Mead and Beer are Gold for Ossipee

Left: Ash Fischbein (left) and Rob Finneron at Hobbs Tavern. Photo by Christine Carignan.

Cousins Ash Fischbein and Matt Trahan are prime examples of what can happen when you let a hobby run amok. The two had been making mead together since 1999, and 10 years later, after a family Christmas dinner, the two hatched their plan to start Sap House Meadery, which they launched in 2010.

Within three years they started Hobbs Tavern & Brewing Co. with a mission to grow both businesses, attract tourists and provide jobs.

And the companies are thriving. If only all hobbies ran this amok.

The cousins have worked in hospitality most of their careers—Fischbein as a chef at various NH restaurants, and Trahan as a line cook in Wolfeboro. “I was making mead for friends and family as a hobby until 2007 when I started to look to start a meadery,” Fischbein says. One fateful Christmas two years later, he and Trahan discussed a building in Center Ossipee that had come on the market. “Matt said, ‘why don’t we put [the meadery] there? We could do the work to get it going.’ I said, ‘you’re on.’ We closed on the building in January 2010,” Fischbein says.

They kept their day jobs while securing licenses and refurbishing the building for  commercial mead production. “We didn’t open until February 2011. What’s amazing is eight months later was my last day working in a restaurant for someone else,” Fischbein says. By October 2011, Sap House had distribution in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

But as Sap House has grown, so has the competition. When it opened, there were only 100 meaderies in the United States, Fischbein says, but now there’s about 650.  Fischbein likes the versatility of mead. “It can be like a beer or a wine. You can make it dry like Brut champagne or sweet like dessert wine. You can flavor in a million different ways,” he says.

Fischbein says he knew he and his cousin had something special to offer the marketplace when they opened and sold out of their initial 1,100 bottles of mead within nine weeks and then went on to earn a medal in spring 2011 at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition. Now Sap House has won upwards of 30 medals at various competitions around the word, has six employees, produces 2,500 to 3,000 bottles of mead per month and is sold in 700 stores nationwide, including 210 in NH. It also ships to 38 states online and added hard cider to its products.

Early on, Trahan and Fischbein noticed when people were done with tastings at the meadery, they didn’t want to leave but didn’t have anywhere to go. So in 2013, the duo decided it was time to expand and open a tavern and brewery. Cooking and food have “always been a passion of mine—the flavor profiles and center of plate presentation and tying it together,” Fischbein says. “It’s the experience of sitting down and enjoying yourself, the company and the food.”

The duo was approached by their now business partner Rob Finneron to purchase the former Whittier House restaurant, which they renovated into Hobbs Tavern & Brewing Co. (named after one of the founding families of Ossipee) to provide customers with a place to hang out and to help revitalize the downtown area, Fischbein says.

The rustic restaurant at Hobbs Tavern & Brewing Co., which opened in 2017, serves tapas-style dishes as well as session cocktails made with meads, beer, cider and wine. The brewery now produces 12 to 15 different craft beers, which are sold at the tavern and in 40 to 60 stores. Brewer Randy Booth recently earned a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado. During tourism season, Hobbs employs 70, which drops to 45 in the off-season. “We are one of largest employers in our town,” Fischbein says. The brewery, which bottles its beer, is now expanding to cans and has already run out of production room. To accommodate that, they are building a 9,000-square-foot production facility in Ossipee that is expected to open by year end. For more information, visit saphousemeadery.com or hobbstavern.com.