Me: well, assuming you do a can thing first (since that's the easiest thing to learn with), it's a very easy process
Me: by can thing, I mean a kit
Me you start by cleaning everything with the detergent very thoroughly. Then you rinse and sterilize everything (sterilizer is just hydrogen peroxyde, you don't remove it after applying)
Me: in a pot, while you're cleaning you start boiling some water You'll be OK, with a few liters if you're just using the can. Dump the can in the water, you can add some additional malt extract if you want a beer with a little more alcoholic content and a malty flavour
Me: stir it well and boil for a few minutes to sterilize that mix. Once that's ready, you dump it in the fermenter bucket and fill to 23 liters with cold water. If you do things right, your water should be somewhere in the 20C range (floating thermometers work well)
Me: make sure to splash the mix around a lot when you add water so that your wort is well aerated
Me: then you sprinkle the yeast on top... actually, follow the directions in the kit, you may have to prime it. if you want, you can take the specific density of your beer before adding the yeast (usually referred to as OG, orignal gravity), you can use this to figure out the alcohol content later on
Me: after the yeast is added, put the cap with the airlock on the beer and leave it alone for a few days. ideally you want to store it somewhere that's between 20C and 16C with little temperature variation, so a basement usually works pretty well. you should see signs of fermentation within a day or two
Me: anyhow, you wait for the thing to ferment 5 days or so, then you pop open the fermenter and siphon the liquid (and as little of the deposits as possible) to a carboy, adding a little water if necessary to fill the carboy
Me: again, everything has to be very clean, and sanitized
Me: pop the airlock onto the carboy, and wait for a few more days for any secondary fermentation to occur and for the better part of the yeast to settle.
Me: finally, there's bottling day. You siphon the beer (again, as little deposit as possible) to another bucket thing. You'll want one with a spigot for this.
Me: in a small pot, mix a cup of dextrose in a liter or so of water to make your bottling sugar solution. siphon the beer from the carboy into the final bucket, mixing the dextrose solution into the beer.
Me: Once that's done, you use this pressure-sensitive ending that you attach via tubing to the spigot and you fill bottles that you had previously cleaned and sanitized. You then cap the bottles and wait for 2 weeks before the beer is ready to drink
Him: and it's just that simple!
Me: cleaning and sanitizing is the most important part of all this. Also, apart from the first transfer where you want everything to splash around, you want to be as delicate as possible and cause as little splashing as you can manage
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