Our Story
Hi! We're Jeff and Pierre.
We're Jeff Gillham and Pierre Vacheresse, two Vancouver boys chasing a dream of establishing our own meadery in affordable Vancouver, BC. We're dedicated to re-crafting an ancient drink and bringing it back to the table.
The humble twosome met in 2009 while working in the restaurant industry. A few years later Jeff started experimenting with old mead recipes trying to make them more in line with the craft beers and ciders he loved. Then one day Pierre owed Jeff a golf game and to Pierre's disappointment, Jeff brought some of his homebrewed mead. After trying some Pierre knew there was potential for this to be more than a fun hobby. After months of creating a business plan and studiously trying many batches of mead they were ready to make it a real business. With a bit of luck, some hard work and a lot of support from family and friends they found a small space in East Vancouver to brew the mead and an apiary that was willing to send large amounts of honey to a small bootstrapping startup.
We're inspired by quality ingredients and unique flavours, with all our meads we hope to ride the line of familiar and new, something to make your palette need a few more sips to make up its mind. We purchase our honey from a Canadian apiary and take care to source all the elements of our mead from suppliers that practice sustainability.
We hope you enjoy our meads as much as we've enjoyed making them, and hopefully one day when you offer a friend a mead it won't be followed by the question "What is Mead?"
Humblebee Meadery's History
2015
We finished our business plan, found a production space and incorporated our name
2016
At the beginning of the summer we were approved by the LDB to sell our mead! We launched The Bee's Knees and Champion of the Sun.
2017
We began to sell at local farmers markets and were overwhelmed by the response and the importance of being able to have people sample our drink
2018
Monkberry Moon Delight was launched and was received very well, still waiting on a letter from Sir Paul McCartney.
2019
We spent a lot of time refining our processes and developing experimental flavours which we hope to share with you someday
2020
With the pandemic COVID-19 businesses everywhere have had to pivot and evolve, we have been so fortunate to have the support of so many people throughout BC that are making the extra effort to buy our mead and keep us in business.
It's Business Time was also launched, stay tuned to see what happens next...
2037
First meadery opens on the Moon.