An easy way to start brewing at home!

One question I often hear from people thinking about brewing beer (or cider) is "How much time will it take to brew a batch?"  The answer to this is that you can spend as much or as little time as you want.  
There are super easy...what I like to call "instant gratification" hopped extract kits, fairly easy beer extract kits with all the ingredients from malt and hops to beer caps measured out, and all grain brewing which takes a little more time and thought to put together.
I'm going to talk a little about the super easy options for beginning brewers.  A hopped extract kit consists of liquid malt extract with hop extract to make a certain style of beer such as cerveza, light lager, bock or IPA-to name a few.
Putting these brews together are easy peasy! 
After sterilizing your eqipment and soaking the extract in warm water, you pour it into your fermenter (fermenting pail) with 2 lbs of corn sugar and/or dry malt extract and add about a gallon of boiling water.  Top it off with cold water and stir well until dissolved.
Top off with a packet of yeast, cover and let stand at room temp for 4-6 days.  Fermentation is complete when bubbles cease to rise or the specific gravity checked with a hydrometer stays consistently at 1.008-1.012.
Transfer your beer into a bottling pail.  Add priming sugar (about 3/4 cup corn sugar). Easier yet, add a carbonation drop to each bottle.  Then transfer the beer into beer bottles, cap and let them stand at room temp for about a week (giving the beer time to carbonate) then move to a cool area for another week or so. Open bottle and enjoy!
These beers produce a fine tasting beer that you can be proud to share!
There are also Cider and Shandy Kits that are equally as easy.  This is certainly a fun way to ease into beer brewing with not a lot of equipment!  Here's hoping you find this information helpful! Cheers! Karen
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