.


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## Lord Morte (Dec 7, 2004)

Possibly by owning the beehives that produce the honey, thereby replacing the financial cost of the honey with a labour cost. Don't have to pay for honey if you've got a ready source. Larger initial outlay, but it makes the operation profitable, especially if you sell the excess honey.

Regardless, cool roleplay idea and one I may try next time I get a chance.


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## Len (Dec 7, 2004)

Dr_Rictus said:
			
		

> It's either that, or giant bees.  Economy of scale.



Adventure hook!


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## WayneLigon (Dec 7, 2004)

The second Niift the Lean book has an adventure linked to this. They are hired by a beekeeper to go down into Hell and draw off the juice these giant demon-eating bugs secrete to create their warrior caste. He plans to feed the bees a tiny, tiny amount of it, whereupon they will grow to giant size and thus produce massive amounts of honey for him. It doesn't quite work out that way...


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## Fergus (Dec 7, 2004)

*Thanks!*

Wow, go out to lunch and come back to find seven replies.  I'm quite happy.  *grin*



> Fundamentally, though, your data has honey selling for 8 times as much as mead but you're only cutting your honey by less than 1:4 to make the mead. So that's never, ever going to work.




Yes, I definitely agree.  The problem isn't the D&D conversion as much as it is the initial pricing that the numbers are based off of.  At the same time, these are the only numbers I've been able to find that have a medieval price of honey in it.  I can find different mead pricings, but no other honey pricings.  I have a hard time rejecting the relative price of honey without any other numbers to go off of...



> It seems likely that your 2p/pint price for honey isn't raw honey (which contains beeswax, bee parts, and other gunk), for example. But raw honey is in fact fine for mead, because of the racking process you mention.




I definitely agree that meaderies would use raw honey (any purifying process would remove some of the few yeasts that are in the honey).  I'm not sure if this would be enough of a financial boost as we'd pretty much need to cut the price of honey by more than half to get the numbers to work out, but it is definitely something to keep in mind.  Thanks for pointing that out.  *smile*



> Perhaps the wholesale pint is larger than the retail pint at the bar. This was common practice in those days and one of the ways traders made a lot of easy money.




Good observation; for example, the SRD has a gallon of ale being the same price and buying five pints individually (37.5% savings).  However, while this reasoning may make honey cheaper, it would also make selling the mead less profitable as one would probably sell mead wholesale as well.



> OK, I have no idea about the history of meaders, but I would guess that one simple way that meaders stayed in business was to have their own hives and collect their own honey. Of course selling the honey itself would be worth more than the mead, but perhaps they did both, making good profits from honey and poor profits from mead.




If the numbers I have are right then you'd make much more money selling the honey than brewing the mead and would never bother making mead.  You'd lose money buy investing your honey in mead.  Also, beekeeping is a very different skill set than brewing and often a full time job in and of itself.  (This is meant to apply to general "be a beekeeper" replies.)



> Regardless, cool roleplay idea and one I may try next time I get a chance.




I find it rewarding for my characters to have roots somewhere, to know what they would do if they weren't adventuring.  Provides added depth and more role playing opportunities.  And how better to tell the tales of your glorious adventures than by treating everyone to your finest mead?  *grin*



> Instead, just buy ranks in Craft(Brewing). Using the craft skill, you can then turn any arbitrary xGP worth of ingredients (honey, spices, etc) into 3xGP of finished Mead.




Well, I'd have Craft(Brewing) anyway...  What gets to me about what you propose is that it basically treats all crafts as the same financially.  I'd expect a tailor who works with silks and lace to have a different profit multiplier than a mead brewer.  Supermarkets have a very low profit multiplier and compensate with high volume transactions, whereas the materials for many paintings are an incredibly small fraction of the selling price.



