On today's episode, we bring back Susan Ruud and introduce you to Fargo, North Dakota's Prairie Rose Meadery. Learn a bit about the buisness and how they came to be. We hope you can get a chance to try some of their award winning meads. Cheers!

https://www.prairierosemeadery.com

SPEAKERS

Susan Ruud, Connor Brekke

Connor Brekke  00:04

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics about alcohol. From beer styles, the brewing process, distillation, spirits and even liquor laws, there's a fascinating world to discover. On today's episode, we learn how Fargo North Dakota's very own Prairie Rose Meadery came to be. Joining me today is Susan Ruud of Fargo, North Dakota's very own Prairie Rose Meadery. I'm your host Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to The Ombibulous. 

Connor Brekke  00:41

Hello, everybody and welcome back to the show. I'm joined once again with Susan from Prairie Rose mediary here in Fargo, North Dakota. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming back on. We're going to talk about North Dakota mead. The previous episode we talked about what mead is. But, I'm going to introduce you to Susan and Prairie Rose Meadery today. All right, so Susan, let people know who you are and how you got into the mead world.

Susan Ruud  01:09

Hi, I'm Susan Ruud. My husband and I, my husband Bob, and myself have started prairie Rose Meadery. We started making mean I guess at home in the early 90s. I work at, I also work at NDSU in plant pathology. So some friends of mine, we would sit at coffee, coworkers, and they were homebrewers. They made mead. So I would listen to them talking about brewing and. I think I went, went over to their house a few times tried some home beers and some home meads. And from the first second, we tried mead, both my Bob and I absolutely loved mead. I think a week or so after we had our first mead, we had a friend out and he was showing us how to make mead we we sat on our deck and made a batch mead and drink some beers and more mead. And yeah, it was a great time. I remember the date October 12, 1996 my first mead, I only remember that because it was my parents anniversary and the couple that was showing us how to make the mead it was their anniversary. It's kind of fun. 

Susan Ruud  02:20

So we started making mead in 96. Got into home brewing both mead and beer. When I go into hobby I go gung ho so, entered a few competitions and won a few medals, both in beer and mead and and then I joined the American Home Brewers Association and ran for their board. Oh, at that time, it was a board of advisors. And actually I won I don't know how. I actually attribute that to some of my really good homebrewing friends in Kansas City. They had a fairly big club at the time and I went down to some of their competitions. And so I think them and the Minneapolis crowd probably voted for me so I have to thank them because that just got me into many, many years of being immersed in home brewing and meat making all across the US. You go to their conferences, you meet people on the East Coast people on the West Coast, center the country, so I get to know a lot of homebrewers a lot of mead makers, both home and professional and it just grew from there. So I believe I was on that governing... er it was a board of advisors turned into a governing committee for the American homeowners association for almost 20 years