Get my 120-page mead making book: dointhemost.org/book

I was exposed to your channel through Man Made Mead, and I was exposed to him through City Steading Brews. Man has it been a journey! I now have 18 gallons of beer, 6 gallons of mead, 2 gallons of cider under my belt since last September. Still feel brand new and shaky, but you guys have given me the confidence to continue on in this hobby. Thank you!

I started with Brooklyn Brew Shop's Jalapeno Saison beer kit years ago and adapted it last Sept to start meading. I just needed a hydrometer, wine yeasts, nutrients, acids and more fermenters. I prefer the gallon batches so i can experiment with more flavors and without being overrun with cases of bottles. Uline sells a case of 4 one gallon glass bottles for under $20, or the carboy jugs for $30.

Haha that confirms who I thought the baking soda mead short was about.

Love the no bs, genuine advice

Damn, wish this video existed sooner. I will be teying to do things right from here on out

Very important video! Clapping the clap outta my hands right now!

Really Appreciate Your Video , Thanks ! 🐯🤠

Just got some brand new 5 gallon kits at a local garage sale for $25 a pop.

Just getting into brewing, beer mostly, and I started with a kit. Even on my first batch ever the instructions were useless. I didn't follow it at all and made some pretty damn good beer. I made the same beer buying ingredients from a local shop and it was even better for 25% less money. Down to $.50 a 12oz beer that beats anything I can buy in the store for over a dollar each, more like $2. Gonna take two years, but this hobby will pay for itself eventually

I got a northern brewer beer kit for Xmas. Done 5 batches so far. First 2 weren’t great, but kinda gettin figured out now.

Man, Golden Hive is getting dunked on everywhere XD. I was gifted his "Deluxe" kit for Christmas, back before he revised it with additional instructions and ingredients. It came with racking cane, hydrometer, 3- 1 gal vessels with airlock, 12 bottles, corks, and a corker. As well as the infamous recipe book. IMO it was very overpriced, but hey I got it as a gift. It came with virtually no instructions. The few instructions it did come with boiled down to "Throw everything in there and let it ride." I had to spend a fair amount of research time on the wiki and a lot of extra cash to purchase all of the necessary ingredients. Research is my jam though so in a twisted kind of way lacking ingredients forced me to study for weeks before I made any decisions or purchases. Knowing what I know now the kit is overpriced and misinforming, BUT his online content is what brought me to the hobby. I wouldn't have the borderline obsession I have now without his easily ingestible short form media. And it brought me to your channel as well as Man Made Mead's. Also those other guys' channel but I don't like their vibes. >.> I don't have enough of my first batch left to share with mead stampede this year and my current batches will be pretty young when submissions are up. So look for me next year!

Great job! I remember buying cheap wine kits (not including fermenters and other hardware) for $40 before COVID-19, which now seem to be selling for $100 to $120 each.

I will admit one of golden hives viral videos got me interested in brewing. Shortly after I found your channel and bought your e book as a result of my new passion, making mead. So inadvertently golden hive did do some positive.. but I do agree his kit is too expensive.

Great video to have in the community. So important to have places to start and to point people in the right directions. Glad you made this and I hope people stay away from the last kit to save their money and to prevent terrible practice.

OK, wait, newbie here. I thought i was good to go with an auto siphon. How does a bottling wand work better? I have one gallon aging and a new batch fermenting right now, so I'm still learning!

You mentioned that an auto siphon was not your preferred method of siphoning. What method do you use most?

And to think Golden Hive only just changed the kit to have all the extra stuff like nutrients and acids as of a couple weeks ago before it was basically just the jug w/airlock, hydrometer and racking cane all for the reasonable price of $90.

Can you do or have you done a video for mead makers on using acids, when to use certain acids and why? Also just picked up your book. Love what you and Man Made Mead do, keep it up!

Started making mead in 2020. Have entered a couple of competitions and am about to host a mead tasting.

I started out with 6 gallons but then I got old so now I do 1 gallon. I can lift them so I just do several one gallons I can handle.

