Even so, there aren't many commercial meaderies in the United States. Pennsylvania, for example, has only a few others—Apis Mead & Winery outside Pittsburgh, Laurel Highlands Meadery in Herminie, and Stonekeep Meadery in Berks County.

The Colony Meadery uses orange-blossom honey from New Jersey for their products' base. The honey is made through migratory beekeeping: The New Jersey orchards drive the hives to orange groves in the South. This honey is the meadery's most expensive ingredient, followed by the fruits they use. Their preference is for fresh local produce and ingredients. For most of the blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries they use in various meads, they rely on a berry farmer in the next county over. But when they make up a batch of their Piña Co-Me-Duh, it's not easy to locally source the 15 pounds of pineapple and 20 pounds of coconut that go into each batch.

These guys are not timid in their experimentation. Their Beso Exotico "combines the sweetness of honey and chocolate with the spice of cinnamon and cayenne;" their Pikwant Field is flavored with a blend of strawberries and kiwi; The Earle combines Earl Grey tea and garden herbs. They produce more than 20 different flavors, many of them seasonals and limited releases.

I tasted almost all of the meads they had on display at their tasting counter. None of them has the heaviness or thickness one might expect of a beverage made from honey. Some are surprisingly dry; most of them are light and crisp with a little bit of sweetness and the taste of whatever fruit has been added. The flavors are bold and distinct, as with the pepper and cinnamon in the Beso Exotico. One of their most popular is a flagship mead, Mo-Me-Doh, “a refreshing semi-sweet honey wine with mint and lime.” It was all that; both the mint and the lime really popped.

Manning and Heller-LaBelle have been at Bridgeworks since October of 2013 after spending 14 months completing all the federal, state, and local paperwork needed to get an alcohol-related business started. “Starting a business in a regulated industry will stoke one’s libertarian coals,” Heller-LaBelle told me. He went on to explain that a meadery in Pennsylvania is hampered because of state laws and the state-run liquor store system. Only wine and spirits can be sold in Pennsylvania's state stores. But it's a long and arduous process to get the state to accept new products. And because state law considers mead to be a wine, it can't be sold by the bottle at beer stores, even though their market is traditionally beer drinkers. It's a Catch-22ish situation. And a paradox that they find it much easier to get their product distributed in nearby New Jersey than in their own state.

Even so, Colony Meadery is managing to grow. They released their first meads to the public in January of this year. By August, their revenues already were “far exceeding” the expectations they laid out in their business plan. And the owners are steadily expanding Colony Meadery’s presence at bars and restaurants in eastern Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. They expect to produce 2,000 gallons of mead in 2014.

Naturally, Manning and Heller-LaBelle are delighted to have won big in recent national competitions. “It gives us validation,” Heller-LaBelle said. And, like their Bridgework neighbors, the HiJinx Brewing Company (profiled earlier here), Manning and Heller-LaBelle believe that a small craft-beverage maker can be an agent of change. “That was true here [in Bethlehem],” Heller LaBelle said. “Bethlehem’s post-industrial turnaround began in 1998 when Fegley took on the risk of taking over the old, abandoned Orr’s department store at the corner of Main and Broad and created the Bethlehem Brew Works. The Fegleys did this at a time when people weren’t opening brew pubs. But they took that risk and it paid off. That was the beginning of Main Street’s turnaround.”