1. Freeze plenty of ice a few days beforehand. You'll need this for cooling the wort in your ice-bath.
2. Get your ingredients and equipment together. You'll need the following equipment:

• 2 x brew pots. A 2 gallon (7.5l) and a 3-4 gallon (11 - 15l) should be fine
• Large water container(s)
• Large grain bag (nylon or cotton)
• Stirring spoon
• Tablespoon
• Measuring cup
• Yeast starter jar
• Fermentor and lid
• Airlock
• Sieve or strainer
• Thermometer (2 is better)

Pre-boil the water that's not going into the brew pot. 10 - 15 litres is a good amount. Store it in sanitised water containers.

Clean and sanitise your equipment. Sanitise everything that will touch the wort after it's been boiled, and everything that will touch the yeast before pitching. The following should be cleaned:

• Brewpot
• Stirring spoon

The following should be cleaned AND sanitised:

• Tablespoon
• Measuring cup
• Yeast starter jar
• Fermentor and lid
• Sieve or strainer
• Airlock
• Thermometer

I simply clean and then fill the fermentor with my sanitising solution, then dump everything in there. I then have a large bowl or pot with more sanitising solution on the bench top and plenty of boiled water in the jug for rinsing as required.

Place your grain bag in your mash pot (the smaller one) and secure it in place with a couple of large file clips.

Work out the amount of water you need to add for the mash (I go for approx 2.6 litres per kg of grain as recommended by BeerSmith). Add this to the mash pot and heat to your strike temp (e.g. 75C). Switch off the element.

Add all of your grains and give them a good stir and poke to wet them evenly. This should drop the temperature down to your mash temp (between 65 and 69C depending on the style of beer).

Cover the pot and leave it alone for about 60 mins (longer if you're mashing at the lower end of the temperature range). It should hold the temp ok, but I pop the pot into a warmed oven (set at 60C) to be sure. IMPORTANT: What ever you do, don't let the temp go above 77C.

Assuming you're using a dry yeast packet, rehydrate and proof your yeast while the grains are mashing. To do this: 

• Boil 1 teaspoon of dextrose or malt extract in a small amount of water and let it cool down to about (30C).
• Put 250ml boiled and cooled (to about 30C) water in a sanitised jar or measuring cup and stir in the yeast. Cover and let sit for 15 mins.
• Pour the sugared water into the jar with the yeast, cover and shake to aerate.
• Let this sit for about 30 mins. It should start showing signs of activity. If not, your yeast may not be viable. 

While the grains are still mashing, heat water in your sparge pot (the larger one) to your sparge temp (e.g. 75C). This will be your boil pot, so you need to leave enough space for the mash contents, plus your extract additions (e.g. If your starting total boil volume is 10 litres and you have 5 litres in your mash pot, you should only add 5 litres to your sparge/boil pot).

 After the 60 minutes of mashing, carefully lift the grain bag just above the water and let it drain for a few minutes. Then transfer it to your sparge pot and "teabag" it for about 10 minutes to get as much of the wort out as possible.

Discard the grains.

Gently pour the mash wort into the sparge/boil pot (avoid splashing as much as possible) and turn up the heat. 

You now continue as per a standard extract brew, adding the malt extract and hops as required.