acid alchemists
The faces of The MadHouse Vinegar Co.
Justin Dean, Co-Owner
Born in Asheville, NC and raised in the backroads of Kentucky’s farmland, it was only natural that he follow the winding contours of the terrain from Field to Fork. Beginning at his parents’ farm in Mason County where he attended high school, his path led to Providence, RI where he graduated from Johnson & Wales with a degree in Food & Beverage Management. From there, he honed his skills at the Maisonette, a restaurant with the longest running streak of five-star awards from the Mobil Travel Guide.
With an accumulated 30 years of experience in the food and beverage industry, he helped open more than a dozen concept restaurants and collaborated on countless side projects, including working with Woodlands Pork and Black Oak Holler Farm. It was in these wooded mountains of West Virginia where he got a taste for carving up perfect, porcine samples of woodlands mast finished hogs nearly 15 years ago.
These days, when not ensconced in with his kids’ sports activities, he spends his time working with schools to improve the quality and nutrition of meals being served, keeping the vinegar bubbling, giving new life to food waste, and continuing to spread the good food gospel to those that like to eat.
richard stewart, co-owner
An Ohio native and former illustrator and designer, he has managed historical Carriage House Farm for the past sixteen years. During this time he has helped support the local food and brewery scene in the Cincinnati region by shifting from commodity crops to native plant and fruit/produce production. With a focus on intense, but sustainable production, he has turned what was once an unknown, family-owned Ohio Century Farm, into a community leader, helping local not-for-profits and reestablishing old breeds of native plants such as pawpaws, spicebush, and elderberry.
Carriage House Farm currently supplies a wide range of regional chefs and upscale retailers and offers an on-farm dinners series that brings the local food concept full-circle, with the chefs the farm supplies coming out to the countryside and doing dinners for small groups of guests.
He partnered with Justin Dean in 2013 to begin working on vinegar production. Carriage House Farm will act as host for the MadHouse Vinegar Co. once it enters full-production and become the single source for a majority of the herbs and fruit used in the process.
Codee Adams, production & strategy
A multidisciplinary designer and multifaceted farmer, when he's not managing the Carriage House Farm brand or tending the orchard, he's on-boarding in the Madhouse production space and helping the brand take shape.