So, I just starting making my own beer. Brewing your own beer is damn easy, and relatively inexpensive. I’ve decided to share my methods.

Clean the crap out of everything that is going to come in contact with your beer. SANITIZE everything that will come in contact with the beer after the boil. Germs can cause some rather awful tasting beer (so I’ve heard). Do not use a scrubber that will scratch the surface — pathogens love to grow in the grooves left behind, and are almost impossible to sanitize. Rinse well, then soak briefly in a bleach or iodine solution. Rinse off bleach before using items using very clean potable or distilled water.
Put your special grains into a grain bag (a mesh bag to contain the grains – like a tea bag, only a lot bigger) and steep them in the large pot in three gallons of hot water around 150 degrees for about 30 minutes. Remove the grains and allow the water to drip out of the grain bag. Do not squeeze the bag, because you may extract tannins that will give your beer an astringent flavor. Add the malt extract and bring everything to a boil. This is some really sludgy stuff, so you may want a large sanitized spoon to help scoop it out. The hops are usually added at various intervals to add flavor, bitterness, or aroma and the times are spelled out for you in the kit’s instructions for your style of beer. In general, hops added early in the boil will contribute more bitterness, but at the expense of flavor and aroma. Hops added at the end of the boil will have a more pronounced flavor and aroma, but will not contribute significantly to the bitterness of the beer. After you have boiled the liquid (called wort – pronounced wert), you need to cool it as quickly as possible. The easiest way is to put the whole pot in a bathtub that is full of ice and water. Once it’s around 80 deg you are ready to transfer it to the fermenter (a big plastic special bucket). Pour the cooled wort into your fermenter. And thats as far as I’ve gotten. I’m really excited about this, but having to wait stinks. I feel like a little kid, counting the days until christmas.