If those syrup tanks are soda kegs, you would have half a kegging system. You need a tank or two, a CO2 tank and a regulator. The tanks are about half the cost of a whole system.
Yeast has to take an extra step when fermenting table sugar, sucrose, which is a disaccharide....two simple sugars bonded together. "Invert" sugar is probably sucrose treated with the enzyme invertase, which breaks down sucrose to glucose and fructose, which the yeast can then ferment rapidly.
Did you ever make ginger ale? I had a curiously strong ginger ale on the North Carolina outer banks a couple of summers ago. It was to normal ginger ale as Red Hook IPA is to Busch Natural Light. Now there's a soda I could imagine trying to make.
1 - an automatic dish washer makes a great bottle sterilizer as long as you have never ever, EVER put that evil liquid drying agent in it. Jet Dry and equivalent will ruin your beer.
2 - the simplest way to make a batch foolproof is to boil the entire batch. This does require an 8-10 gallon pot to make a 5 gallon batch. If you can't justify the big pot, get the biggest pot you can find and boil the extract and as much water as you can fit.
3 - A ten gallon pot full of boiling wort will cool pretty quick in a bathtub full of cold water, especially if you change the water a couple of times. Wort coolers are nice but the beginner can get away with hefting the pot in to the tub. The most critical time in your beers life is when it is cooling from boiling to pitching. That is when it is most susceptable to baddies getting in.
4 - never add sugar to boost specific gravity. You will end up with a brew that tastes terrible and gives you a hangover. This is probably THE most common mistake and has given homebrew a bad name.
5 - kegging sure makes the hobby easier but does add considerably to the cost. There is nothing wrong with fermenting in a plastic bucket with a spiggot (put a plastic bag over the spiggot and seal with a rubber band after you assemble the sanitized parts you ran through the dishwasher). Bottling is simple after fermentation completes. Just lift a bottle to the spiggot, turn the knob and fill the bottle.
6 - always prime the batch, not the bottle, if you are going to use natural bottle carbonation. The old books said to put a teaspoon of table sugar in each bottle. I sure had my share of poppers doing it that way.
7 - two stage fermentation sure helps reduce the amount of yeast in the bottle but can be skipped if you don't mind a little extra sludge.
Finally - my favorite foolproof brew?
Get yourself a gallon of unfiltered apple cider from the box store in a glass jar. Toss in a packet of champagne yeast and give it a shake. Stick a fermenation lock in a rubber cork on the top. Put it in a 5 gallon plastic bucket and leave it be for a month or two changing the water in the fermentation lock as needed the first few days. It WILL foam over and make a heck of a mess which is why it is in the plastic bucket and why you have to add water to the lock every so often. Wait for it to stop bubbling, then wait another week or so for it to clarify, then gently pour it into a clean jug. Put it in the fridge and enjoy.
I made mead once. It was ok but not my favorite. I made a few wheat beers and they are great during the summer. My favorite has got to be a nice mild brown. I find that most american homebrewers go for that over hopped microbrewery taste. Never understood the american fascination with preservatives. Hops were traditionally added to a beer as a preservative. IPA's are strongly hopped to survive the trip around the cape. I personally like a nice brown beer I can taste the malt and not have it overwhelmed by the hops.
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