Ale, Beer, Stout appreciation

fantastic, thank you!

About to start on a new batch soon. Only used a beer kit before, is this much harder? Is there any way to get the alcohol down a bit?

A few things to consider:

1. Make sure your alpha acids match those values for the hops I used. If they are higher your EBUs will increase, lower and they will drop. You'll still get a nice brew but make sure they arent too far off
   
2. Make sure you measure out everything before hand
   
3. Watch out for boil overs when you add the malt, be prepared to pull of the heat
   
4. You can reduce the abv by increasing the amount of water in the fermenter but you need the abv to carry the high EBUs. You could probably reduce it down to 5%. Or remove 500gram of the malt extract, that will give you 5.1% with the volumes shown (I would do that)
   
5. Check out brewuk.co.uk for all the advice you will need
   
6. Leave in the primary fermenter for 2 weeks before bottling, the extra week conditioning is worth it.
   
   

PM if you have any other questions :)