> Well, the easy solution is not to get caught up in the details and say that you can make a very modest living from brewing mead and let it go at that.
> 
> As far as possible modifiers to your math (since I get the feeling you will not be satisfied with the first solution)




Ha!  *laugh*  Definitely good instincts on your part.  I'm totally willing to go with your suggestion if the wealth system in our game is abstracted (something like _Grim Tales_ wealth syste, which I very much like in concept even though I've never used it).  However, if I'm going to need to count coins to pay for something, then I'm going to want to count the coins that are coming in as well.  Part of the fun of roleplaying for me is really getting involved in the world and throwing myself into the details of it and worrying about the little things just as much as the big things.

Overall, the space I'm in is pretty much what Rictus said: it's never going to work without changing honey to mead price ratio to be much less than 8:1 and I'm not sure that there's a good way of accurately doing that.

Thanks all for your input.


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## MaxKaladin (Dec 8, 2004)

I suspect the problem is the price list.  There is a list of sources at the end, but we don't know which book the prices in question came from and where that book got it's data.  They could have been gathered independantly from different countries with differing economic conditions.  It could be that the place with 2d/pint honey charged more than .25d/pint for mead.  

Given the calculations you present, I suspect that in the real world someone making mead would either be charging more or not making mead.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Dec 8, 2004)

> If the numbers I have are right then you'd make much more money selling the honey than brewing the mead and would never bother making mead. You'd lose money buy investing your honey in mead. Also, beekeeping is a very different skill set than brewing and often a full time job in and of itself. (This is meant to apply to general "be a beekeeper" replies.)




Except that there is probably a limited market for honey.  There's probably some equilibrium between honey sales and mead sales that makes for a maximized profit margin.  Say you have a lot of bees.  You can sell 10 gallons of honey over a season before everyone in your village has enough honey that you'd have to lower the price to below cost to sell any more, but your bees make 30 gallons.  You can make mead out of that extra 20 gallons, sell it to the local tavern, and make money on your extra honey.  You change the product you're selling to avoid putting yourself out of business on a supply glut, especially because the costs of transporting honey are probably prohibitive if you're a commoner in a village somewhere.


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

MaxKaladin said:
			
		

> I suspect the problem is the price list.  There is a list of sources at the end, but we don't know which book the prices in question came from and where that book got it's data.  They could have been gathered independantly from different countries with differing economic conditions.  It could be that the place with 2d/pint honey charged more than .25d/pint for mead.
> 
> Given the calculations you present, I suspect that in the real world someone making mead would either be charging more or not making mead.



 Oooo....  Good point.  I had not thought of that.

Bad researcher, Fergus, bad researcher.


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## JackGiantkiller (Dec 8, 2004)

Look at it this way: people in places that make mead have a lot of honey. That's why they make mead. Mead isn't made in wine country. 

Honey is free, if you own the hives, or collect the hives yourself. the price they list for honey has to be a city price , since city folk can't gather their own honey and also live far from the places where honey is gathered.


As to their being a limited market for honey...when has there ever been a limit on how many sweets people will eat? or how much alcohol they will consume? Neither mead nor honey would have limited markets, anywhere they had heard of them.  Mead was really only made in Northern Europe during the middle ages.


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## dontpunkme (Dec 8, 2004)

One tip if you want to not lose money---No dwarves in the brewery/meadery.  Damn barrel-shaped bastards will drink you out of brew and to make matters worse will probably end up smashing all your equipment.


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## Umbran (Dec 8, 2004)

Fergus said:
			
		

> Yes, I definitely agree.  The problem isn't the D&D conversion as much as it is the initial pricing that the numbers are based off of.  At the same time, these are the only numbers I've been able to find that have a medieval price of honey in it.




To back up and strengthen what MaxKaladin said - "medieval Europe" is a big place, and covers several centuries in time.  Unless you are sure that the honey and mead prices come from the same place and time, they'd make a poor basis for an economic model.

Plus - having a day job is pretty darned hard for an active adventurer.  Seen either of the Spider Man movies?  Peter parker has problems keeping up a job as a delivery boy.  And you want to go galavanting about committing violent acts while also trying to maintain a permanent business address?

The first enemy you leave alive to find out where you work is gonna put your place to the torch.  Enemies are like that.


