Prep Work: Take a quick inventory by laying out all of your ingredients and supplies. Make sure you have your malts, hops, cleaning supplies, etc. Begin Heating Water: Begin by collecting and adding 1.25 gallons of water to your brew kettle. Fire up your stove and begin heating the water. Prepare Specialty Grains: If your kit contains specialty grains, add them to the provided muslin bag. These grains will add color and flavor to your beer. Steep Grains: Add the bag of specialty grains to your water. Think of this as making tea. You should quickly see the color of your water changing. You are simply going to steep these grains to extract the color and flavor compounds. Continue steeping grains for 20 minutes or until your water reaches 170F. Once you are done steeping the grains you can remove and discard them. Pick them up and allow to drain. Do not squeeze the bag. Simply allow any excess liquid to poor back into your kettle. You now have wort - unfermented beer. Continue heating your wort until you have reached a boil. Once you have reached a boil, remove your kettle from your burner. Keeping a heat source under your kettle during the next step may cause your malts to scorch the bottom of your kettle. Add your dry or liquid malts. Pour your malts in while stirring. Once your malts are mixed into solution, return your kettle to your heat source and bring back to a boil. Once you reach a boil set a timer for 60 minutes. Most recipes call for a hop addition right at the beginning of the boil. In this case we have a single addition at the 60 minute mark. Your recipe may vary. Continue boiling until your 60 minutes are up. Keep your wort at a steady rolling boil. Once your boil is complete you now need to cool your wort to 80F. The easiest way to do this is by creating an ice bath in a sink. Simply add water, ice and your kettle and allow to cool. This may take 30-60 minutes. During this time try your best to not disturb your wort. Since we are no longer boiling, we must ensure anything that comes in contact with your beer is properly sanitized. While your wort is cooling, take this time to prepare your fermentation equipment. Remember that anything that comes into contact with your wort needs to be clean and sanatized. In this case we have mixed up some Star San solution and poured some info our fermenter. We have also sanitized our air lock, stopper, scissors, yeast packed and siphon that we will use to transfer our beer to the fermenter. Once your wort has cooled to 80F transfer it into your sanitized fermenter. We are using an auto-siphon to transfer the beer. A single pump on the auto-siphon will get thing going. You can also use a funnel. During this transfer, make sure to splash the wort around as you want to mix in oxygen which your yeast will need for fermentation. Now that the beer is transferred it is time to pitch your yeast. The dry yeast we are using can be pitched directly into the wort. Other yeasts may need to be re-hydrated so check the package for manufacturer instructions. Open the yeast packet with your sanitized scissors and pour approximately half into your fermenter. Discard the remaining yeast. Seal your fermenter with your cap or bung. Insert airlock into the cap and fill to the line with water. The optimum fermentation temperature for the yeast in this beer is 59F - 75F. This varies by yeast so make sure to check the instruction on the package. We will move the fermenter to a cool, dark place and allow to ferment for 2 weeks. Fermentation should begin within 12-48 hours. During fermentation you will see CO2 escaping out of your airlock and a creamy sludge-like build up on the top of your beer. It will take up to 2 weeks for the yeast to ferment the beer but the airlock activity will slow down after the first 2-3 days.