By Emily R. Zarevich, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Anything tastes sweeter when it’s locally made. Backed By Bees is a Burlington-based honey farm located on 6214 Appleby Line, amidst Burlington’s fertile rural land. Backed By Bees specializes in its original honey soda and also mead, a delectable, centuries-old alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey with water and mixing in grains, fruits, hops (flowers of the hop plant), and spices. The expert who makes the mead happen at this thriving Burlington business is Vincent Sowa. As the resident meadmaker, Sowa oversees the manufacturing of this historical drink and makes it a priority to ensure high quality. Mead’s existence is estimated by food and drink historians to go back as far as 20,000–40,000 years ago. Why and how does Sowa make it now, and where does the honey industry stand in Burlington’s future? Sowa has agreed to share his story. Answers have been lightly edited for flow.
How did you become a meadmaker and when did you start working with Backed By Bees?
We founded the company in 2018, but I’ve been brewing mead for about 15 years. I was introduced to the product because prior to this, I was in the Navy. I had toured the world a little bit and I had seen the product in other countries and other areas of the world. When I got back to Canada and in particular Ontario, there really wasn’t anything. There were no products, there was really no way to get mead. You had to brew it at home to have it in your kitchen. I just started brewing from there, in my home, with a little bit of everything.
There is no formal training for mead-making. There actually is no educational programming in the world that will train you how to do it. Any meadmaker out there is pretty much in a self-taught trade. I started a homebrew club in Oakville just with my friends. I would brew them things and then get them to test it, like guinea pigs. I also love bees and the two worlds kind of coincided when I met my business partner David Stotesbury. He’s the beekeeper here.
What are the most rewarding aspects of working on a bee farm?
It’s connecting people to nature. I think that for David and me, it’s what we love to do. Anytime, anywhere, somebody can come out and experience the bees. I think there’s a kind of social education around the time you’re young — you’re socialized to think that bees are scary, and I think one of the most rewarding things is putting people in contact with nature and helping them have a much deeper appreciation for its balance. They appreciate what their role is and the decisions that they can make in their own lives that can impact things like climate change. It is empowering for people to understand that.
Can you describe the process of making mead?
It’s a big category. I love this topic because it’s bigger than beer, wine, or cider. I always tell people, if you can imagine it, I can probably brew it. If you can come up with a flavour profile that you want, you can brew it. Mead-making is really a bit of a blank slate. It’s mixing honey and water together, pitching some yeast, and then allowing that natural fermentation process to occur. And that can occur anywhere between 30 days to a year or up to three years, depending on the style of mead that you’re making.
And then there’s a lot of work on the backend to balance it and to balance between all the different flavour profiles. You know, acidity, saltiness, bitterness, sweetness. A lot of the process of mead-making actually is in thinking about the balance or thinking about how to drink it.
Beer is very much on what’s called the hot side, where you melt barley and you drink it fresh and young. In winemaking, you crush the grapes. It can take a year to ferment out, depending on what you’re making. Cider-making can be the same. It can take a year after you crush the apples. I can produce all kinds of mead because honey can be stored. I can make something more like a beer, on demand, or it can be made more like a cider or wine where it’s over the entire year.
Do you think that this area of Ontario has a strong agricultural future?
I am actually also chair of the Burlington Agricultural and Rural Affairs Advisory Committee. I’m quite involved with the agricultural community here in Burlington at least, and it’s shifting. In Burlington, we talk a lot about the rural-urban and farming community. It’s definitely been a trend where farms have moved out. We are on the last dairy farm in the area. I think Backed By Bees is one of the new farms to come in. That’s truly where our revenue is, from farming and beekeeping, and that is dying in Burlington.
I think without the political support to keep it going, we’ll just see a turnover into houses and estate properties in the north end, which I do feel is a big issue because we have so much opportunity to take some of this prime agricultural land and put it into production. It’s not going to feed the entire city, but it’s going to start to give people other options. I come from a farming community north of Waterloo, out in the St. Jacobs area, and even that is turning into more of a manufacturing base. I think with the “Buy Canadian” movement and the tariff threats, there is a large opportunity to refocus and re-shift and increase our own food security improvements.
Besides the on-premises store, Backed By Bees also sells its products at Farmer Jack’s, Denninger’s, and Blue Dot Acres. Sowa’s mead, however, can only be bought at the business’s main Appleby location. To sample the mead and learn more about it, there are a few options. Firstly, you can attend a regular Friday night BBQ at Backed By Bees from the May long weekend to Thanksgiving weekend in the fall, where mead will always be served. Interested clients can also sign up for mead tastings and classes here.
This is the fourth article in an ongoing series about people in Burlington who make their living with—what is now considered—unconventional careers. For the series’ first article on Helen Peacock, a Burlington-based psychic, please click here. For the second article on the art restorer and artist Joan Ng, please click here. For the third article on the escape rooms gamemaster Akhtar Syed, click here. If you know anyone who would make a suitable subject for this ongoing series, or if you feel that you would be a suitable subject yourself, please feel free to reach out to articles@local-news.ca.
