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Leaving boil hops behind was the right thing to do. They are spent. Dry hopping would be your next step for hop character on the cold side. Welcome back!

You could boil it for a few minutes and chill it again. If it tastes funky, though, dump it.

It depends how long this has been sitting, but it looks like the good, suspended yeast is in the lighter, opaque brown section in the (roughly) middle. Hurry though, and pour it off into a fresh jar or two, so it can settle. If you wait too long, it will settle on top of the trub, making it...

Yes that line of argument gets rather silly. As someone who has brewed with many systems, whether turnkey all-in-one or DIY cobbled together; 1, 2, or 3 vessels; propane, electric, or induction; bottoms, bags, baskets; recirculated or not, temp-controlled or not, etc. etc. - I feel strongly...

Regarding dumping yeast and trub... as the owner of a plastic conical, the Catalyst, it's just one way of doing things and not necessarily superior. I would probably use the Catalyst more but it doesn't fit into any of my temperature-controlled spaces. It's easy enough to keep trub out of the...

It's totally brewing beer. I suspect you know this deep down, and only wish to start a ruckus.

I would review your goals. Why do you want to pressure ferment? Why do you want to spund? Those are different things, even though they may use similar equipment. Pressurized fermentation requires a special fermenter. Spunding happens either in the fermenter OR in the serving keg, so it may...

There are so many variations on producing lager beer, all of which can succeed in their own way. You have to make decisions about temperature, pressure, schedule, and carbonation. Remember that the point of pressure fermentation is that it allows you to ferment the beer at a warmer temp than...

Oxygen is needed so that yeast can replicate and increase their population once being pitched into wort. You do not need to add oxygen to beer for it to carbonate, or to worry about that at all. I have purged O2 from many a serving keg using CO2 from the fermenter, and carbonated naturally in...

I won't address the yeast part, but regarding your pressure settings... 15 psi at room temperature is not adequate for carbonation. The pressure setting required to obtain a given amount of absorbed CO2 is dependent on the temperature. Refer to this chart. At 68ºF, 15 psi only achieves 1.7...

You shouldn't be worrying about gravity testing this beer for at least a week. Presence of a krausen is indicative of fermentation, and it's a lager yeast fermenting in the 50s - it's doing exactly what is expected. Don't pitch more and try to keep your hands off of it entirely. Are you...

To purge one gas with another requires pressure that forces the resident gas out of its occupied space. So I would imagine that since the egress of residual CO2 from the beer would not occur with any significant pressure, O2 from the atmosphere would also freely enter the space, mixing with the...

Since we have a dodgy thermometer at play and two worts mashed at uncertain temps, I figure it would be a bit of a crapshoot to rely on viable enzymes in the "good" batch. I'm not arguing with the basic science you proposed. It's just a bit experimental. But a good thing to explain nonetheless.

I'm a little dubious of Miraculix's suggestion, if only because it would be unpredictable. At least you know you got half the intended volume of viable wort. If you mixed it together it would be a "who knows?" situation. You might get a lot of unconverted starches, which would cause permanent...

You answered your own question and took the right action. :) Temps matter in both the mash and fermentation, and outside of a certain range it can actually fail, not just be "not as good." Carry on!

I like analogies. :) Long ago before MIDI and sampling and computers, if someone couldn't play an instrument, that instrument wasn't gonna show up on the track. And before recording, there were no tracks at all - one had to play an instrument live to make music. Thanks to technology...

Pay close attention to whether stated measurements are inner (ID) or outer (OD) diameter. Because of course, the tubing ID must fit around the supply line's OD.

Most likely, you are done. That's 68% attenuation, which is very normal, and two weeks is a long time and 70ºF is warm. Recipes don't know much about your process - they are an estimate at best. What yeast is it, and what was your mash temperature?

That is not possible, so there must be an error in measurement somewhere. Gravity cannot go up. How are you determining the current gravity?

As a musician (and perhaps you are one, too), I think this falls apart quickly. Making beer from extract is like piecing together pre-recorded sequences in GarageBand and making a song. Brewing beer from grain is more akin to recording those sequences yourself. Both are songs, and to the...