I experimented with beer brewing years ago and enjoyed it.
I found this book helpful:
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charles Papazian
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Homebrewing-Third-Harperresource-Book/dp/0060531053
I’d recommend picking up a copy and finding a good homebrew store from which to buy equipment and malt extract. You might want to start with buying malt extract, rather than trying to brew from grain, because mashing the grain requires additional equipment and expertise.
The number 1 rule in home brewing is cleanliness. If you don’t religiously clean everything with hot water and bleach/iodine, you will ruin the taste of your beer.
Rule number 2 is to be kind to your glass carboys (where you ferment the beer). Don’t put a carboy filled with hot liquid anywhere near cold water (huge rookie mistake, which I made twice).
Rule number 3 is to ask the folks who run the homebrew store for advice. They tend to love the hobby and freely give out advice.
You can find lots of recipes on the Internet and the Papazian book has some good ones as well. It’s a fun hobby and you can make a decent ale with very little training.
I recommend the Papazian book also. It’s the bible of the field.
-Start with malt extracts and supplement with whole malt.
-Keep a log of all important info. Temperature, specific gravities, cooking times, brand of yeast (there are many, I recommend a liquid yeast from Wyeast), fermentation dates, taste your product after primary fermentation before bottling and record results, repeat after secondary fermentation.
-For easy cleanup get a crab cooker and cook outside or in the garage. This hobby is messy and sticky and will make your kitchen a disaster area.
-Start with five gallon batches and decide if this hobby is something you are going to stick with.
-If you decide that you want to get serious and do whole grain mashing, get an empty keg and have a metal shop cut the top out. This makes a great cooker that can do larger batches. Put a valve on the bottom to drain the wort through a wort chiller. Also make a wort straighter for the bottom of the pot. This is the ultimate home brew set up.
-Hops, hops, hops! Most recipes never call for enough hops. Be generous.