Great topic Snow! No essay from me tonight which is surprising as this subject really interests me.
In your original post, you said that it felt as though a lot of AHB'ers were hard core brewers ie AG. I think you are quite right there. The majority of people who post here regularly are in that category.
This poses many advantages and a couple of disadvantages to newer brewers. If you look through the latest threads box, you will see many topics that are irrelevant to newer brewers as they are topics that are exploring the cutting edge of home-brewing. Now this is great stuff. It's like you have a whole team of excellent brewers who are experimenting in the grey areas and gradually turning them into black and white for us to get the benefits of later on.
The disadvantage of this is, that a new brewer reading about AG here, will quickly think,as I did, that AG looks pretty hard. It's actually very simple and far more reliable and far more forgiving. For me, it's actually going to be a cheaper option.
Like, Screwtop, I have started and stopped brewing many times as I have always done kits and I have always had a taste in my beers that I find unpalatable. (Until yesterday that is. I actually brewed a dark beer that's not too bad - quite nice really!)
Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing AG done from scratch at Ross's, who I beleive has only been doing AG for a year. The beers were the best I've ever had (including any imported bottled beers) and the process was dead easy and only required an extra hours work on top of what I already do.
So, I think the following 2 points are very important.
1. If you are getting the results you want from kits then that's great. If your mates like your beer then that's even better!
2. If you are not getting the results you want from kits, it's important to realise that AG is
not complicated.
A side effect of this site is seeing all these advanced topics which are dealing with the Formula 1 level of brewing - they're looking at ways to make the perfect beer - and unfortunately these can confuse us newer brewers with terminology etc. (I think this may have been why you actually started this topic.)
To get rid of this false notion, the best way is not to read but to ask someone here if you can come and watch them on a brew day. You will be astounded at the generosity here when you ask for help once you have the basics of sanitisation, temperature, etc, right.
If you want a longer version of the above 2 points see Post #4 of
this thread
Whilst, at the time of that post, I was forumming a tad under the influence and was pretty frustrated with my brewing attempts, I think it's a good post to read if you ever find yourself not satisfied with kits. (On a quick re-read, the only advice I gave there that I'm not happy with was my comments on fresh wort kits which I actually know nothing about when sober although I seemed to know all about them in that post!)
Finally, there are many brewers who start with kits and succeed in brewing beers they enjoy. This is fact. There are also many brewers who start with kits and do not succeed in creating a beer they enjoy. This is also fact. Often they just dissapear which is a real shame.
At this stage, we don't know if you are happy with your beers or not. I reckon it's safe to say that everyone here will be hoping that you relish your first beers and will honestly be thrilled to raise their glasses to you.
If your beers don't turn out to be what you're after though, don't become dissillusioned as Screwtop and I did. It's very important to know that there are other methods and they
are easy if shown first-hand. So if this does end up being the case, the brewers here will simply put down their glasses and open their doors. Sounds pretty good to me either way, Snow!
[Looks like I ended up writing another essay but Screwtop's was probably longer!]
) and had a bottle last weekend - magic with loads of complexity that was never initially there - hard to describe but an absolute keeper now!! B) 
