Everett's Best Kept Secrets: Aesir Meadery

Editor’s note: Originally published September 20, 2016.

It is not wrong to call Everett brewer Erik Newquist an expert on mead, but it is something of an understatement. His knowledge of honey wine is encyclopedic, palpable, and contagious. Behind his wild beard and steel rimmed glasses lies nine thousand years of tradition waiting to be poured out.

My wife and I recently visited his shop at Aesir Meadery. The brewery is located in the alley between Colby and Wetmore, just north of Everett Ave. It’s an inconspicuous place with a generic rolling door so keep your eyes peeled when you go.

We stood in front of a stainless steel table as Erik carefully decanted samples of his craft. He narrated the tasting, highlighting ingredients selected from local sources. Organic cocoa nibs from Theo Chocolate in Fremont. Lingonberry, a northern European delicacy, available only at IKEA.

We sampled sarsaparilla root mead (tastes like root beer), blackberry and citrus meads. Erik took us across a broad spectrum of flavor in a few woozy-boozy minutes.

Erik told us that he started brewing in college while he was pursuing degrees in microbiology and chemistry, which makes sense. He is a flavor tinkerer—incorporating whatever comes to hand seasonally into his brew.

On the day we visited, he was standing next to a pyramid of five gallon food grade buckets. The lids were labeled with green sticky notes: “cider” and “mash”.

“A friend brought me 450 pounds of Gravenstein apples,” he said. “I was like, ‘okay…?’ So I built a cider press last week.” Sure enough, he gestures to a tall wooden frame made of two-by-fours. It took him 13 hours to process the fruit into cider and required the use of a conventional blender, a butcher knife and a perforated bucket.

I interpret this as a tribute to his craftsmanship. The Aesir shop is part science lab, part brewery, part museum. A mead horn hangs from a ceiling beam next to a wooden sign that says “mead hall.” Erik teaches mead making classes on the regular at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard.

Right now Aesir mead can be found in select upscale retailers throughout Washington (think cheesemongers and wine shops). You can pick up a bottle locally at the Sno-Isle Food Co-op.

Erik plans to scale-up soon and start distributing across state lines. He wants to get a bigger space in Everett to accommodate the rising demand for his product. Mead is now the fastest growing sector in the alcohol industry.

“I’m one hundred percent Scandinavian,” Erik says at one point during our tasting. “I love making mead. This is who I am.”