First off making beer is completely legal. There are restrictions to amounts that can be brewed, and if you plan on doing some major brewing (meaning more then 50 US gallons a year) I would heavily suggest you search the guidelines for that. Also of course you must be 21, period!
Starting Equipment
If you are so lucky to have a brewing shop in your local area, you will find that they will likely have a beginners kit to start with. Beginners kits can come in several configurations. Some contain better products then others. More or better equipment of course means higher price. In this list is what you will absolutely need to make a batch of beer.
- Boiling Pot
- Ferment container
- Secondary/Priming container
- Bottles
- Bottle capper
- Racking Cane
- Hydrometer
- Racking Hose
- Bottling Cane
- Thermometer
Boiling Pot
Boiling pots are one of those issues that are detemined by how you are going to brew, and budget. If you plan on making homebrew on the kitchen stove then you will need a smaller pot. Typical reciepes go off of a 5 gallon end product. One of the major steps in brewing beer is boiling wort. Wort in alot of cases gets boiled for approx. an hour. So you will need to have a pot that is big enough to boil enough water for an hour that will boil down to 5 gallons. So this vessel would need a little over 6 gallons capacity. This obviously will likely not work in any great efficiency over a stove top. So you will need to go down to about half that size if you plan on using the home stove top. When using a smaller pot the same ingredients are used, but you will be making a more concentrated wort, and more water is added later to make up the full 5 gallon reciepe. To achieve the "Full Wort Boil" (means you got a pot large enough to hold over 6 gallons) The more common method is to use a propane burner. Again something extra to consider. So once you have determined the size of pot you are capable of brewing out of. Next will be the type of pot.The more sought after pot to use is a good stainless steel pot. These are a bit expensive and thus a reason why you would possibly consider other options. There is much debate but it is my understanding (as well as what I use) that an aluminum boil pot works just fine. These are like the pot you see used to fry turkey in. These are easily aquired, and come with a burner! If you plan on using the stove top I myself have seen it cost efficient to get a steel canning pot. These will work ok with the stove top setting, I have used one of these for my first few batches when I did not have a propane setup. It worked ok. There are a couple other more rare options but these are the most commonly used. There are pro's and con's to both. Enough I do not blelieve I could fit that all in this article. Starting out, go with what will work for you by heat source, and budget.
Fermenter
The fermenter is what your wort gets transfered to after the boil. This is where the yeast is added and you allow fermentation to take place. The typical homebrewer setup for these is a plastic bucket, or glass carboy. The plastic bucket is the cheapest to aquire. These buckets are found all over the web, or at a home brew supply. If you wish to venture to find your own bucket they are typially a 6 gallon bucket, FOOD GRADE, that is not stained with lets say, pickle juice. And with an air tight lid. Whether you are using a bucket or glass carboy, an airlock is fixed to the top. I will show more pics later on this. Plastic buckets work ok. However brewing can go bad with contaminents very easily. Buckets have edges and small scratches sometimes that can hide bacteria or other bad stuff we do not want affecting our brew. So they do work but of course there is the upgrade to glass carboy. These are sanitized better, but unfortunately not as easily. A carboy has a small hole to the top that doesnt allow for easy cleaning like the buckets do. Available are long brushes that help with this issue. The fermenter must be big enough to allow all the beer to fit into it, with a few inches of headroom to spare for krausening (Ill explain later). With a worthy fermenter in hand you will be looking for a secondary/priming container. This is pretty much the same exact thing as the fermenter. It just has different function in the process.
Let me back up on this for a second. If you wish to carbonate your beer (like any store bought or common made beer is) then the beginner is first guided to bottle conditioning their beer to get carbonation in their brew. There are other more expensive more elaborate ways to do this, but again beginners are usually guided to do this first. So that said, you need bottles. Twist top bottles typically are not used because, these bottles need to hold a good consistent pressure. Aquire some regular old style "pop top" style bottles either emptied from a homebrew supply, or (my prefered way) I find my favorite brew at the store that has this type of bottle and I proceed to empty the bottles directly into my mouth. I like to do this mostly because the cost is not a whole lot different. If you use a 5 gallon batch you will need approx 48-52 bottles. Of course you will need caps for these. Any homebrew supply will have these for cheap. You cannot put on caps without a capper.
CapperThe capper can come in a couple different configurations. There is the arbor press style, two handed style commonly. The arbor press style is a little more spendy. I does do a great job of evenly applying the cap to the bottle. These can be dangerous, because too much pressure and you crush the bottle with your precious homebrew. The two handed capper works ok, its cheaper. It may not apply the cap as evenly, but it works ok.
