By Richard Bell
If you were looking for the best mead in Canada, Musquodoboit Harbour would be an unlikely place to start.
But at this year’s All Canadian Wine Championships, the Harbour’s own Fireside Meadery won a double gold for its Ember Metheglin mead (made with water, honey, and spices), the best in its category, and a gold for its other mead offering, Sunset Cyser (made from apple cider and honey).
Fireside Meadery belongs to Connor Jeffreys and Maria Young. Young grew up on the Eastern Shore. The two met while attending an overseas university program in Ireland at Atlantic Technological University of Sligo. He was studying fermentation, while she was in performing arts.
“From a very young age, I knew I wanted to brew,” Jeffreys said. “It started from my dad making wine in the basement.” Jeffreys pursued his interest in fermentation at Durham College. “Before I left for Ireland, I actually tried making mead, and the very first recipe I tried making was a cyser. It turned out well. I thought it was okay, but not a great, great product.”
Back in Musquodoboit Harbour, Young’s father Andrew had been doing his own brewing. “When Maria and I moved to Musquooboit Harbour, I bonded with Andrew over making mead,” Jeffreys said. “He’d had an alcohol-making hobby for a couple of years, and really dove into it during the Covid lockdowns. He’d been looking into making different things and thought mead would be really interesting. Andrew was the one who really introduced us to exploring this craft.”
Jeffreys kept experimenting until he found a recipe for a cyser that he thought was “really really good. I brought it to all our family functions, and got everyone to try to it, and they all thought it was really good.”
“One of the things that Connor said he always wanted to do is to be an entrepreneur and start a business,” Young said. “After trying all these amazing products and knowing his passion for brewing, I'm like, well, we have the opportunity to do this now. We're not getting any younger, so we decided to incorporate the business in 2022.”
They went through the process of getting all the necessary permits and started building up stock. They began selling at Farmer’s Markets in the spring of 2024. When they saw the opportunity to set up a combination brewery and sales outlet in the center of Musquodoboit Harbour, they decided to grab it.
Young emphasized how important her father has been in getting their business off the ground. “My Dad is an absolute godsend,” Young said. “He's always been incredibly supportive of anything that me or my brother have ever wanted to do since we were very young.
He was a stay-at-home dad.
At the core, I would say our business is a family business.”
At their shop at 11 East Petpeswick Road, visitors can enjoy the new deck that Jeffreys just completed or sit inside. They offer samples of their two award-winning meads, with a well-stocked supply of full bottles. They also offer coffee and tea.
One of the shop’s more unusual offerings is a collection of drinking horns made from the horns of water buffalo, in homage to legends about the Vikings drinking from animal horns. They started buying horns from online auctions across Nova Scotia. Their current supplier lives in India, just south of Nepal. They’re looking into purchasing horns from a water buffalo farm in Lunenburg.
[The Firesign Meadery’s website is at https://www.firesidemeadery.com.
The phone number is 782-414-3200, and the email address is [email protected].
