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

[Lonely Tylenol]

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.

 

[Fergus]

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.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

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.

 

[dontpunkme]

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.

 

[Umbran]

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.

 

[VirgilCaine]

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

ROFLOL.

 

[Fergus]

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*

 

[Umbran]

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.

 

[jasper]

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.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

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.