Welcome to Old Station Honey & Mead
We craft a variety of meads with honey, berries and herbs, sourced from our own farm and local growers. We’re looking forward to sharing our love of bees and mead.
We craft a variety of meads with honey, berries and herbs, sourced from our own farm and local growers. We’re looking forward to sharing our love of bees and mead.
Est. 2019
The story of how Old Station Honey & Mead came to be is a long and winding one.
A guest once asked me, “how long have you been working at this,” and I responded, “sixty-one years.”
And while that’s true, the immediate story is shorter than that.
Our mead-maker lives less than a kilometre from the meadery, where he and his wife have a greenhouse and berry orchard and where they began keeping bees eight years ago.
The couple combined their love of berries and honey together into the hobby of mead-making six years ago.
And honestly, it was never meant to be anything more than a hobby… until one day, our mead-maker heard their little hamlet was going to get a new district fire station.
He went to the councillor and asked what the county intended to do with the old district fire station. The county was considering demolishing it because it didn’t want the the hassles of an old building with no purpose.
That’s when the idea to take a hobby and turn it into something more began. We approached the county about selling or renting the building so we could establish a meadery.
“Meadery?” asked one of the councillors. “I didn’t even know you had cows.”
That was in 2018, before Covid changed everything, but the county stepped up and bought into the idea that a small town could take an old public building and create something new and fun… using the agricultural products it’s had for a century.
We opened our doors the first weekend of May, 2022. We craft mead from honey, fruit and herbs all produced right here in Leduc County.
We currently have six meads on offer, and some ‘BeeBerry’ (our mascot) merchandise. Check in often as we continue to build the tasting room, add a variety of meads (including sparkling and non-alcoholic honey sodas).
In future, we’ll offer a light menu, great coffee and cookies so the tasting room (formerly the Training Room of the local fire station), can be a rural rendezvous of sorts, where you can relax and slow down.
We’re brand new to the mead scene in Alberta, and currently we have seven meads (three sparkling and four still).
Sadly, we’re currently SOLD OUT of Mile 25. It’s made with a very unique varietal of honey that’s tough to get right now because the bees didn’t have the best season. If all goes well for the bees, we’ll have it back on our shelves by September, 2023.
This mead is known in mead circles as a ‘bochet.’ We lightly caramelize this unique varietal of honey over a couple of days before pitching the yeast.
We’ve also carefully chosen a yeast to release a slightly fruity nose.
In the 1960s and 70s, Edmonton Journal political cartoonist Yardley Jones would use the Village of New Sarepta to poke fun at rural Alberta. He created a fictitious industry to use in his cartoons, which he dubbed, “The Tire & Girdle Factory.”
This almost traditional mead is mead in its simplest form… honey, water and yeast. It’s a great place to begin your understanding of mead.
It was an old saskatoon berry farm that drew us to New Sarepta. The honey bees came later… and the mead making after that. We use our own local honey and our own saskatoon berries to craft this semi-sweet wine with that just screams “prairie summer.”
The Ministik Bird Sanctuary is located about 8 miles south of the meadery.
Think champagne or prosecco. This traditional sparkling mead was created with ‘local’ in mind. It’s a traditional mead, sparkled to awaken your taste buds. Great paired with seafood, fowl and some Asian dishes like noodles or even sushi.
A wonderful mead to serve friends at your next festive dinner.
We named this sparkling raspberry mead ‘Miquelon’ after our local provincial park.
This mead has a light raspberry flavour and colour. Enjoy it anytime you want something light and fruity.
Unfortunately, this amazing mead sold out quickly. We’re going to get another batch into the fermenter before the end of October to have ready for the new year.
We just didn’t anticipate the demand for this deep, delicious. It’s been our best seller since it hit the shelves in June.
No one ever uses ALL their rhubarb. We asked New Sareptilians to bring us any of their own rhubarb they weren’t going to use. We though we might get 50 lbs. But The People responded with amazing support and we collected over 900 lbs. We named it “The People’s Barb” in honour of good people of New Sarepta who generously collected their rhubarb to support the project.
If you like rhubarb, this sparkling mead is for you. We added a hint of sweet raspberry to balance the tartness of the rhubarb, resulting in a delightful tangy-sweet drink that can be paired with dark chocolate.
Check back soon for updates!
Phone: (780) 297-3811
Email wf.munsey@gmail.com