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## VirgilCaine (Dec 8, 2004)

Dr_Rictus said:
			
		

> It's either that, or giant bees.  Economy of scale.




ROFLOL.


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

> To back up and strengthen what MaxKaladin said - "medieval Europe" is a big place, and covers several centuries in time. Unless you are sure that the honey and mead prices come from the same place and time, they'd make a poor basis for an economic model.




All of the numbers are (allegedly) from England around 1450.  I've also found other website for English prices from 1200-1500 and they all relatively agree on the price of ale in England over that time period.  I've only been able to find one site with a honey price, though, which is the sticking point.  (pun intended)



> Plus - having a day job is pretty darned hard for an active adventurer. Seen either of the Spider Man movies? Peter parker has problems keeping up a job as a delivery boy. And you want to go galavanting about committing violent acts while also trying to maintain a permanent business address?




A big part of running a meadery is letting things ferment for months if not years.  Any character can be out adventuring while fermentation is going on.  There are also the cold winter months when many roads are snowed in and people have to find things to do to stay busy.  Or my character could get the business started and then hand it off to a relative to be the active manager.  There are many possibilities.

Also, I doubt that the Peter Parker comparison is a good one.  He actively tried to respond to every bad doing that crossed his path.  It's possible to (a) not be a rescuer, (b) not involve yourself with everything that's going on, and (c) decide that you're a little shell shocked from that last adventure and you want to hole up for a bit.  Some of the best adventures I've heard of have been ones where the party is based in the same city for the whole campaign and they have goodly amounts of downtime while interacting with the city.

I would also like to point out that not all advenutrers commit violent acts.  *smile*



> The first enemy you leave alive to find out where you work is gonna put your place to the torch. Enemies are like that.




Isn't that the joy of having a rival?  *grin*


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## Umbran (Dec 8, 2004)

Fergus said:
			
		

> A big part of running a meadery is letting things ferment for months if not years.  Any character can be out adventuring while fermentation is going on.




Somehow, I doubt that making one really bitg batch of mead and waiting for it all to ferment is a good business model.  I would strongly suspect that a successful meadery would have a rolling inventory - some batches new, some in the middle, some old.  While there will be busy seasons and slower seasons, no successful businessman should be allowing things to just sit and wait.  There's always soemthing to be done.



> There are also the cold winter months when many roads are snowed in and people have to find things to do to stay busy.




Ever read the books on frontier life by Laura Ingalls Wilder?  Even when you are snowed in, there are chores to be done.  In fact, a wise man will have been saving up chores for those times when he cannot do anything else.  Maintaining tools and equipment would take up much of the winter.



> Or my character could get the business started and then hand it off to a relative to be the active manager.




Yeah, but what's the fun in that?    If you do that, then your character is really only vaguely related to a meadery.  In most ways, it isn't really his anymore.  The real work is all being done by someone else.  Is this guy supposed to be a brewer or a financier? 



> I would also like to point out that not all advenutrers commit violent acts.  *smile*




True, but such are rare beasts.  Even if you don't commit, your character is likely to be in close proximity to them.  It is the rare person who can claim the name "adventurer" who isn't involved in such things.  And it is the rare enemy who quibbles over details - even if you don't commit the acts, you are likely to be considered guilty by association.  And you're the one with the juicy business worth a great many gold that can be attacked to hurt you.

Not saying that such a character is not possible.  Just pointing out the drawbacks.  Typically, businesses are either targets, or forgotten details.


