These are all products you will need to start home brewing.
Top 1 Gallon Home Brewing Kit
If you go on Amazon you’ll see all sorts of different kits available. They usually come with the ingredients for your first brew which you may or may not want. I have gone through and found a pretty good kit here with what is offered vs price.
With a 1 gallon kit you’re going to want at least a primary and secondary fermenter, a mini auto siphon, and an airlock. The problem is that most of the 1 gallon kits only come with one fermenter and it’s a plastic bucket. That’s fine, but if possible I like to get a glass primary as well.
This kit I found looks pretty good. It has a 2 gallon primary fermenter bucket, a 1 gallon glass carboy, a mini auto siphon, and an airlock. Couple this with a glass primary and a hydrometer and you’re on your way.
1 Gallon Wine Making Kit
Top Home Brewing Kit Choice
One of the problems with home brewing kits is that every company seems to throw different items together, so it’s either hit or miss and you always end up having to buy more items.
Another problem is that when companies make home brewing starter kits, they don’t have mead in mind. Mead requires a few items in addition to what you see in most starter kits.
With this in mind, I have found a kit that includes everything you need to start brewing mead and beer.
This kit includes a 6 gallon bucket and a 5 gallon glass carboy for your bulk aging. Perfect for Mead.
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Plastic Hydrometer
In the past I have shattered 4 different hydrometers while homebrewing. The hydrometers I have used were all made of glass and they will shatter very easily. I would get so frustrated I would just start brewing without them even though I would have no idea if my brew was done fermenting or not. I found a solution in a plastic hydrometer. Never shatter again!
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Pitcher
Pick up this handy measuring pitcher for when you need to get accurate with your measurements of ingredients.
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Sanitation
Sanitation is critical to home brewing and can often make or break a batch. When it comes to sanitizing your equipment, go with the best. I have been using Star San since the beginning and it works great. Star San doesn’t need to be washed off, so it saves you a step in making your home brew.
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Nutrients and Additives
Mead making calls for the addition of various nutrients, tannins, acids, and other things to make your mead balance out and ferment well.
Fermaid O
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Go-Ferm
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Wine Tannins
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Acid Blend
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Corks, Corkers, and Bottles
If you are going to be making mead, you’re going to need some strong bottles and corks to allow proper aging. Let’s be honest, it also looks a whole lot better.
In order to put corks in bottles, you’re going to need a proper corker. In my experience, the easy double lever corker is the way to go. The two handles on the side give you excellent leverage to push a cork into a bottle. I’ve used the smaller plunger corker as well and it will just give you a bunch of grief. Go with the double corker.
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When it comes to corks, the ones you want to get for making mead are #9 corks. These provide the tightest fit in your bottles.
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For bottles you want to look for wine bottles. These bottles here are 750 ml which is the standard wine bottle size. You can get 36 for 60 bucks which is a pretty good deal.
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Literature
One of the best books on home brewing ever made is Charlie Papazian’s Joy of Home Brewing. Every level of home brewing is covered from the simple to the complex with detailed explanations of why everything is happening. There is even a large section dedicated to making mead.
This is the first book I read on home brewing and it’s still the primary resource I look to when I have questions. This book is written in a very easy to understand manner with great illustrations. Highly recommend.
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A lot of people start out wanting to duplicate one of their favorite commercial beers. If that’s what you are interested in, you should check out Clone Brews. It’s filled with exact recipes of many popular commercial beers.
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The Compleat Mead Maker is the most comprehensive book I have found on making mead. The level of depth into everything mead is deep. This was the first book I bought on making mead and I reference it every time a question comes up making a new mead.
