Are you sure about some of that advice, my tap water clean and safe too but would make **** beer. Testing and altering alkalinity is easy and cheap and if your going to spend time and money on AG it should be an essential part of a brewing regime. Yeast is the most important ingredient we use. To advocate using "cheap powder" is just wrong. New brewers should be encouraged to make the best beer they can not just the easiest. If they want easy beer there are plenty of decent kits around.
I often have people ask me questions about basic brewing, as they know it's one of my many interests..
I was actually raising the point that there ARE ways of altering the water, and that it DOES make a difference to the brew. Really to be aware of it, and that further investigation/reading might be required.
Though I also did point out that I personally don't play with the water - just expressing my own preference.
I also pointed out that yeast DOES affect the drink and that there are lots of different ones you can buy - for that same reason.
Again, I pointed out that I now have my own preferred yeast, which happens to be cheap, but gives me the results I want. Again, just expressing my personal preference.
As experienced brewers will know, there are lots of factors to take into consideration - the article is really about highlighting some of these factors.
Really, I'm just giving my input, but I don't charge anything to readers, so I don't need to give a moneyback guarantee ðŸËâ¬