The Mead Institute from A to Z

Welcome to The Mead Institute!

About the Mead Institute

The Mead Institute is a nonprofit international membership organization for mead professionals and consumers that promotes education and global quality standards. We strive to uphold the values of quality, integrity, diversity, and hospitality in our materials and programing.The Mead Institute is dedicated to delivering mead education and quality standards in an accessible and inclusive format. Our mission is to establish mead as a 1,000-year industry by developing superior standards for tasting, quality, and instruction about mead, and disseminating them through professional channels to employees, consumers, retailers, distributors, and the media.   

Who We Are

The Mead Institute is comprised of a group of a very diverse group of individuals. Founded by Ken Schramm, Frank Golbeck, and Alyson Schramm Naeger. We are comprised of six board members.

	ALYSON SCHRAMM NAEGER Mead Institute Chair and co-founder of Schramm’s Mead and Schramm’s Orchards. Certified Sommelier, Certified Cicerone, Certified Specialist of Wine, and Certified Specialist of Spirits
	FRANK GOLBECK Mead Institute Co-Chair and founder of Golden Coast Mead
	KEN SCHRAMM Founder of Schramm’s Mead, Schramm’s Orchards and the Mazer Cup Mead Competition. Author of The Compleat Meadmaker
	CARVIN WILSON Owner of Carvin Software and Mazer Cup Competition Organizer.  American Mead Makers Association and the National Homebrew Competition 2019 Mead Maker of the Year
	PETE BAKULIĆ Mazer Cup Competition President. Mead, beer, and wine competition judge
	CHRISSIE MANION ZAERPOOR Author of The Art of Mead Tasting and Food Pairing and owner of Kookoolan World Meadery and Kookoolan Farms

Membership Tiers

There are essentially six different tiers of Mead Institute Memberships. If you aren’t sure exactly which tier you fit in, please do not hesitate to shoot us an email! Some of our tiers are fairly self explanatory, in particular for Educational Institutions, Meadery & Meadery-in-Planning, Distributors of mead, Retails of mead both on and off-premise. Retailer memberships are tiered based off of their number of brick-and-mortar locations from zero to four, five to eleven, and twelve or more. Decade Memberships are available to meaderies who are interested and able to support the Mead Institute in such a major way. This tier of membership is especially valuable to established meaderies interested in increasing mead knowledge worldwide. It is also perfect for savvy meaderies who want to get in early and save money down the road safe guarding against future membership price increases. Industry Supplier memberships are available to honey, packaging, fruit, spice, barrel suppliers and more! Individual memberships are also available. Individual mead lovers, home meadmakers, and supporters should join under the Mead Aficionado membership tier. Individual memberships are available to our industry allies at a slight discount under the Individual Professional membership tier. This tier is for bartenders, sommeliers, cicerones, bottle shop employees or members of the media looking to expand their knowledge of mead and the mead industry. Members at this tier must be actively employed in alcohol service, sales, or journalism.

Anyone unable to join the Mead Institute due to pandemic related work loss is encouraged to contact us directly for assistance with membership fees.