Stage 1 - Gathering Ingredients
We're making a very specific beer here: a dark, fruity, chocolately beer with a high alcohol content (about 6% - 7%, we reckon). Here are the ingredients:

• 543g sucrose
• 2kg dark malt extract
• 1kg light spray malt
• 500g crystal malt
• 500g amber malt
• 148g chocolate malt
• 53g roasted barley
• 81g fuggles hops (to be divided into 61g and 20g)
• 10g target hops
• 20g hallertau hops
• 1 tablespoon Irish Moss
• Brewer's yeast (but how much? ARRGHH! Enough for 20 litres, I guess)

Note: regarding the barley, you'll probably need to roast this yourself on a tray in an oven. Just roast at a high heat for about 20 minutes, until they go a dark colour. Of course, as well as the above, various equipment was required:

• 2 x 20litre brew buckets (with tight-fitting lids)
• Sterilising powder
• Thermometer
• 20litre beer boiler
• Milk bottle
• Airlock thingy (we used a 'type 2' one)
• Various muslin bags - one large enough to fit over your brew bucket and several smaller ones for the hops

The above should be enough to get your barrel of beer happily fermenting but ultimately you'll need to syphon it off into the other brew bucket (and possibly back again) and then, finally, into capped bottles. Hence, you'll need the following:

• Syphon
• Empty beer bottles
• Bottle capper
• Hydrometer (for measuring specific gravity)

Stage 2 - Sterilisation
So, next we need to sterilise things. Give the brew buckets and lids a good clean and then use the sterlising solution to finish off. Once done, keep the lids on the brew buckets to minimise contamination. Sterilise the empty milk bottle and the airlock (this airlock should fit snugly on top of the milk bottle; hence, if you have no milk bottle, just ensure that your airlock fits tightly onto whatever bottle you use). You'll shortly be preparing the 'starter culture' (hey, I've no idea what it's really called but 'starter culture' sounds pretty good) which will involve boiling water in a pan and pouring into the milk bottle. To do this, you'll probably need either a funnel or a jug. Either way, ensure that all of these things are thoroughly sterilised beforehand.

Stage 3 - Starter Culture
So, we get about 300ml of water (two thirds of a pint) - the exact quantity isn't critical - and boil in a pan. Add three tablespoons of the light spraymalt and let it boil. Once boiled, pour into the empty glass bottle, put the airlock on the top and let it cool. Give the bottle a little bit of a shake to get some of the air mixed into the liquid. Let it cool down . . . once cooled down, we'll be adding the yeast, but don't worry about that for now.

Stage 4 - Boiling commences
So, we've got our starter culture thingy, we've got sterile containers and equipment, we got the ingredients . . . so it's time to put it all together. Now, if you wanted, you could put all the malts into your beer boiler along with 15 litres of water and let it boil but that might not be the best idea. See, stuff like amber malt is often supplied in grain form - this ain't gonna boil that well. Any malts provided in powder form, just bung into your beer boiler. Otherwise, you wanna break up whole grains (using a pestle and mortar, blender, whatever) into powder or something approaching that. Also, in order to save yourself unnecessarily filtering grains out of your beer boiler, it makes more sense to keep all these in some kind of large muslin bag or whatever. Anyway, here's the way we did it:

1. Crush crystal malt and amber malt into something approximating to a powder (the finer the better)
2. Place powdered grains from previous step into large muslin sack
3. Place 61g of fuggles hops and 10g target hops into small muslin bags
4. Place 20g of fuggles hops and 20g of hallertau hops into small muslin bags
5. Put 15 litres of water in beer boiler
6. Place large muslin sack (containing malts) over top of beer boiler, ensuring contents reach the water
7. START BOILING! FULL POWER!
8. Once boiling starts (check the temperature with thermometer if you feel the need), turn the heat down and do the following . . .
9. Start timing and add the 61g fuggles hops and 10g target hops
10. After an hour and a quarter of boiling, add the 20g hallertau hops, the 20g fuggles hops and 1 tablespoon of Irish Moss
11. Let boil for another 15 minutes (totalling an hour and a half of boiling)
12. Turn the heat off, tidy up a bit
13. Top up the beer (up to 20 litres, if you want) by pouring boiling water on top of the large muslin sack. I think we used boiling water (?!).
14. Transfer the beer from beer boiler to your sterilised beer bucket. Hopefully, your beer bucket will have a tap, as ours did. If not, use a syphon. DO NOT just pour it from one vessel to another - that would be bad.
15. Put the lid on the beer bucket and leave it somewhere to ferment

Stage 5 - Fermentation
Once your starter culture has cooled down sufficiently (I'm thinking below body temperature - 37.5°C), add the brewer's yeast and replace the airlock. As we did all of the above on Saturday night, it was only Sunday morning when the starter culture was added to the beer bucket, given a quick stir and the lid replaced. I've no idea how much brewer's yeast we used . . . erm . . . Anyway, also quite important is to test the original gravity using your sterilised hydrometer. This should be done after you've added the starter culture. Make a note somewhere of the reading.

Stage 6 - Further fermentation and bottling
The stuff in the beer bucket should happily ferment for a week or so. You should see froth forming after a day or two. You can take the lid off or leave the lid loosely on top at this stage, as the yeast has now established itself and the beer is well and truly brewing now. Once the frothing has calmed down (typically after a week), transfer the beer (i.e. syphon) into another clean, sterilised beer bucket, leaving all the gunk at the bottom. Leave the lid on this and allow to ferment for another week or so. Syphon the beer back into the original beer bucket (although this will of course have been cleaned and sterilised). Boil a half pint of water with 3 tablespoons of sucrose. Add this to the beer and give a good stir. Beer is now ready for bottling. Transfer into clean, sterile bottles, leaving one inch of free space. Beer should be left in bottles for 1 - 2 months before consumption.