I've been brewing for a while. My buddies and I all home brew. It's really easy, and a whle lot of fun. Your upfront costs will be about 300 bucks. This doubles or triples if you want to keg the beer as opposed to bottle it. I use a outdoor burner system since the wife does not like heavy malt smell (yes, she is occasionally nuts). Make sure you use stainless steel pots since aluminum is somewhat porous and will absorb small amounts of beer and eventually ruin subsequent batches. The stainless steel is one of the more expensive pieces of equipment you need. The biggest pain in the ass is keeping everything clean. Beer making requires that everything be sterilized - the more sterilized the better. You use iodine to sterilize, athough you can use bleach too if you wanna be cheap. Note that I've had friends warn me that bleach-beer hangovers are ridiculously bad. After that it's real easy. You just sit outside and drink beer while boiling you're new beer prior to fermentation. Bottling is a pain, but a $400 keg system can make life wonderful. Like Dylan, experimentation is the fun part. Try anything. Especially christmas ales, where you can get away with adding spices without feeling like you're ruining the ale.
I've got a kit and have brewed a few batches myself. I'm going to get back into it once I get more room...keep in mind, we're not talking about truck-fulls of equipment, but it does take up some room. My batches have come out pretty good, with the subsequent ones definitely better than the earlier ones (yeah, I can learn through experience!). I am all on the sanitation bandwagon. But for other brewers out there, one of my toughest problems is always transfering from fermentor to bottling bucket to bottles. In layman terms, can someone please explain the best way to do this? Thanks!
Get a $10 pump/siphon kit for moving from the primary to secondary fermenter. I sterilize a 5 gallon gatorade cooler (the spout kind) and transfer the beer into it for bottling. The spout makes that process so much easier*. *Make sure to really clean the spout.