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## jasper (Dec 8, 2004)

Some random thoughts.
First you have to boiling the wort (honey water mixture) which will kill off the yeasts. To start the fermentation either use the dregs from the last batch (still some live yeast beasts in dregs) or just cover with cloth over night for a natural yeast. Second 90% is good if you racking a lot of mead  for a long term mead (1 year) if you going for beer like mead one rack is okay. I lose maybe a cup per 5 gallons of mead when I rack. Or not rack at all. Pour the wort into the clean keg, cool, add yeast, pound in the bung, wait 7+ days. 
Furthermore you are talking about small batches like home brewer today. The economies of scale would work. Mead today can cover anything from light beer to wine depending on yeast used. A beer like mead would be drinkable in 7 days after you bottle. If you just pour it into a keg call it 14 to 21 days.
Different yeasts will give different alcohol rating and flavors. Wild (natural yeast out of air) can change the flavor between bottles. I had one wild yeast get into two of two liters bottles of mead. The bottle had stress fractures from the amount CO being created. Some of my friends liked it some did not. In D&D I have a brewer who vats have purify water spell cast on his mixing vats. I bump his prices up a little from retail. 
Mead has various names depending on what you cook (place) in it to flavor the batch.  So I generally tell people what I flavor it with. 
Your brew shop can be active year round if you include beer and ale. Also decide if your brew shop owns the bees. By owning the bees you get extra income, beeswax candles, use of bees for the farmers or lords estates, etc.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Dec 8, 2004)

Some random thoughts about this:

I wonder about your source's prices.  They list mead and ale as being the same cost per pint.  Based on the other information, that seems a bit unbelievable.

The price of honey is listed on a per pint basis, but if that is the way the honey was sold for general use, part of that cost will be packaging - a pint jar.  Honey bought in large quantities could be packaged differently (especially if raw) and could cut down the cost.

Also, since you are using a source that lists prices in England, this may also be a clue as to the economics:  From web site: 
http://www.regia.org/food.htm



> Honey was used to make a sweet alcoholic drink called mead, which was usually flavoured with some form of herb such as meadowsweet (O.E. meduwyrt - meaning mead plant). However, even today it is still not clear whether the mead they knew was no more than honey beer that we may encounter occasionally today. The confusion here lies with the fact that they refer to 'frothing horns of mead', and mead as we make it does not have a head to it. Barley was used to make beer which may have been flavoured with wild hops. Whether these were wild or cultivated is not known, but the Graveney boat, a 10th Century clinker built inshore trading boat may have been carrying a cargo which included hops up the Thames Estuary. (The GraveneyBoat: a tenth century find from Kent. V Fenwick ed Brit Archaeol Re Brit Ser 53 Oxford 1978).




If it was a honey beer, I would think it would have less honey and therefore the 0.25 pence/pint price listed may be low for real mead.


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## Munin (Dec 8, 2004)

A thought that hasn't be covered yet is to consider the intangibles of your enterprise. 

I assume you are going to have a place to sell your mead: an inn, a pub, or some other establishment. Or perhaps you have a partnership with several proprietors of such. These connections could lead to other business enterprises that are much more profitable than the mead brewery would be on its own. 

For example, you may develop a silent partnership with a local pub owner. By providing the finest mead available, you gain exclusive rights to sell your product in his pub. The fine quality of your mead draws in a wealthier clientele who can afford to pay a little more to cover the cost of doing business, AND such types are far more likely to be involved in the local intrigues, giving you a place to keep your thumb on the pulse of the community. 

This could even lead to expansion, as word of your product spreads, undoubtedly traveling merchants will be more than willing to pay a handsome sum for the opportunity to sell your mead abroad, perhaps in places where honey is not readily available, and thus mead is not available.

It is these intangible benefits that may make the otherwise unprofitable business of brewing mead worth your while. Coming from a DM, it would actually make your DMs job a lot easier, and that's never a bad thing.


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

> Not saying that such a character is not possible. Just pointing out the drawbacks. Typically, businesses are either targets, or forgotten details.




You definitely make good points and they are well taken.  I guess it varies and a game to game basis.

I agree that businesses can turn into targets.  However, I'd like to think that most characters have some "targets" in the world: loved ones, family, some property...  A business may be a liability, but no more so than others that are available.  *smile*


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

Disclaimer: I am not a homebrewer.  *smile*



> First you have to boiling the wort (honey water mixture) which will kill off the yeasts.




I've seen sites of mead home brewers that advocate (a) not boiling at all and (b) some recommend not even heating the mixture at all.  This is something that is true for mead while not being true for most other beverages.



