To brew, you're going to need to get some equipment, the bare minimum being: 5 gallon pot — must be stainless steel or enamelware 5 gallon glass carboy or food grade plastic bucket carboy brush bottle capper (no, putting the beer in plastic coke bottles and screwing the lid on real tight will not work) bottle caps ingredients kit (available at Homebrew Outlet and comes with complete brewing instructions) brewing yeast (you could use baking yeast, but that's gross) — also available at the Homebrew Outlet some tubing iodophore solution - for sterilizing the equipment thermometer stainless steel or food grade plastic spoon (will be used to stir 3-5 gallons of boiling water) Highly recommended: racking cane autosiphon secondary carboy wort (pronounced wert) chiller funnel airlock bottle filler — not as complicated as it sounds. actually $2 piece of plastic. Advising your roommates ahead of time. They may not appreciate a huge, smelly mess, the smell of bleach used to sterilize bottles, the resulting spill, a locked off closet, and then a filled fridge (especially if the beer doesn't come out as one would wish). Seriously. A friend or roommate with a less discerning taste for beer willing to make your bad batches disappear. All temps given in degrees Fahrenheit, instructions may vary based on ingredient kit. Rule #1: sanitation. Everything that touches the beer after the boil must be sterile. Failure to do so will result in foul tasting beer. Follow directions on iodophore bottle for sanitation. 1. Get about three gallons of water or so up to 155, seep the grains in a clean sock or grain bag for 30 mins. 2. Remove grain bag, bring water to full boil 3. Remove kettle from heat, add malt extract. Make sure all of the extract is dissolved before returning kettle to heat. 4. After about 5 minutes, add boiling hops. Note that if the water line is close to the lip of the pot, you may want to turn off the heat so the wort doesn't boil over. 5. Add Irish moss 6. Add finishing hops after 45 mins. Remove from heat 10 mins later. IMPORTANT: Once the boil is over, everything that touches the beer must be STERILE. 7. Cool wort using wort chiller or bathtub full of ice. 8. When wort reaches 75-80, remove chiller, whirlpool wort to get the trub (solids and crap) into a cone in the center and being siphoning into your fermentation vessel. At this point, you can pitch the yeast. 9. cap it with an airlock and wait a week or so 10. transfer from primary to secondary fermenters. wait another week or so. 11. go to a taqueria and ask if you can have any bottles. i've had the most luck with El Mariachi. Don't bother with the Jarito's or Dos Equis bottles, they don't cap well. Also, as a general rule, don't use bottles with screw off caps, they don't seal very well. 12. clean the bottles in a dishwasher with no soap. 13. add priming sugar to beer 14. transfer beer from secondary fermenter to bottles, place cap on lid 15. wait 15 mins for the headspace to fill with CO2 (optional), then cap 16. wait a week or so, drink beer