BmoreArt

The journey from home fermenters to Good Food award-winning manufacturers was a long road. Back in 2012, Baltimore City had never licensed a fermentation facility. Meaghan spent countless hours at the health department and home researching food safety in other regions and states before becoming Baltimore’s first fully licensed and approved fermented food facility, a fact they proudly state on their website. 

In 2022, the couple opened their sibling business, Hex Superette, a market, bar, and tasting room in the front of their manufacturing facility on York Road. The sun-drenched dining room overlooks the grocery store. Shane and Meaghan sit on the window bench, their silhouettes leaning comfortably close, their gaze adoring and anticipatory, watching the other speak as though they are singing a duet. 

Before they met, both grew up in the Midwest and came to Baltimore with no plan to stay. The couple’s trajectories were nearly parallel until the day they finally intersected, a love grown over fermented foods. Meaghan was an artist. Shane was a photographer. Meaghan’s gut health journey began after an illness overseas in Ireland was alleviated with her first encounter with kombucha. Shane had adopted a diet centered on living foods after losing his dad to colon cancer.

When the two began dating, Meghan went snooping for compatibility. “I open up his fridge and I see yogurt and kimchi and was like, we might get along,” she says, chuckling.

After the two married, their obsession with food systems, preservation and gardens grew. They became Master Gardeners over part of their honeymoon. Then, with 25 other families, they erected a massive community guerrilla garden in Mount Washington Northwest Park—the 4.9 acre plot was unpermitted at the time. “We just dug up this big plot of the park and started growing stuff,” Shane recalls. The renegade community garden was grandfathered into the city’s master plan years later and named the Eric Waller Community Gardens after a long-time neighbor and avid gardener. 

“We grew so much food. It was ridiculous, and I was really surprised people didn’t know what to do with the food,” Meaghan recalls. She invited people over to their house to learn basic canning, fermenting, and preservation methods. “People were more intrigued about the crocks and the carboys and the things bubbling and sizzling all around us in our living room kitchen,” she says. One day, they came home to an envelope of money taped to their door. “I found myself coming home from work with orders in our mailbox,” Meaghan says. 

I ask if they were taking orders, and they both exclaim “Noooo,” simultaneously.

They took it as a sign, a culmination of their journey. “The fermenting and fomenting that was mutually occurring through our pathways,” Shane says poetically. And thus Hex Ferments was born from demand, passion, and love. 

The couple have built a business on superior quality, always using locally and organically grown foods. “Cabbage, carrots, and onions, that’s our top three,” Meaghan says. “I’m really proud of the relationships that we’ve built over the last 12 years with our farmers.” 

Each year, Hex Ferments sources 80,000 pounds of cabbage, grown primarily in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The photogenic Early Dutch variety of cabbage has tight heads with leafy outside greens and is used in cuisines, both fermented and not, throughout the world.

While Maryland has a particular affinity for sauerkraut around Thanksgiving among families of European descent, the first documented recipes for the fermented cabbage dish come from China. The durable and long-lasting brassica vegetable has long been a staple among working-class families. “Cabbage has the ability to sit and be stored all winter long, which is why so many cultures around the globe use cabbage, and you see it when you read about early colonialism. It’s one of the very first vegetables to succeed in most climates,” Meaghan says.

Hex Ferments utilizes a wild fermentation process, aka no added cultures. “It’s just shredded vegetables and unrefined sea salt mixed together to create an anaerobic environment [without oxygen]…the perfect environment to convert proteins, enzymes, yeast, all that into acid-loving bacteria, which is lactobacillus bacteria,” Shane explains. 

The human gut contains over 400 species of microorganisms. One vital and healthy bacterium—arguably the most well-known—is lactobacillus, first observed by Louis Pasteur in 1856 while studying milk spoilage. The probiotic is widely used in food manufacturing today and has been touted as a “good bacteria” that contributes to a healthy microbial flora in animals and humans. Microbial flora being the literal aura of microbes that surrounds the human body—think less purple light and more dead skin and bacteria. 

“Microbes and people in general have a thermal fingerprint that’s unique based on the speciation of invisibilia surrounding the type and density of microbes,” Shane explains. If you want to nerd out on microbes, plan a visit to the ARTIS-Micopia Museum on your next trip to Amsterdam. It’s the world’s first interactive science museum about microbes and has over 40 interactive exhibits that make the invisible world of microbes visible. If you’re looking to experience a more local experience with the microbiome, stop by Hex Suprette’s tasting room and enjoy some of the many natural ferments made there. 

“The menu began as a response to a question we’ve been asked for years at farmers markets, our old space at Belvedere, and events: ‘How do I eat this?’ That curiosity sparked our mission—to create familiar, craveable dishes that each feature at least one fermented ingredient, introducing people to the deep flavor and health benefits of fermentation in a way that feels both accessible and exciting,” Meaghan explains. 

The menu has been designed to incorporate at least one Hex Ferments ingredient in each dish. Dave Bryson, who’s title is officially Kitchen Optimizer, has been instrumental in helping co-create the menu with items like Kimcheese (a grilled cheese on a long-fermented focaccia with HEX Miso Kimchi) or the HEX Powerhouse, their take on the popular veggie sandwich, stacked with local sprouts, carrots, Glow Kraut, house-made hummus (brightened with sauerkraut or glow kraut brine), and house-made radish pickles.

Hex Superette tasting room showcases the delights of living foods and drinks being created behind the scenes at Hex Ferments. “Adding it to the front of our manufacturing space was an intentional move. We wanted to collapse the distance between production and plate—to create a space where people could see where their food is made, taste how it’s meant to be enjoyed, and connect with the process. It’s part education, part hospitality, and wholly rooted in our belief that fermented foods are for everyone—not just a niche, but a vital and vibrant part of everyday eating,” Meaghan shares. 

Hex Superette’s kitchen and market is open Wednesday through Saturday for shopping, dining and drinks. Hex Ferments hosts fermenting workshops regularly and is hosting the first annual Baltimore Fermentation Festival Saturday May 17, featuring twenty local makers and fermenters. Tickets are $25 for general admission.