> Furthermore you are talking about small batches like home brewer today. The economies of scale would work.




I assume that you're referring to buying honey in bulk to reduce prices.  I agree that this can make honey more economical, but at the same time you'd also be selling mead in bulk most likely and making less money on the sale.  (If I'm misunderstanding your point, please correct me.)



> A beer like mead would be drinkable in 7 days after you bottle. If you just pour it into a keg call it 14 to 21 days.




I'll defer to your knowledge here.  Regardless of the brewing time, it doesn't affect the cost to produce or the sale price.  (Minus some overhead charges, of course, which I'm finessing at this point.)

Thanks for your general comments and info about mead brewing!  And for the _purify water_ casks idea...  *grin*



> Bad players ruin any game. That includes but not limited to RPG, online, sports, poker and pretend.




How true...  On a personal note, it's much easier for me to apply this to _other_ players than to myself.  Must remain vigilant.


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

> I wonder about your source's prices. They list mead and ale as being the same cost per pint. Based on the other information, that seems a bit unbelievable.




A valid criticism.  At the same time, even if mead were twice as expensive it wouldn't make mead profitable (assuming the price of honey is correct, of course) and I'm having a hard time justifying that mead would be more than twice as expensive.



> The price of honey is listed on a per pint basis, but if that is the way the honey was sold for general use, part of that cost will be packaging - a pint jar. Honey bought in large quantities could be packaged differently (especially if raw) and could cut down the cost.




Quite possibly, though you'd then probably be selling mead in bluk as well.



> If it was a honey beer, I would think it would have less honey and therefore the 0.25 pence/pint price listed may be low for real mead.




And if it were a honey beer you'd be using significantly less honey and instead be using cheaper grains...  That might be it.  Thanks for the link!


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

> A thought that hasn't be covered yet is to consider the intangibles of your enterprise.
> 
> I assume you are going to have a place to sell your mead: an inn, a pub, or some other establishment. Or perhaps you have a partnership with several proprietors of such. These connections could lead to other business enterprises that are much more profitable than the mead brewery would be on its own.




I haven't covered those in the thread, you are correct.  At the same time, while I can see these intangibles as making a meadery more profitable the aim of my post was how do meaderies get to even break even in the first place.

You do have good ideas and suggestions for increasing profits and having the meadery lead to further interactions with the world around you.  I like the ideas very much, though I don't think that they are sufficient to solve the gross cost/revenue imbalance.


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## Storm Raven (Dec 8, 2004)

JackGiantkiller said:
			
		

> As to their being a limited market for honey...when has there ever been a limit on how many sweets people will eat? or how much alcohol they will consume? Neither mead nor honey would have limited markets, anywhere they had heard of them.




Honey and mead have a limited market in that consumers of those products don't have infinite amounts of money, and have other expenses they must take care of as well (such as buying other types of food). As evidence of this fact, I will direct you to your household pantry, where I am guessing you don't have an infinite amount of sugar stored.


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## Amaroq (Dec 8, 2004)

*From the GM*

*blink* I opened this thread without noting the original poster on the grounds that, as a (former) home mead-brewer, I was interested in it... only to discover that the original poster is one of my players!

So, reacting to it as the GM in question, my first thought was to blink in bemusement... my second was to laugh uproariously... and my third was 'Okay, how do I work this in?'

--------------------------

I think the most obvious solution to practically address Fergus' dilemna would be to declare the prices incorrect on both ends. Prices in a dynamic world should reflect both supply-and-demand and cost-to-produce; 'by the book' prices of course cannot; they're listed for the convenience of a player who just wants to buy a pint of ale, or some such, rather than introducing the concept of different prices in different regions, etc. But, as observed earlier, that's 'out of character' for Fergus, here.  

If the cost-to-produce really were about 8 times the listed price for a pint of mead, then I'd expect the seller to price his mead about 8 times above that, thus limiting his mead to a higher-class patron, but that may be sensible, if we're assuming ales as the peasantry drink.

