What’s better than sipping on a frosty beer or a minty cool mojito on a hot day? Making money on YouTube while you get your buzz on, that’s what! All you have to do is meet the 1000 subscriber and 4000 hours of Watch Time requirements to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program. Once you've been accepted you can start generating revenue from ads run against your video content.
It’s always a good idea to draw inspiration from already-successful YouTube booze buffs. Here are several high-proof channels to get you rolling.
Cocktail creation is an art form that requires a full range of bartending skills. Whether you’re looking for a YouTube mixologist apprenticeship or simply want to watch a master drink alchemist in action, The Educated Barfly and How to Drink are great options.
The Educated Barfly is a straightforward repository of cocktail knowledge. Host Leandro DiMonriva delivers a masterclass in bartending with modules on topics like classic drinks, cocktail variations, and home-bar basics.
The tutorials start out with mini history lessons and include all the helpful tips you can drink. Pay close attention and you might even catch a meta tip like the discussion on creating an awesome thumbnail in this video on the Song of the Siren tiki drink.
If you’re seeking cocktail tutorials with a little more entertainment value, check out How to Drink. The channel has much in common with The Educated Barfly (they even did a crossover episode), but How to Drink adds flair to the format with artful close-ups of jigger pours and garnish spritzes, a prohibition-style background song, and plenty of clever overlay text.
How to Drink host Greg Titian waxes poetic about tasting notes and invents drinks based on popular TV shows and movies. For instance, he once concocted a guess at what the mysterious liquid in Rick Sanchez’s flask is on “Rick and Morty” using pickle juice and Hennessy XO.
There are plenty of content creators on the YouTube beer scene. You may want to start with The Craft Beer Channel and You Betcha, two channels that are very much on opposite ends of the sudsy spectrum but equally delightful.
The Craft Beer Channel has pretty much everything you need to know about brews. It’s just a couple of regular guys named Jonny and Brad from the UK who are beyond passionate about drinking, brewing, and pairing food with beer.
Take your home-brewing game to the next level with videos like their two-part series on making a New England IPA, which includes tips from a renowned craft brewer. Foodies wondering what brewski to match with their favorite pizza can find the answer on The Craft Beer Channel as well.
Party-beer purists who gag at the thought of a hoppy IPA also have a safe space on YouTube in You Betcha. It’s a channel run by a content creator from North Dakota named Myles Montplaisir who has an almost unhealthy obsession with Busch Light.
The channel isn’t exclusively focused on beer—it’s more of a general comedic take on life in the Midwest—but according to Montplaisir, a simple cell phone video of him comparing Busch Light to a craft beer from Wisconsin drove the channel to its current success. And if Anheuser-Busch isn’t sponsoring You Betcha, they must be benefiting fiscally from the free product placement in virtually every video on the channel.
Learning how to enjoy wine can be an intimidating process filled with highfaluting terminology and behavioral protocols. To make wine-tasting more palatable for newbies, certified sommelier Madeline Puckette and her friends started a YouTube channel called Wine Folly. Puckette wrote on the channel’s website that:
“The inspiration for Wine Folly was based on an observation I’d made while serving, Basically, people want to know more about wine but they don’t know where to start. The goal of Wine Folly is to share wine knowledge in a way to encourage and inspire new drinkers.”
Wine Folly accomplishes that vision by delivering the full-bodied richness of wine culture without the condescending pretentiousness that excludes the uninitiated. Puckette explains everything from tannins and identifying sweetness in wine to how to properly clink glasses, always keeping it light and engaging.
She even goes so far as to crack jokes you’d never hear from a fancy sommelier at a wine tasting. Exhibit A is a video on tasting champagne in which she refers to the price of a bottle of bubbly as “a lot of money for something you’re gonna pee out.”
In addition to Adsense, these channels use resources like affiliate links, Patreon membership, and merch to maximize their earnings. Plus, their growing subscription numbers and high-performing videos make them attractive to off-platform sponsorships.
But the most important takeaway is this: These YouTubers create value that keeps their audiences returning for more.
Whether you want to give sloppy beer-bong tutorials or embrace the snobby side of fine wines, the first step toward success on YouTube is to find a need and fill it with quality.
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Aaron is a writer and editor from the US who currently lives in tropical Taiwan. When he's not crafting a press release or blog post, he's probably writing about the New York Yankees for Elite Sports NY or falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of comedy, music, and sports highlights.