Hydrometer
Racking
To trasfer beer from bol to fermenter to secondary, from secondary to bottles or wherever. You will need a racking cane and hose. A bottling cane helps fill bottles easily. There is the plain standard racking cane. These work, however the beginner brewer doesnt have good quality wort pumps or anything like that so the liquid is siphoned from one vessel to another. Many methods of doing that involve many possibilities of introducing bacteria or contaminates into the brew. So the next step up is the auto siphoning cane. These are very very handy and worth the other extra couple of dollars getting. Cleaning isnt as easy, but makes a hard job easy. Thermometer
A good instantly reading thermometer is great to have. The quicker the readout and accuracy the better. For the longest time first brewing I went to the local superstore and found a digital meat thermometer that worked just fine. As well as cost affective. Another option to have is a floating thermometer. These are aquired mostly at homebrew retail. It does exactly that. It floats in the liquid. This is very handy when your chilling your wort.
Ingredients
Starting off with your first brew, you will want to go with an extract recipe. Beer malt will come in a couple forms. Either grain, or extract. Extract will come in typically either a syrup or dry powder. This can be found anywhere online. Extract usually comes as it is, but there are makers that make hopped extract. This means they already did the boil with the grains and hops making the wort. They just dired it down to a syrup form. Other then getting a Mr. Beer kit, this hopped extract would be the next easiest beer to make. Once you have malt, you will need hops (unless already hopped). There are many "hop charts" out there that will give description to taste. HERE is one of them. There are hops for bitterness, taste, and aroma. The reciepe will spell all that out for you. Next yeast. There are many yeast types. Different strains, liquid or dry. Dry yeast is the cheapest. It has been used effectively before. I personally like to use liquid yeast when I can. There are two major makers for brewing yeast. Minimal effort searching the web and you will find them. A good simple recipe will be an ale extract recipe. Each of those makers have a good universal ale yeast. 
Sanitizing
I cannot stress sanitizing enough. This should be the first thing on your mind each step of the way. Check out any brew supply and there will be several options. There is both powder and liquid forms. They are all used in their ways according to the brand and their reccomendations. But this is incredibly important. All the work you do is only going to pay off if your brewing process is clean. Bacteria can ruin beer in a hurry. It produces off flavors that are not desirable. SANITIZE EVERYTHING! That reminds me of the first step.
First Step.
Get the water ready. You should have a fermenter that is slightly over the capacity of your final volume. Boil enough water to fill that for the most part. This may take several pots to boil if you have a smaller then final volume boil pot. Water from the faucet contains bacteria. A good boil will get rid of that as well as most of the chlorine content. Chlorine can make a bad off taste as well. So I like to boil that off when I can.
Second
Water is ready. Fill your boil pot approximately 75% full. Bring that volume to a boil. Once at a good rolling boil, SLOWLY add the extract. This is a fun time (fun meaning high tensity). Because when adding extract, it will want to foam over. Too much added too quick and it will foam and boil over the edges of the pot. So patience is key. Once all the malt is in, you MUST keep an eye on how it is boiling. A good rolling boil is all that is needed. Go too hot and its going to boil over when your not looking. So make sure you dont leave site of this step the entire brewing process your first couple of times till you get a good feel for how your boil setup works without boiling over. Most receipes will be for an hour boil. Along with that most recipes call for a certain amount of hops be put into the boil for 60mins. So of course this would be the time to add those hops. If you have a hopped malt extract. Just boil for 15 mins. and that is all that is needed unless you plan on doing some extra ingredients. So your wort is boiling, you have some hops in it. If you cover your pot leave an inch or better breathing hole for it. Or it will boil over, but more importantly there are byproducts that are not wanted in the wort that are being boiled off into vapor. So you want the majority of that vapor making it out of the pot. When I do cover the pot I go a step further and when taking the lid off I let the condensed water on the lid drain off into a sink nearby or wherever. During the boil you will want to stir things up a bit occasionally. Some times hop debris likes to get on the edges of the pot, they arent doing much for you there. Mid boil you will most likely be adding more hops. Again keeping an eye out for over boiling when you do this. You will begin to approach the 15mins. left mark. At this time aroma hops are being put in. There is another ingredient that I highly reccomend at this point. There are a couple things that will allow your beer to be nice and clear. One of the is adding irish moss at the last 15mins. of the boil. The other is chilling the wort. Ill get to that in a bit. So irish moss and last hops are put in. Boil then goes to completion. Third Step
