after tasting a pals ginger beer last week i am keen to try and attempt it myself.
does anyone have any tips or kit they might want to pass on?
Oh Aye mate - get stuck in to it. It's part of attaining manhood, brewing your own ale. Don't know about ginger ale, mind, but real ale is something that has to be attempted.
Malt extract brewing is were you start from. You can buy kits that have very simple instructions (just add water and yeast, leave, drink) but personally I never had good results doing this as a beginner. You just need to add a wee bit of sophistication and you can get great results from extracts.
Rather then type a load of stuff out, check out these sites, they'll give you a picture of what's involved.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/index.html
I found the second site very helpful when I was getting going. Although it's American (it's an article of faith with UK brewers that Americans know nothing about ale) it's v clearly explained.
Should say that I'm only an intermediate-level sort of homebrewer, do partial mash brews - I think there are more experienced brewers who post here who would know a lot more than me.
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Ignore the deluxe kits you can buy. For ease of brewing you need:
23/25L barrel/keg thing that can take a little bottler/tap (syphons are awful) and airlock.
Little bottler.
Airlock.
Sanitiser.
Big plastic Stirring spoon.
Big stewpot - about 5-8L size.
Bottle brush - NOT with a wooden handle.
Caps and capper - the £35 jobs are ace, the cheaper ones are a pain but work (right fanny on though).
Hydrometer - just get a beer one, not a combo.
Cokking scales.
Jars for storing excess DME/dextrose, I use big old coffee jars.
Bottles - I've saved 300 hefe 500ml bottles, because bigger means less washing and capping and they are very strong.
2 tips
1 get the temperature right
2 Clean everything if in doubt clean again
3 RTFI
Coopers ginger beer is an ace kit to start with
coopers +1 had good results with that several times, in fact, there's another one of those about a metre away from me, which I'm going to start this weekend
Ditto Adam
What do you use instead of the Carbonation tabs? cos they are not much cop.