Looking up beekeeping info (Here's a nice spreadsheet on starting a for-profit beekeeping business), however, I see that the MODERN retail price of honey is about 3.5 times as much as the bulk price of honey. If we assume the same ratio historically, and assume that your one data point was as retail price, then our price-to-buy-honey is much too high. So that's dropped our failure margin to about 2.3 : 1, which helps dramatically but doesn't solve the problem.

More useful might be the following observation (from S.W. Andrews' 'Mead and Meadmaking'):


> In the early days, the beeswax from the honey comb was required in great quantities for the making of candles. These candles were used not only in the churches but also m the home and of course honey was the only form of sweetening, so that beekeeping in those early days played a very important part in the economics of the country of that time.
> 
> It was only natural therefore, that honey should be used to make the only alcoholic drink known to man at that time. Before the wax could be used for candle making it had to be washed, this washing produced a weak solution of honey water which would ferment quite naturally without any other addition, as the honey would contain a great number of yeast cells; in any case the airborne yeasts would very quickly innoculate the honey water. One can almost imagine the jubilation of the first beekeeper to discover that his fermented honey water had such stimulating properties.
> 
> When wines were imported from the continent, mead in common with other country wines which were made in the home fell by the wayside, and gradually the art of making them was lost, that is to the many, but not to the few, for there have always been beekeepers and wherever you find two or three beekeepers you will also find a meadmaker. This may be due partly to economics. If one has to purchase honey on the open market, a gallon of mead can be fairly expensive.



Amusing - his latter observation dovetails with Fergus' economic model.

So it appears that, though I as a modern home-brewer would start with 100% pure honey, it might be reasonable to assume that your dark ages mead brewer starts with honey byproducts, and thus avoids the economic problems you've outlined entirely on the grounds that they are based on an incorrect assumption (that he needs buy honey rather than honey byproduct).

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At any rate, be forwarned: your character, though s/he may be able to save towards, earn, and purchase mead-making facilities, will not be starting with sufficient starting-gold to go into business in the first session, or to pre-suppose ownership of same as part of his 'background story'.


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## jasper (Dec 8, 2004)

Not heating it. Well I learn something new today.
No if you own the bees you are getting fees for helping a farmer/lord’s crop. Fees could be cash, goods, or services. Buy in bulk wholesale will give you a greater profit because you selling in bulk retail. I had a friend buy a 10 gal pickle bucket of honey from wholesaler at $30 and for $200 he could bought a 55 gallon drum of honey, which he thought was a good deal until he remember his wife would put his couch on the back porch with him on.
You right on the sale price but I don’t take the prices in Players or elsewhere as gospel. I just use them when I don’t want to be bothered thinking of price. It is hard to do breakeven point analysis on things in PHB because they some times don’t make sense. Also both beer, mead, and ale were seasonal with some batches lasting till the next harvest. But how much are planning on using the middle ages (seasonal) as model or assume something closer to modern model (raw materials year round but different prices). 
Cooking time is not changed. But if you break your mead into three or more brands one batch can be sold three or more ways. Ex New mead 9 days old with peas porridge 9 cp, standard 21+ days price 1 sp, wine (1 year) old market price. Just divide the batch up into 3 casks and roll the wine cask into the back of cellar. 
Also your brew house will want to have more than one product. I mention beeswax candles, beer, ale, etc. If you go with purified water you could sell that to commoners depending on how dirty the local water supply is. If you do beer and ale the left over solids (barley etc) could be sold or given to local farmers for feed or mixed in to compose heap. 
How big of brew house you planning on? Town, city, kingdom wide?
I would NOT go with the giant bee idea. You probably get in trouble with the local druids in a sting operation.


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## Fergus (Dec 8, 2004)

> *blink* I opened this thread without noting the original poster on the grounds that, as a (former) home mead-brewer, I was interested in it... only to discover that the original poster is one of my players!




You used to brew mead?  Learn something new about your GM every day...  *laugh*



> I think the most obvious solution to practically address Fergus' dilemna would be to declare the prices incorrect on both ends. But, as observed earlier, that's 'out of character' for Fergus, here.




