Sugarbelt Mead Festival set
This isn’t your mother’s wine festival.
It might just be your 14th great grandmother’s though.
“There’s a big mead culture at the Renaissance fairs, so you’ll see a fair amount of mead being served at Renaissance fairs,” said Tony Qualls, co-owner of Manic Meadery. “But usually not just a mead festival that kind of mimics the beer festivals where you have multiple vendors from around the country get together and pour their libations.”
That is, until now. The second annual Sugarbelt Mead Festival, which bills itself as the country’s biggest mead-focused festival, will be held from 2-6 p.m. May 21 at Bulldog Park in Crown Point. Mead is a particular type of wine made from primarily honey, combined with fruits and other ingredients, Qualls said.
“What we did notice is there’s a lot of beer fests that happen all the time, and there’s not really any mead-focused festivals,” Qualls said. “So it was just natural for me to kind of want to use the beautiful park we have in our town.”
Manic Meadery in Crown Point organizes the event. The meadery is co-owned by Qualls and his best friend since sixth grade, Keith Cantwell. Qualls, who has an event planning background, said they poured mead at a few beer events at the park, and thought he would like to use his connections with associates around the country that make mead and try to gather them for the country’s largest mead-focused festival.
“I think we definitely successfully achieved that …” he said. “I haven’t found any mead festival that even compares to it in the United States.”
In its inaugural year last year, 800 tickets were sold, with 20 different meaderies from around the country and two local breweries pouring samples. In addition, three food trucks were on site and the Joe Marcinek Band, who will play again this year, provided live entertainment.
“This year we’re trying to grow it a little bit,” Qualls said. “We have it capped off at 1,200 (tickets).”
The $75 general admission ticket includes a swag pack with a commemorative glass and other items.
“The four hours you just get unlimited samples from all 30 vendors, unlimited bottles of water and entertainment,” Qualls said.
A $25 designated driver ticket provides the same access, without the alcohol, but with an area providing soft drinks/nonalcoholic beverages.
“Mead comes in all sizes and shapes. There’s beer-strength meads that are in the 5-6% range, and there’s meads that are 15% alcohol,” Qualls said. “Obviously we’re not pouring full glasses of that, it’s samples. But four hours of that and you can certainly not be in a position to drive, and we certainly encourage responsible consumption and ride sharing.”
If the weather is nice, some yard games will be set up on the open grassy area of the park. The event will take place rain or shine.
“It’s a beautiful open-air venue with a cover on it, so you’re protected from rain in case the weather’s bad,” Qualls said. “Even if the weather doesn’t quite cooperate, there’s plenty of space for people to be covered and not just be standing in the rain.”
As of press time, ticket sales were right around last year’s attendance of 800, with a couple of weeks left to sell tickets.
“This year we’re at 28 meaderies and two breweries, so we’ve expanded vendors as well,” he said.
Four food trucks will be on site for sales, including Pappas Restaurant & Bar, Manta Latin Kitchen, Sizzlebox and Elevated Pie Co.
Similar to last year, a charity raffle will raise funds for the Suicide Prevention Hotline. Last year it raised just over $8,000, Qualls said.
“So many people are affected by suicide and depression and mental health illness every year that we thought it was a very unifying kind of thing, and we got a really great response, so we’re going to do that again this year for the charity raffles,” he said.
Manic Meadery opened about five years ago, although plans at first were a little different.
“We originally were going to be a brewery, and we decided that a winery fit into this area cause there wasn’t one around in Lake County, Indiana. So we decided to open a meadery,” Qualls said. “We saw a trend in the U.S. of it coming back.
“It’s actually the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man that was purposely fermented. There’s been a lot of meaderies opening. I think the last I checked there’s over 700 meaderies in the U.S. at this point. But it’s still kind of underground and doesn’t see a lot of attention in pop culture as much.
“So we kind of took a chance because we thought the brewery market was a little oversaturated and opened up the winery,” he said. “And after a couple of years, we saw a really great response from our community here in Crown Point and we participated in a lot of international competitions and mead advocacy and such. We also work with a lot of beekeepers because we use around 25,000 pounds of honey every year.”
While the venue doesn’t allow package sales, vendors are allowed to sell other merchandise such as T-shirts. It also gives mead enthusiasts a chance to connect with vendors from around the country and potentially order from them in the future if they offer shipping.
“A lot of the stuff isn’t in distribution,” Qualls said. “You can’t go find it at Binny’s. Some are, yes, but a lot of these are very small sort of Ma and Pa type of wineries.”