Colony Meadery
Pennsylvania meadery known for sports-themed meads and community partnerships.
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Colony Meadery got its start in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2013, then relocated to Easton in late 2022. The company bottles and cans dozens of mead varieties and also makes four hard ciders. Founders Mike Manning and Greg Heller-LaBelle launched the business when only three other meaderies existed in the state.
Manning had been home-brewing beer since 2002 and switched to mead in 2008; he met Heller-LaBelle, a craft beer blogger, at a 2012 tasting where Manning shared his mead. Heller-LaBelle liked it enough to convince Manning to go into commercial production with him the following year. All mead is brewed in-house, using orange-pollinated honey from apiaries in South Jersey.
Early growth
From 2013 to 2022, Colony operated out of a business incubator at 905 Harrison Street in Allentown. In 2014 it won the first “Commercial Mead Maker of the Year” award at the inaugural Mead Free Or Die competition in New Hampshire. The meadery added mead slushies in 2015. It has run events across the Lehigh Valley to promote mead generally, co-sponsoring local brewery competitions and fairs—including Bethlehem’s annual ChiliFest and Lehigh Valley Pride—and regularly participating in South Jersey events.
The brand is known for Philadelphia sports-themed meads. The most famous, Joel Em-Mead, launched in 2018 with cans featuring 76ers star Joel Embiid and inspired by his favorite drink, a shirley temple. That limited run sold out in five minutes and became a permanent menu item due to popularity.
In 2019, during Musikfest, Colony opened a second tasting room in South Bethlehem, replacing an earlier Bethlehem location that operated inside the Moravian Book Shop from 2015 to 2018 until Moravian College bought the building. That tasting room also sells local Lehigh Valley craft beers. In 2020 the meadery partnered with animal shelters, putting photos of adoptable dogs on its cans to encourage pet adoption.
Weyerbacher Brewing partnership
Colony had hoped to expand into a larger purpose-built brewery in 2020, but Governor Tom Wolf’s mandate that alcohol-serving businesses without food must close—a COVID-19 pandemic measure—ended those plans. To grow and leave the temporary Allentown incubator, Colony announced a partnership with Weyerbacher Brewing, producing mead in Weyerbacher’s brewery and opening a new tasting room on its ground floor.
Lore & Background
Colony Meadery was founded after Mike Manning, who began brewing craft beer in 2002 and switched to home-brewed mead in 2008, met craft beer blogger Greg Heller-LaBelle at a beer tasting in 2012. Heller-LaBelle enjoyed Manning's mead and convinced him to start full-time commercial production in 2013. The meadery brews all its mead in-house, using orange pollinated honey from apiaries in South Jersey.
From 2013 to 2022, Colony Meadery operated out of a business incubator at 905 Harrison St. in Allentown. In 2015, it expanded to include mead slushies. The brand is known for producing Philadelphia sports-themed meads, most famously the Joel Em-Mead made in 2018, whose can included images of Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid and was themed after the Shirley Temple, Embiid's self-proclaimed favorite drink.
The limited run sold out in five minutes and became a permanent menu item. Colony Meadery opened a second location, a tasting room in South Bethlehem during Musikfest in 2019, replacing an earlier Bethlehem location in the Moravian Book Shop that operated from 2015 to 2018 before the location was purchased by Moravian College. The tasting room also sells local craft beers from the Lehigh Valley. In 2020, the meadery partnered with local animal shelters, featuring pictures of dogs up for adoption on their cans to increase pet adoption.
The meadery hoped to expand into a larger purpose-built brewery in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic and Governor Tom Wolf's mandate that businesses serving alcohol without food shut down ended those plans. In an attempt to expand and move out of the Allentown incubator, Colony Meadery announced a partnership with Weyerbacher Brewing, producing their mead in Weyerbacher's brewery and opening a new tasting room on the ground floor. This move came after Weyerbacher's second bankruptcy in 25 years and a total shift in the company's direction.
Reader's Guide
Colony Meadery's significance lies in its role as an early commercial mead producer in Pennsylvania, being one of only four meaderies in the state at its founding. It has actively promoted mead culture in the Lehigh Valley through events such as co-sponsoring and attending local brewery competitions and fairs, including Bethlehem's annual ChiliFest and Lehigh Valley Pride events, as well as regularly participating in events in South Jersey. The meadery's innovative marketing includes Philadelphia sports-themed meads, with the Joel Em-Mead achieving notable rapid sell-out success. Its community engagement extends to partnerships with animal shelters, featuring adoptable dogs on cans.
The meadery's history reflects challenges common to small beverage producers, including forced relocation from a retail space purchased by a college and expansion plans derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The partnership with Weyerbacher Brewing represents a strategic adaptation to secure larger production facilities and a new tasting room, following Weyerbacher's financial difficulties. Colony Meadery's legacy includes its contribution to the growth of mead awareness in Pennsylvania and its creative approaches to branding and community involvement.
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Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Colony Meadery (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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