I actually started with the make a brew kit and I was quite happy with it! I’m currently working on my second batch with my own yeast and nutrients (d-47 and fermaid-o). Sadly run into a stall but pushing forward with degassing and yeast hulls. It’s been a fun experience so far.

I have the summer harvest fruit wine making kit for one gallon batches and it has a auto syphon, hydrometer, gallon bucket, carboy, and a starting sample pack of camnden tablet, yeast nutrient, tannins and acid. I really like it since I don't go too over the top with my wine making.

The golden hive videos are sooooo bad. I saw his kit and laughed. Great video here good info for New brewers

Knowing what I know now I'm glad I rushed to large batches (5 gallon plus) because it doesn't cost that much more in scale to get a large size "beginner kit" Of course the best recipe book for the home made recipes kit is You Can Make Mead by BC Phillips which I was able to afford by following this channels advice 😂

I agree! I moved up to 15 gallon stainless steel and clear in my 3,5,and 6 gallon carboys! I now have mead 4 years old.

Interesting video. Don't disagree with much of what you say but I am not convinced that a mead or wine making KIT is the best approach for a first time mead/wine maker. As you note, most people who want to get their toes wet may not jump, still less, dive into the water and spending $100 BEFORE they get their feet wet may not be for everyone. After all, we have been making wine and mead for millennia and for almost all that time we used whatever equipment we had at home. Do you NEED a carboy to make a gallon of mead? Why can't you make that in a gallon kitchen using the lid to keep out an excess of O2 and flies? Do you NEED a siphon for a gallon of wine (5 bottles). Will oxidation be a REAL problem if you pour the wine into bottles using a kitchen siphon? The thing is wine making at the gallon level is a lot like vegetable gardening. Once you imagine that you are a farmer farming acres of crops and not someone growing vegetables for a 4 by 8 foot bed your approach is of necessity very different. And once you have dived into the water, and you see the value of purchasing equipment a la carte, that's a very different story.

Yes, yes they are

Wow your definitely not hiding your distain for golden hive.. lol To me you are paying for the convenience factor when buying a kit. I learned after I bought my beer kit from Northern brewer that it can get you by but if you want to have more control over the recipe you need to do the research and be willing to make a few bad batches. My son just learned this lesson when he bought a rootbeer kit from craft a brew. The kit was super over priced and made a very lack luster root beer. I feel like the ingredient were probably pre packed too long ago and might have not been very fresh even then. I had my son do a few minutes or research to find a good recipe and we bought all the ingredients and made over twice as much for less cost, and it tasted so much better. Still not perfect but that has gotten his mind going on what he wants to change for the next batch. Ive made a few batches of mead and used information from people like yourself, man made mead, city steading, golden hive and a few other. They were really good, but not great so now Im adjusting for next time.

8:54 that's the one I bought plus a couple other things since

Loved the video, sadly (or maybe not) in my country you can't anything like that since mead is practically nonexistent. The only thing I don't agree with is #6. I believe it's the opposite, when you start you want to do and try many different things and be brewing all the time, so the smaller the batches the more you can do and feel free to screw up (because you will) since it didn't cost you that much. Imagine making a 5 gallon batch and you screw up or end up not liking it because you are not too sure of what you are doing.

It's not that I don't want to scale up. I just don't have the room for it. I could probably manage a 3 gallon set up at most if I clear out some space somewhere.

Good morning from Argentina

I guess I'm so new to the hobby that I don't understand all of the terms yet. I thought the video was going to review wine ingredient kits. My bad.

Real

FIRST!!!!

I didn’t even know who that golden hive dude was until this review. Now I see he has over 500k subscribers..🤯🤯🤯

I think a wine thief and a graduated cylinder should also be included in a beginners kit. Perhaps not a bare bones beginners kit, but definitely an all inclusive beginners kit

As a dialysis patient my reason for going with 1 gallon was simply: the rate at which I drink is so low that I expect a gallon will be plenty for me. Also I just don't have room in my life right now to store the products of multiple 5 gallon batches.