Originally Posted by JonnyV

Get away from the Mr. Beer kits and get a good 5 gal. extract brewing setup. Once you get good at extract brewing, move to partial mash and then to all grain brewing. All grain is starting from scratch but the cooking process is time consuming but very very worth it. I'm still at the partial mash step, actually making a Sam Adams Summer Ale clone kit this weekend.

Originally Posted by MGMorden

Yep - if you're doing extract brewing it can be insanely easy. Need 1 bucket with an air-tight lid and grommet as a fermenter (I just use the single primary - no secondary yet). With extracts it's kinda like making tea. Boil your water, add the extracts, and then boil for as long as the directions/recipe says (adding in the ingredients specified at time intervals. When done, pour it in the sanitized fermenter, take a hydrometer reading, then pitch your yeast seal it up and add your airlock. Wet 3-4 weeks, and the beer is ready for bottling (which I presume works the same way with Mr Beer).

Partial-mash and all-grain are more complicated (and I've not taken that step myself), but overall the process is very doable. The main thing is just making sure everything is well sanitized - basically everything that will touch the beer and in the immediate vicinity needs to be sanitized, and beer is loved by bacteria almost as much as humans. You need to make sure that there is nothing the take root in the beer - particularly prior to fermentation (afterwards the alcohol in it helps to keep out some weaker infestations).