The Fat Friar’s Meadery

I feel obligated to write a speedy review for this place since it has none so here goes… I had never heard of the Fat Friar’s Meadery until last week. We took some friends to visit Maine Meadworks and while there I noticed a poster called The ME Wine Trail– it listed vineyards, wineries and meaderies in Maine. Perfect since I was just Googling for said info last week! We decided to stop by Fat Friar’s on our way home from Acadia. We took some crazy back roads and truth be told I was feeling a bit ill upon arrival. Speaking of arrival…
–the meadery and tasting room are in the brewer’s home! Seriously. Don’t be alarmed. (I was a bit shocked by this personally.)
–After following the hand painted signs we ended up in the «tasting room» aka the brewer/owner’s basement. We were greeted by the owner and master brewer himself, Sean! He was very friendly and happy to see us and launched straight into the tasting.
–The tasting room was under construction which was a bummer, but clearly a coincidence. I was distracted by the very strong paint smells but I plowed ahead. I came this far, right?
–Sean walked us through the mead tasting. He was very knowledgable and answered all our questions including mine «can you tell us how exactly mead is made?». He was passionate, humble, and made mead-​making sound easy!
–the tasting was FREE! We tried about 6 or 7 different types of mead. They included: Traditional semi-​dry, Lemon ginger, Hot pepper, Cherry and my fav– Maya which had cloves and cinnamon. Sadly there was only one bottle left of this and our friends snagged it.
I have to be completely honest and say I did not love the mead. I’d say it’s more traditional compared to say Maine Meadworks (MM) which was more my style BUT my 3 companions all really enjoyed it and most of them preferred it to MM! Sean and his wife kindly let us use their bathroom (in their house) and we got to meet their sweet dog and kitty. So bonus points for that!
Note that Fat Friar’s is down the street from Oxbox so I’d suggest hitting both up. All in all a very personal and unique experience with quality mead– check it out! :-)