We recently connected with Sean Walcek and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sean thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Mead is the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man and most people have never heard of it or tried it, Thousands of years ago, as people settled into agricultural based society wine and beer became more common as both were easier and cheaper to mass produce. However, in recent years Mead is enjoying a bit of a renaissance as people rediscover this wonderful beverage. Mead is made from fermented honey, is naturally gluten free, and can be made in many different styles. Our mission is to introduce people mead, specifically drier meads!

Sean, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started home brewing beer many years ago. After experimenting with brewing beer for several years I became interested in making mead. Making mead soon took over and became my primary focus and I knew this was more than a hobby. This is a way of life. There is something special about making and sharing a personally crafted mead with others. It brings people together when times are good, and when times are bad.

After trying a lot of commercially available mead, I realized there wasn’t a lot of dry mead available. So much of what’s out there is sweet. Cloyingly sweet. So I saw this as an opportunity to open people’s eyes to what is possible with mead. A little planning, a lot of work, and a few years later that dream became a reality when I opened 5/4 Meadery in Roswell Georgia in 2020.

5/4 Meadery is a small family business committed to crafting top shelf meads that aren’t extremely sweet. If you’ve never had mead or you have and you think you don’t like it, you need to try a 5/4 Mead.

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

My original plan was to open 5/4 Meadery with my father as my partner. We had worked together for almost 20 years running EJW Associates, Inc. an advertising & marketing company focused on B2B located in Alpharetta Georgia. He would handle the creative side, I would handle the technical side of things. It was a perfect fit. In fact, the name 5/4 Meadery was his idea as he was a huge fan of jazz, and I am a musician and music lover also. One of his favorite songs was Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, which is written in a 5/4 time signature. It’s an unusual time signature and mead isn’t your typical beverage so we ran with it.

Planning for the meadery started in 2017. Unfortunately, in late 2018 my father was struck by a car while riding his bike home from work and sustained a traumatic brain injury that left him paralyzed and ultimately took his life about 6 months later in 2019. While still wrestling with the loss of my father, my mother was diagnosed with late stage cancer and passed away later that same year. It was not an easy decision to make, but I decided to stick with the plan and push forward as a way to honor both of them. I know it’s what they would have wanted.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Opening 5/4 Meadery in 2020 was interesting to say the least. We received our final permits and licenses for 5/4 Meadery in January 2020, projected opening in April but by that time the Covid pandemic was in full swing. The timing was terrible for our business type. We are a Meadery with a tasting room, so in essence a drink only bar that makes it’s own beverages. One of the most adversely impacted types of business during the pandemic.

We delayed opening as long as we could, hoping the pandemic would subside but it just kept going. So we went ahead and opened in November 2020. We had to pivot to a lot of curb side pickup and online sales. I went back to moonlighting as a web developer with some long time clients from my previous life, which worked out nicely. There’s a lot of flexibility with IT work in general so I was able to keep things afloat during that time. Luckily working remotely became a more accepted way of doing business and that made it easier to keep things flowing while juggling the new business and a handful of IT clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.54meadery.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/five_four_meadery
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/54Meadery
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/54meadery
• Yelp: https://yelp.com/biz/5-4-meadery-roswell