What extract is better - liquid or dry?
Dry is better, but more expensive. Your choice.
What size brew pot should I use?
The bigger the better - Extract - 4 gal, All Grain, the bigger the better but 7.5 gal is pushing it very small. Your choice.
What kind of brew pot is better aluminium or stainless steel?
Your Choice, Al better heat transfer, never had a problem with it. SS, easier to clean. Your choice.
What is the best fermentation chamber - glass carboy, plastic brew bucket, better bottle, conical fermenter?
Depends on your batch size, 20 gallon's I think you want to go with conical, Glass is easier to clean, plastic you have to worry about scratches a little more. Never used a BB yet. Your choice.
Should I go straight into all grain?
Wow, Your choice? How much do you want to take on all at once?
What is best for all grain - batch or fly sparging?
Your choice. Depends more on your equipment, time and what your rather do. Old school is fly sparging.
Should I go straight into kegging?
Depends on how much you hate bottling, kegging makes thing much easier, but much more expensive with getting kegs, co2 bottle, regulator, fridge, temperature controller, gas and beer lines, taps, etc. Your choice.
What is the best type of fridge for a kegarator?
Now this is a loaded question just begging to start up a flame war if the ones above don't do it. Your choice.
Should I go with pin lock or ball lock kegs?
Either or, what can you get cheaper and support with parts. Answer seems to be ball locks now days. Your choice.
Should I add extract at knockout?
Depends if your doing a late extraction or not, but I would say yes. It helps with color and hops utilization. Your choice.
Should I use a yeast starter?
Depends on your yeast, volume of wort. Your choice.
Should I do a full boil?
Yes, but if doing extract with late addition, this question does not compute. Your choice.
Should I use pellet or whole leaf hops?
What can you get? I can only get pellets. Depends on what you want, IE: Your choice.
Should I use tap water or distilled water?
How good is your tap water? In general if you can drink it from the tap at room temperature and like it, you can use it for your beer. If your a bottled water snob you may want to use spring water, not distilled unless you treat it to provide the needed nutrients for your yeast. Tap or spring water = Your choice.
If I build a lauter tun should I go with a round or rectangular cooler?
Size of the cooler and bed size is more important, round coolers make it easier to get a good bed depth, but if your batch sparging it does not matter. I use a Ice cube, lots of space, cheap and I batch sparge. Again: Your choice.
What is better for a MLT copper manifold, pvc manifold, cpvc manifold, or stainless steel braid?
Now your just trying to start another holy war here. Depends on your sparge method, budget, type of MLT.
There are other options like brew in the bag, steam infusion, electrical heat recirculation.
To be honest - do you want to make beer or be a toy master?
I would do a tree decision based on your budget and decide what you can afford to spend without kicking yourself if you decide you don't like homebrewing after 3 batchs. From there, it is all up to you. This board accepts all homebrewers as they are. (But some do teast brewmuncher for his ugly junk). It's all up to you.
