I went with the glass. I didnt want to have to keep on buying new plastic carboys every so often after they wear out, and I want to be able to see whats happening along the different stages of fermentation to be able to learn, and just entertain myself. I have been reading about a lot of people getting hurt with glass carboys however and it really kind of scares me because I just never find myself in the mood to want to go to the hospital which has made me contemplate about getting better bottles but I don't know. My logical side tells me is that there are a lot of careless people out there, and if they took just a little precaution they wouldn't have gotten hurt themselves... so we'll see how that one goes along once I start to get more experience.
As for what recipe I went with, I purchased a American Wheat Ale, which had good reviews from just about everyone, and it wasn't very expensive ($18 with no yeast) compared to others, so I think its a good place to start. As much as I would like to start lagering to make pilsners, in all honesty I don't have a way to temperature control it, and I know its more finicky and was told by others to do something with a quicker turn around so I could reap my reward sooner and quell my impatience, along with fine tune my technique. I think that was pretty good advice especially because it will give me a chance to get familiar with everything and I can upgrade to allow for a lagering capability down the road so its less of an up front cost.
Quick question to anyone that can answer however. Is there a way to have an airlock valve and a blow off tube, or do you need to do the blow off tube first then switch to the airlock valve