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I don't have any experience with brewing with a gas stove, I'm all electric. I can't comment on gas, but if your stove has 8" 2kW+ electric burners or a high-power canning element you can most likely do it. Some folks use insulation on their brewpot, some use heatsticks, and if you're lucky...

Couldn't you just mask out everything but the label part on a blank handle and just spray it with blackboard paint for the same thing?

Yep, you can do it. I've done around 27 AG batches in my kitchen. You just need a stove that can pump out enough juice to heat the volumes needed, or augment it with a heatstick in the boil.

I actually kind of like the smell of Star San. I wouldn't drink it or anything, but the smell doesn't bother me.

I just got one recently for my mash tun. Haven't got to use it yet, but that thing is really stiff. I doubt the weight of the grain would impact it.

If I had too much protein in the wort, like when I used rye and had a badly stuck mash, I got scorching from hell. I mean there was sizzling black crud on the element. Other batches, I had no problem other than it boiling a little too vigorously if the stove was also on max - it would splatter...

I just built a ~950W 110V low-density heatstick from a 4.5kW 240V element, and by itself it really doesn't do much. What I really wanted it for, though, was to just give a minor boost to the boil to keep it rolling (my stove seems to max out around 212 F on 7 1/2 gallons, it'll boil but not...

Maybe the percent number just means the percentage of the original volume that boils off per hour, so it is constant.

I ran a test with my new gear yesterday, using a stovetop plus a 950W heatstick. The evaporation rate for me with plain tap water came in around 17% (about 2 gallons over a 90 minute boil, with the starting volume at 170 degrees). I tried to make the conditions as close as I could to actual...

I like Star San for other reasons besides as a sanitizer. I use it as an acid wash on my equipment that I clean with percarbonate, after rinsing the percarbonate solution out with hot water. The acid will neutralize the alkalinity if there is any still present, and the Star San wash has...

Either model is probably fine for 5 gallon batches. I do 5 gallon ones myself and bought a Therminator, but that was half because of the bling bling factor :o It looks like John Blichmann owns my kitchen considering all of the things I have with his name on them. For either chiller you...

I got my Foodsaver initially for sealing up hops and grain, but I'm glad I have it otherwise. The thing gets used at least once a week. Vacuum sealing canisters of brown sugar keeps it from turning into a brick, and I use the Foodsaver vacuum marinading dish as well for preparing meats.

I tried using rye once to make a roggenbier, so half the grist was malted rye. I ended up with the worst stuck mash I've ever had. If I ever use rye again I'm going to throw in a lot more rice hulls than I did that time.

Backflushing isn't for the coolant side, it's flushing water through the wort side backwards to the normal flow to get any hop bits and trub out that got caught in the plates.

I read something a while back about Chimay that stated that it was likely they used dextrose as the sugar addition but they didn't exactly want to publicize it. It's been a while ago so I don't know where I saw it. If they do use dextrose and can end up with that beer I don't see a problem...

Fastenal sells packs of washers but my local store broke a pack for me since I only needed two of them.

All of my Firestone kegs (but one) have plastic gas-side dip tubes, and the lips are warped. Even the replacement ones I have are used and are also warped. However, I just use O-rings sized for them and they seal fine with the post cranked down tight.