Thirsty Bee Meadery

Kelly and Matthew Brantley have been making honey through their family business, BZ Honey for about eight years now. They decided to expand their honey business to a meadery with the opening of Thirsty Bee Meadery in January of 2020. Thirsty Bee Meadery is located on Commerce Street in Old Town Tomball, just a few doors past their BZ Honey store.

My parents happened to be visiting from Louisiana recently and a visit to Tomball is always an enjoyable outing for us while they are in town. I figured a visit to Thirsty Bee Meadery would be a fun stop during our Tomball visit. Our first stop was as the Tomball Farmers Market where we met Matthew Brantley at the BZ Honey table. The Brantleys are familiar faces to those that visit Houston area farmers markets as they participate in quite a few in the Houston area. They have expanded their farmers market presence to now include their Thirsty Bee meads. Our next stop was at the Tejas Burger Joint for lunch. Yes, the Smokehouse burger is worthy of the hype and is now one of my favorite burgers.

After lunch we made the short walk to Thirsty Bee Meadery where we met Kelly and the Brantley daughters. They were happy to share lots of great info about their meads, their honeys, and their family business. All of their meads are made on-site from their BZ honey. This is truly a hive to glass business. I learned how the type of plant the bees get their pollen from greatly influences the flavor of the honey and in turn the mead. In a way, mead can exhibit terroir just like wine made from grapes.

The Brantleys did a great job with their space incorporating the Old Town Tomball feel and details of beekeeping throughout the tasting room. The tasting flight boards are made from beehive boxes and there’s even a shelving unit built in the form of a honeycomb. These touches add to the Thirsty Bee’s welcoming feel.

Thirsty Bee Meadery has draft-style meads with lower ABVs that drink like a beer and dry meads with higher ABVs that drink like a dry white wine. They offer a flight of three meads, meads by the glass, and growler fills of meads. They are in the process of bottling meads as well.

We tried a flight which included:

• OG Dry Mead – Made with raw honey from Tomball, dry, 7.2% ABV
• Boozeberry – A blueberry Melomel (fruit flavored mead), sweet, 4.5% ABV
• White Paw – A strawberry and peach Melomel, semi-dry, slightly carbonated, 7.5% ABV

We enjoyed all of the meads in the flight. My favorite was the OG Dry Mead, while my mom’s favorite was the Boozeberry. The range of mead offerings means there is something that matches well with everyone’s tastes. They have several other meads available and are rotating through some of their flavors to help them determine their customers’ favorites. They also have charcuterie boards for those that want to snack while enjoying a glass of mead.

Over the past few years I have seen Old Town Tomball become a much more popular town with the growing farmers market and an increase in good restaurants and fun shops. Thirsty Bee Meadery is a great addition and I plan to add it to my regular Tomball trip stops. Customers can follow them on their Facebook page to see when new meads are available, special events, and their farmers market schedule.