What's all this, then?

I've been making passable beer & wine from kits on-and-off for years now. I'd always had a hankering to take it to the next level, however, and so, with loads of great support and advice from my friend Russ in Chicago and the good folk at Beoir.org, I'm making the jump to Extract Brewing. As Russ said to me: "Getting to know your ingredients is half the battle". As a decent cook, I fully understand and endorse that idea. Doing strange and terrible things with specialty malts and hops as well as generally making an unholy mess (and hopefully drinkable beer!) is the key to geting to grips with more advanced brewing.
The plan is to get to All-Grain sooner rather than later, but I'll need to brew plenty of beers (and doubtless learn from plenty of mistakes!) before I get there.
As far as my setup goes, I've got all the standard kit-brewing stuff like FVs, hydrometers, thermometers, siphons etc. Obviously some more kit is needed for extract brewing so I've purchased a 21L Brew Pot from The Homebrew Company  which, at €39.95 with €5.95 p&p (or free if your order is over €65), is excellent value. I've also added a crown capper and bottling wand from the same source: the kits used to just go into my plastic pressure keg (without any CO2) but I'd like to bottle condition. I will invest in the gas set up for the keg very shortly, though.

My own personal taste in beer runs to the darker stuff: Stouts, Porters, darker Ales; however, I plan to brew as wide a variety as I can, to broaden my knowledge and understanding.

Finally, anyone in Ireland who is at all into Home Brewing (and Craft Beer) should join Beoir. It's only €10 a year, there's a raft of great benefits to being a member, not least of which is a 5% discount at all the main Homebrew suppliers in Ireland. That's already repaid the membership fee for me!

Ok, so, some Brew Days to follow.