Some ancient beverages are too good to be lost to the past. Viking Braggot Co. in Eugene, Ore., is the only brewery in the country to exclusively brew braggots—a drink pioneered by the Vikings that combines hops and honey.

“We do the hybrid between mead and beer,” Viking co-founder Dan McTavish says. “Mead is 100-percent honey that’s closer to a wine, and beer is all barley that you ferment. We do the grain and the honey that we ferment together. Like a honey ale.”

Although mead is arguably one of the oldest-known fermented beverages, braggots aren’t far behind, according to the American Home Brewer’s Association. Honey has been traditionally used throughout history as a strengthening agent in fermented beverages, which were most popular in Europe throughout the post-Renaissance period up until the 1800s.

Viking Braggot was established in 2013 by McTavish, 30, and Perry Ames, 32. When McTavish was in his senior year at the University of Oregon, he had the idea that he wanted to form a brewery. A friend of his at the time was working in a meadery. “I thought that was different,” McTavish says, “brewing with honey.”

McTavish started with his own homebrewing at the time, playing with the concept of braggot style, but he knew that in order to go from the five-gallon scale to the 200-gallon scale the company is now operating at, he would need someone with more experience.

That’s where Ames came in. He had brewery experience, having worked at a small brewery in Florence, off the Oregon Coast, for a few years. At the time he was part of a homebrew club—Brew of O, a play on the University of Oregon—which was how he met McTavish.

“It was perfect timing that he had the experience with a small-scale brewery and was looking to get back into it,” McTavish said.

With two Eugene locations and 18 employees, Viking Braggot brews four flagship beers and two to four rotating seasonal beers each quarter. Although they are eventually looking to grow their own hops and keep their own bees, at the moment they partner with small, local farms.

Their primary hop supplier is based in Philomath, and honey for their year-round brews comes from Hummingbird Wholesale.

“[Honey] can go anywhere from super light in color and thin and viscous, to really sweet, to a buckwheat that is pretty much black and really thick, which tastes smokey on a level,” McTavish says. “It’s really wild.”