Chilling the wort. If your recipe doesnt say to do you, well you need to. The yeast gets added after the wort is chilled. If the wort is not cool enough it will kill your yeast. That is bad. So you will need to chill the wort down to below 80F for ale yeast. This can be done by taking the boil pot and putting it in a sink or tub or whatever filled with ice. The best tool to use on this is a wort chiller. There are many out there. It is alot of times not too cheap, but not too expensive. If you desire a good finished product, these are worth getting. Some people will add ice to the brew. The problem i have with this is that ice was never sanitized by a boil or anything, so it has a potential of bringing unwanted elements to your brew. If you freeze some of your boiled water, that may work. Although I have never tried it. The quicker the beer chills down the better. NEVER AGITATE HOT WORT. With the wort still being hot, never agitate it. So no pouring from one vessel to another unles you are using a racking cane or other means that do not create bubbles in the hot wort. Hot wort can allow oxygen to bond to the liquid chemically, this will leave bad tastes with your beer. Wort is only agitated when cooled. So once you have the wort cooled down. Fouth step
At this time you have some chilled wort. Transfer that wort into the fermentation vessel. To do this first stir the volume of liquid to form a whirlpool. This will cause all the sediment to go toward the center of the pot. Then you can use your racking cane and hose to get the liquid out, less the sediment. If you had to boil less then the full amount add your remaining water amount to bring the volume up to final volume level. At this time you will want to take a reading with your hydrometer. This will give you an indication of alcohol content. This first reading is the OG (original gravity) reading. This will be compared to the FG (final gravity) reading when you are done fermenting to ensure the process has went as planned. At this point you agitate your beer. With a spoon or wisk or something, agitate it well for several minutes. Some use other areators to do this. Either way the wort must be areated. This will give the good yeast some good oxygen to fuel their growth and production. So when your done areating your beer, add yeast. This is known as pitching. Pitch your yeast as reccomened by the yeast type your using.
Step 5
Cover your fermenter with lid or top with an airlock. Airlocks are typically filled with good sanitized water. Place fermenter in a very dark room or closet or wherever will it will keep the ideal temp of the yeast you are using. This is typically around 72F with ale yeast. If you did some things correctly after the first few days that airlock should be bubbling. If this is happening fermentation is taking place and good stuff is happening. The fermentation creates CO2 as a byproduct. This bubbles out of the airlock.
If you choose to use a secondary you will want to do so after your brew is done fermenting. You can tell its done fermenting by seeing that the airlock doesnt bubble more then once every five minutes. Also this is checked with the hydrometer. Taking the lid off (dont breathe your bacteria laden mouth over your brew) and you can either put the sanitized hydrometer right into your brew, or cane off some into a sampling vessel (never pour sampling beer back into batch). then you will be taking your final gravity reading. Do the math of readings. Here is a chart for that Here and here. If the reading dropped down do those guidlines as in those two links, then your ready to rack into your vessels for carbonation unless you deceide to put your beer into a secondary. Putting your beer into another vessel equal to your fermenter is a way to take the good clean liquid off of the trub in the bottom of the fermenter. You can do this to prime the beer, or you can leave it in there for some additional weeks to allow the beer to age and mature, as well as helps with beer clarity. Step 6 and final steps
There are a couple ways to carbonate beer, this article is going to be based on some very beginning practices. I have went to the TAD (tap on draft, search it) system. This I found to the be easiest way to carbonate my beer, and very happy with it. I began out bottling and I will explain that here. To bottle condition beer for carbonation, you will either be priming the beer before you put the beer into the bottle, or there are brewing sugar drops or candies or whatever that you can put into the bottle. I would prefer priming the beer volume for good practice. To do this find the amount of priming sugar you are going to use, this will vary on which kind of sugar you use.
Here is a great article on priming. Once desired amount of priming sugar is added. Stir in very well, DO NOT AGITATE THE BEER. At this point oxygen being introduced into the beer is a very bad thing. Once again it will spoil your beer if you do. So from the time you took the cover off of the fermenter you should not have agitated this at all, actually while fermenting it should not have been either. Priming sugar is disolved thoroughly next, rack into bottles. Get the racking cane, hose and bottle cane primed with beer. This is another place to point out that your mouth has alot of bacteria that will spoil your beer. So do not suck on the hose to prime it. Auto siphon racking cane really comes through on this step. You can see that some boiled water is in the racking hose, then allow that to draw the beer through. Fill each bottle to where there is approx 1.5 inches of head space. Using a bottle cane is great because you can leave the cane in the bottle and fill it to top, then when the cane is pulled out you get a good head space in the bottle. Next cap it off with the sanitized bottle caps. Store bottles in a dark place in the same temps you fermented with for about 10 days or better. Chill and Drink!!!! Though know that the beer you drink at first will be a bit "green" tasting. It will mellow out the more you let it age. Just make sure you drink it up before it becomes about 90 days old. At that point beer will begin to deteriorate. But by all means ENJOY! and know you are a man of means cause you just made beer!
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