Yup.  *grin*



> Looking up beekeeping info (Here's a nice spreadsheet on starting a for-profit beekeeping business), however, I see that the MODERN retail price of honey is about 3.5 times as much as the bulk price of honey. If we assume the same ratio historically, and assume that your one data point was as retail price, then our price-to-buy-honey is much too high. So that's dropped our failure margin to about 2.3 : 1, which helps dramatically but doesn't solve the problem.




*blink* *blink* *blink*

A 3.5 divisor for buying wholesale?  That's...  Wow, that's much more than I'd expect.  No, it doens't solve the problem, but that's a huge difference in and of itself.  And it's a bigger difference than the discount of selling mead in bulk.



> So it appears that, though I as a modern home-brewer would start with 100% pure honey, it might be reasonable to assume that your dark ages mead brewer starts with honey byproducts, and thus avoids the economic problems you've outlined entirely on the grounds that they are based on an incorrect assumption (that he needs buy honey rather than honey byproduct).




That would make a significant difference, especially when combined with the buying in bulk.  Without historical numbers on wholesale prices or byproduct prices it's hard to say for sure, but given your quote and the huge modern wholesale discount on pure honey I'm definitely willing to stipulate that meaderies can be profitable.

Thanks for your assistance, oh wise and venerable GM!  (See what lengths my GM will go to in order to flesh out the world?  *grin*)


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## Gab (Dec 8, 2004)

Well, I don't know if this will help, but the last batch of mead I made (in February; it's just about ready to bottle), I paid 35$Can for 8L of honey (includeing the container).  That's enough to make 19L of mead (IIRC, 1 US gal = 3.8L and 1 Imp gal = 4.5L). If I keep the whole 19L, that's 38 pints (1 pint = 0.5L). With today's numbers, I'd have to sell it at 1$/pint to make a profit. Compare the 1$ price with what you pay for a beer at a pub...

So your numbers from the Medieval times could be off, if the prices scaled down the same.

Oh, and I believe it was only in the mid 1800s that someone figured out how to use honeycombs to collect honey; before that, you had to kill the bees every time you collected honey. This could have made honey more expensive.


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## MaxKaladin (Dec 8, 2004)

Fergus said:
			
		

> All of the numbers are (allegedly) from England around 1450.



Actually, the page just says "around 1450 and didn't make any mention of England.  You could surmise that from the use of "d." as currency, but other places had money derived from Roman coinage and it could have been "converted" for the price list.  Those prices could technically be for anywhere.

Besides, England isn't tiny so even if all the prices are for England, if the mead price is from some rural manor and the honey price is for London, there could still be a signficant difference in "real" price.  

We also don't know if those are retail or wholesale prices.  The per pint price for honey could well have been a retail price reported in a market while the pint price for mead was what some manor paid per pint for mead bought in bulk.


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## Fergus (Dec 9, 2004)

> Oh, and I believe it was only in the mid 1800s that someone figured out how to use honeycombs to collect honey; before that, you had to kill the bees every time you collected honey. This could have made honey more expensive.




It's that fact (among others) that make me highly skeptical of trying to scale any hard numbers from today to medieval times.  Scaling back Amaroq's 3.5 divisor for wholesale seems somehow different to me than scaling back price ratios...



> Actually, the page just says "around 1450 and didn't make any mention of England. You could surmise that from the use of "d." as currency, but other places had money derived from Roman coinage and it could have been "converted" for the price list. Those prices could technically be for anywhere.




A reasonable point.



> We also don't know if those are retail or wholesale prices. The per pint price for honey could well have been a retail price reported in a market while the pint price for mead was what some manor paid per pint for mead bought in bulk.




I'm guessing that they are non-bulk.  See Amaroq's post for wholesale pricing.


