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

[Munin]

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.

 

[Fergus]

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*

 

[Fergus]

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.

 

[Fergus]

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!

 

[Fergus]

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.

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

 

[Amaroq]

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?'

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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'.

 

[jasper]

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.

 

[Fergus]

*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*)

 

[Gab]

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.