Beer is made from malt, hops and yeast with a lot of water. Avoid using sugar, it thins the body of your beer and will add a flavour that is often described as cidery. Many new brewers do use sugar (and many old kit brewers do too) as that's what the back of the tin says to use. Brew lots of beers, do lots of research, try different additives for your kilo and you can decide what to use.
A very good combination is 500gms dried malt extract (DME) and 500 gms dextrose. Too much malt and your beers may become too sweet. Experienced brewers know how to counteract this, but newer kit brewers can create good beers using 50/50 malt and dextrose.
Many neighbours (and other well meaning brewers) are stuck in the rut of using sugar and aiming for the cheapest stubby of beer possible. Using better quality ingredients will increase your cost per brew, but the beer will have much better flavour and will still be much much cheaper than any commercial beer you can buy. All members on this forum will agree the extra cost is well worth while. You can draw on all the combined knowledge of the forum members rather than the often stuck in a rut sugar based brewer. Yes, you will have conflicting opinions, but the great thing about this hobby, you can listen to all sides, then try each side and decide for yourself.
To avoid bottle bombs:
Take great care with cleanliness and sanitation. Many infections will slowly chew away at the remaining long chain molecules in your beer (the bits that give malty flavours) and slowly increase carbonation, destroy the good flavours and produce nasty flavours. Eventually the bottles go bang.
Don't bottle early. Don't use the airlock as a guide to bottling. Use your hydrometer. Check that the specific gravity is stable over at least two-three days before bottling. Keep your brew at the correct temperature, if the temp drops too low, your yeast gets sluggish. Don't rush your brew, many of the kits say bottle in seven days. Your beer will be fine to leave in the fermenter for a fortnight before bottling (so long as you are not cooking it at 26 degrees on a heat mat.) Leaving your brew longer in the fermenter helps to make the beer cleaner flavoured.
Use the correct amount of priming sugar.
Also, to create a better flavoured beer, ferment at the correct range for your yeast. Generally this is 18-20 degrees for an ale. Many tin instructions say up to 26-28 which is way too high.
