We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Luck a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Combining Our Old Norse Heritage With Our Love Of Mead We Came Together To Start A Little Project Called Four Brothers Mead. Through The Initial Support Of Our Family And Friends We Started To Take Root. Once Exposed To Others Outside Of That Small Sphere Is When We Started To Explode! Requests To Sample Our Mead Began Pouring In From Coast To Coast And Every Continent In The World Save Antarctica. We Have Established Relationships Along Old Norse Trade Routes With Our Fellow Mead Lovers. What Started As A Small Idea Of Four Veterans Coming Together To Make What We Love Has Quickly Exploded To A Globally Requested Old World Drink Worthy Of The Gods. As Many Of Our Patrons Have Told Us, “Odin Would Be Proud!”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The Four Brothers are Bryan, Chris, Joe, and Dan. We all enjoy Mead, and one day set out to create our own. The title and vision for the brand was clear: combining our ancestral background with a drink fit for the battle hardened warrior. We created an old-world product using only the best all natural ingredients to produce a drink worthy of the gods.

We offer a variety of different meads, currently about 15 different flavors. Our meads are made from real natural whole ingredients. We never use any artifical flavors, zero added sugars, no sulfites, no winemaking chemicals at all. Its literally water, honey, yeast, and whichever real fruits and spices we use as flavors. We wanted to make a mead the same way our ancestors made it over 100o years ago! We support local farmers and apiaries by sourcing our honey locally and use only real fresh harvested fruit.

One of our missions at Four Brothers Mead was to be able to give back to the Veteran and First Responder Communities. As Veterans ourselves we understand the importance and impact giving back helps those who need it the most! Each quarter we give back proceeds from our sales to a different non-profit organization which helps support American Veterans and First Responders.

Below is a little more about each of The Brothers and how we all met!
Bryan enlisted in the Army in 2008 as a Combat Medic and ETS’d as a Sergeant in 2020. He has had two overseas deployments with one to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. During this time, he became close friends with Chris and Joe.

Chris enlisted in the Army in 2005 and is currently serving in active reserve status as a Military Police Staff Sergeant. Bryan and Joe later joined Chris’s unit and deployed shortly after to Iraq. Then in 2010, Chris deployed to Afghanistan for his second tour and was operating out of FOB Salerno. Down the road, Chris, Bryan, and Joe became close friends; after another tour to Afghanistan in 2015, Chris went on to marry Joe’s sister and met his brother-in-law Dan. Chris deployed once more to a classified location in 2020.

Joe enlisted in the Army in 2007 as Military Police, where he met Bryan and Chris. Over the next few years the three became close and were introduced to Dan at a family BBQ. After a full contract, one short extension, and a deployment in Iraq, Joe ETS’d as a Staff Sergeant in November 2015. Starting in 2014 Joe served as local law enforcement in St. Louis, MO. Joe continues to support the American War Fighter and his service to our country and communities in a similar function.

Dan enlisted as active duty in the Air Force late 2003 as an Air Transportation Airmen and immediately deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom in early 2004 under the 5th Expeditionary Air Mobility Squadron. During this time, he was responsible for the secure shipment of classified material and deceased personnel during the early days of the war on terrorism. While deployed he worked with Mortuary Affairs to prepare and send home our real heroes who paid the ultimate price. A few years later he met Bryan and Chris through Joe.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As Veterans we were reborn out of the fires of adversity through blood sweat and tears. Resilience is something that we had to learn, and fast! The story of Four Brothers Mead is no exception.

A one gallon glass carboy (small fermentation vessel) and $20 in my pocket. That’s how Four Brothers Mead started back in 2018. I started with literally nothing and now run the largest Mead producer in the State of Missouri. Resilience.
It started out as a sloppy mess of honey all over my kitchen table and no formal processes or procedures. Just the passion and dream to craft an amazing mead and to be able to share with others one day. I pawned my first gallon of mead off on family and friends asking only for a small donation if they so chose to do so. With that sale I bought my second glass carboy and repeated the process. Two carboys turned into four, then eight, and so on. Word amongst our circle of friends began to spread about this mead I was making. Suddenly requests started pouring in for more. We were blown away.

Eventually we reached the “hobby” legal limit in Missouri of producing mead. We had to make a difficult decision. Do we continue this as a hobby between friends and family or take this to the next step. Enter, the OG Tank. We purchased our first “big” stainless steel tank. A 50 gal stainless fermentation vessel from Italy. We thought we were in the big leagues! During this process we realized that we were required by law to start producing in a commercially zoned space. We decided we wanted to continue to the adventure and make Four Brothers Mead a legal LLC so we began renting a small piece of commercial property with our new “big” fancy tank. That tank helped us grow substantially. It was with that tank that put us in our first couple small restaurants and our first liquor store. We quickly expanded to several more even larger tanks. We began picking up even more attention and attraction. At this point we had a small cult following. We needed a space to offer our mead to the public in person and be able to educate future patrons about our brand.

The Tasting Room and its magnificent timing!
We began renting an additional commercial space, this time to open up our tasting room. It was the fall of 2019. We began renting this beautiful building built in the late 1800’s, but had since been neglected and was falling apart. Throughout the winter of 2019 and into 2020 we poured countless hours and money into this building. Doing 99% of the work ourselves as we didn’t have but a few nickels to run together still at this point. Margins are tight and we were still trying to launch our brand. Months of rehab went by and the time came to finally set a huge grand opening party. We had grand plans to launch this brand to the next level. We set a grand opening date for Mid-March 2020…the same week COVID19 shut our county and city down!! No one was allowed to be out in public places. Small businesses were forced to shut their doors. It was a massive blow. Resilience!

As Veterans we were trained to quickly overcome adversity, adapt and overcome is the expression. We did just that. We immediately shifted to a “curbside” model, which wasn’t a thing back then. We had to make up rules on the fly while the country was paralyzed. We had rent to pay and money invested in product laying dormant. We scrapped and clawed and any opportunity we could to make it by. We were not eligible for any COVID related small business assistance as we were such a new business. We did not meet the criteria. Through the support of a small group of loyal patrons, word of mouth, and a lot of resilience we not only pushed through the worst of the COVID, but thrived! Since then we moved (again) into a larger 5000 square foot production facility and have thousands of gallons of fermentation tanks, we now distribute to hundreds of stores, and ship not only throughout the US but internationally! This year we placed in third in an International Wine and Mead competition in New York and took first place in a national competition.
We are now the largest mead producer in the State of Missouri. Resilience!

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We sell online through VinoShipper. They are a liquor license holder for Direct to Consumer shipping throughout the United States.

Contact Info:

• Website: fourbrothersmead.com
• Instagram: @fourbrothersmead
• Facebook: @fourbrothersmead
• Youtube: @fourbrothersmead
• Other: TikTok: @fourbrothersmead

Image Credits
Michael Winkler Photography took the one photo of the the mead splashing out of the glass.