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## Fergus (Dec 9, 2004)

If you go to amazon.com and examine the book "A Sip Through Time" (a book about historical brewing that contains historical recipes) and click on "see similar items" you might be surprised at what the eighth similar book is:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...one/purchase/ref=pd_sexpl/104-7439104-3302304

Is there an official connection between brewing and D&D?  *grin*


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## Amaroq (Dec 9, 2004)

*Re: A Sip Through Time*

Clearly you, in your depth of research and preparation for this campaign, purchased four books on meadmaking and the Expanded Psionics Handbook. 

Besides, isn't 'The Compleat Meadmaker' one of those 2e books with all sorts of neat fluff about the Meadmaker class?


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## Fergus (Dec 9, 2004)

> Clearly you, in your depth of research and preparation for this campaign, purchased four books on meadmaking and the Expanded Psionics Handbook.




No, but I did buy a $1.80 used book from amazon.com that a home brewing friend recommended as the best general home brewing book she knows of.



> Besides, isn't 'The Compleat Meadmaker' one of those 2e books with all sorts of neat fluff about the Meadmaker class?




True.  However, there's a completely updated version for v3.5 in which Meadmaker is a five level prestige class:

*Requirements:*
*Saving Throw:* Fortitude Save +5.
*Feats:* Skill Focus - Craft (Brewing).
*Skills:* Craft (Brewing) 8 ranks, Perform (oratory or singing) 4 ranks.

*Class Features:*
*One with the Mead:* Any true Meadmaker, even at 1st level, is a master of his craft.  Rolling a 1 on any Craft (Brewing) roll will never result in an automatic failure; calculate the success roll normally using 1 as the rolled value.  Meadmakers never suffer any ill effects from (over) consumption of mead regardless of the quality of the mead.

*Friends of the Mead:* A Meadmaker is able to use his mead to win over the hearts and minds of his drinking buddies, making them so agreeable that they'll do (among other things) the most embarrassing of dares.  At 2nd level, the Meadmaker gets a +4 circumstance bonus to any Bluff, Diplomacy, Perform, or Sense Motive roll when interacting with someone who is drinking his mead or is under the effects of having drunk his mead.

*Mead Feed:* The very essence of mead is one of the most nutritious substances in the world.  Meadmakers who have reached the 3rd level in this class can brew mead that will hydrate people as if it were water and feed them as if it were gruel, and it will manage to taste incredibly full bodied at the same time.  A medium-sized humanoid will need to consume a gallon of this special mead over the course of the day to be fully fed and watered, though will suffer no ill effects from the alcohol as this mead is designed not to have any ill effects.  It takes a full year to brew this special mead and since it requires a high level of attention a Meadmaker may only have one 32-gallon cask per level in this prestige class brewing at any one time.

*Mob Mead Mentality:* Meadmakers at 4th level can use their mead to influence entire groups of people at a time.  In a crowd of people sufficiently drunk on the Meadmaker's mead, he can use his Perform (oratory or singing) skill to stir up a crowd with drunken tales or drinking songs towards some goal.  The DC is set by the DM and should be based on the crowd's sentiments towards a particular goal.  For example, getting a group of Elf haters to form an Elf lynch mob should be relatively easy while getting a group of merchants subsidized by the local baron to agree to a trade embargo against the baron would be quite hard.  When the mob is released to its task it will receive a +2 morale bonus for fear saves and other saves that would dissuade the mob from its goal.  A Meadmaker can also use this ability on a group of sober people as long as the promise of imminent drinking is provided, and Meadmakers are highly cautioned against using this ability and then cheating the people out of their mead.

*Mead Might:* At 5th level, the Meadmaker has passed the point of being able to engage in drunken brawls without suffering any ill effects.  In fact, he is able to harness the power of mead to aid him in battles!  Any combat penalty that a lesser person would suffer due to drunkenness is treated as a bonus for both attack and damage rolls for the Meadmaker.  For example, if a player would normally get a -2 circumstance penalty to attack rolls because of having a few too many pints of mead in him, a 5th level Meadmaker would get a +2 circumstance bonus to both his attack roll and his damage roll for having drunk the same number of pints.

What do you think?  *grin*


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