If you've made a few kits and/or extract brews, why not have a go at a simple AG brew, to see the difference it makes? A small batch of AG beer is not difficult and you will discover the difference and feel the joy and pride of making it from scratch. All you need for 5 litres is 1kg of Maris Otter, or other pale malt, a packet of hops, and a sachet of yeast. You just need a thermometer, a decent sized pan and something to strain the grain from the wort. A big sieve, or a piece of cloth in a colander.
Recipe:
- 1kg Maris Otter (about £1.50)
- One packet of hops (any you like - EKG, Citra, Amarillo, Galaxy, Fuggles, First gold etc) (About £3-4, but you will only use 15g of the 100g, so cost is around 50p)
- One packet of yeast, 3g dried yeast is enough. (50p ish)
Method:
1. Heat 3 litres of water to 75C in big pan.
2. Pour in the pale malt while stirring - get rid of lumps.
3. Check temp is 65-70C - adjust if necessary with cold or boiling water.
4. Wrap a thick towel round the pot and leave alone for one hour.
5. Strain into a bucket or other vessel through sieve, or colander lined with cloth.
6. Heat another 4 litres of water to 80C and add the grains back to it. Leave 10 mins, stir, and strain the liquid to your bucket. You should have about 6 litres, which will reduce when you boil it for an hour.
7. Dispose of grains, add wort to pan and bring to boil.
8. Add 5 grams of hops when boiling point is reached.
9. 55 Mins later add 10g of hops, boil another 5 mins and switch off.
10. Cool the wort in sink, with lid on, add to sterilised FV/demijohn via sterilised sieve to catch hops, pitch yeast at around 20C.
You should get 8 or 9 x 500ml bottles of lovely beer for about £2.50.
If you've never made an all grain beer it's really worth giving this a go.
Gonna pitch my spare Nottingham yeast in to try to save it, if that dies too I'm gonna bin in - you can generally save/bottle a brew stuck at 1020 but not one that's hardly started and is still at 1040. 
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