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Looks great. I like that the cord comes out of the side instead of the bottom (like Blichmann's does) so it should be easier to mount or simply place on a table. Also, the insulation is a nice plus.

NO - don't put it in a secondary. Transferring to secondary will introduce oxygen into your beer. You can leave it in primary for a few months and it won't affect it at all. Introducing oxygen WILL affect it though.

It's funny - I have the opposite view. I'm too lazy to deal with siphoning from carboys, so now I use a spigot(s) (SS Brewbucket). The whole process is so much easier and streamlined.

I used glass carboys for 20+ years, and recently went to SS Brewtech Brewbuckets and I'll never go back. They are great and worth the price in my opinion.

It wasn't necessarily a total game changer, but I'd certainly recommend one. The crush is exactly what I want it to be based on my equipment, and I can crush when I want to. It was a great addition to my little brewery, and if you have some extra money - buy one and you won't regret it.

It's very common, actually. While convenient, many people opt to get their own grain crusher, because you can fine tune the crush to your particular setup. Often the LHBS won't crush it quite as fine as you want, which reduces efficiency.

Some people let it cool down naturally. Keep in mind that once it gets below 160F or so, it will be susceptible to contamination. That's a lot of tasty sugar water for bacteria, yeast, fruit flies, and the like to get in and setup shop.

Fermentation temperature control was, by FAR, the biggest improvement to by beer quality. It made more of an impact than everything, including going all-grain, starters, oxygen, ph meter, etc, etc.

Can you order one without the keggles?

I've left mine in the primary for a couple months before, and didn't detect any "off" flavors from being in contact with the trub. Secondary has less trub/yeast in contact, so you should be able to go that long easily (if you really had to). I would bottle it long before that though, since...

First of all, don't transfer to secondary in the future. You gain nothing from it except oxidation. This is true the vast majority of the time - just don't do it and your beer will be better. You can rack however much you want into smaller vessels if you want to experiment. There's no reason...

What is your carbonation level? Do you force carb with a keg or do you use priming sugar?

You said that you "didn’t really get all the malt extract out of the packet." - was it because the steam got it all gummed up? When I use extract, I put it in an big bowl first, then pour it in from there. If it gets gummed up, I can just dip the bowl in and get it all out.

Normally, 2 weeks is enough time to carbonate - but it could certainly take longer sometimes. I would wait another week and check it again. Make sure the bottles aren't stored in too cool of a place to allow the yeast to be active as possible.

Good to hear it kicked off finally. Yeah - maybe it's just your thermometer and the water was too hot. I find that dry yeast is always reliable - though I've actually never rehydrated before pitching it. Your beer should be fine, though I would expect at least some sort of minor off flavors...

Maybe your water was too warm/hot when you rehydrated (?). If I were you, I'd buy a packet of yeast and dump it in there without rehydrating and see what happens. I can't image the LME would be "bad", in that it wouldn't provide any fermentable sugars - so it would seem that it's an issue with...

I like Chinook for bittering and late boil, and Centennial for flavor after boil. I'd say also Cascade (my favorite), but I don't know how the Argentinian variety tastes.

Don't bother with a secondary - waste of time and you expose your beer to oxidation, unless you have a CO2 system and can completely purge the secondary - and even then, it's not worth it the vast majority of the time. I agree with everyone else to read How to Brew. It's an easy read and very...

No, that's not the way to carbonate - I don't see how that would work. The airlock, no matter how full, will not hold pressure inside of the fermenter, in fact it's designed to let pressure out. The only way I can see that it was carbonated, is if it got blocked by debris and kept some...

As long as you top off in the fermenter to 5 gallons (or whatever amount your shooting for), your post boil amount won't matter. With .75 gallons more than you thought, it will be lower gravity than if it was 3 gallons, but as long as you top off to 5 gallons - the gravity will be the same...