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Congrats also on the promising batch. One thing you might find helpful in the future is to eliminate bad recipes as the source of a bad beer. I quite often select from this list of award winning recipes, and so far they've all turned out great. Doing so allowed be focus on improving various...

I suggest you use these online instructions as a reference in case I've led you astray: http://homebrewmanual.com/brew-in-a-bag/ Last, I'll just add - if your first beer doesn't turn out to be so wonderfully great that it glows an aura and you want to marry it, don't worry, you'll get better...

Despite not having a large enough pot, all is not lost. What you can do is buy dry malt extract in substitution for the base grain (it's a whitish powder that gets very sticky when moist). I assume the base grain and specialty grain are still separated? When using this extract you can do...

Just a note... the process I'm recommending is called BIAB - which I've actually never done before. I do a method called mashing, so be sure to seek verification from other posters that the process I've outlined is correct. Nonetheless, I hope it helps. Also, to note, you'll need a very large...

Where do you get a toilet plunger that big... Christmas is coming and I could really use one ;-)

I'd leave the 3rd batch (with Wyeast) exactly where it is... the low end of the yeast's range is exactly what you want. 1 degree lower won't make a noticeable difference - usually when slightly lower it will just take a little longer to ferment. Usually at the lower end of a yeasts range you...

Strong alcohol smell and flavor, you say? It could be that your fermentation temperatures are too warm. Off the top of my head (you can look up the exact stats), US-05 likes to ferment at around 65-68 ferenheit. And that's the actual temperature of the beer, rather than the ambient room...

I took me about a year of brewing to get consistently good enough at it that I was satisfied that I considered myself to 'know what I'm doing.' In that time I went over various aspects of my process in order to try and improve. For a short period of that I started adding small amounts of...

If saving a bit less than a penny per beer (at whatever scale you decide to go with) takes priority over your time and effort then, as others have indicated, you can use the free buckets and scale down your recipes. I would go with scaling back the recipes to 4 gallon batches in the 5 gallon...

...ingredients aren't that expensive either. I'm all for free stuff... I'm just not going to reduce my volume for the sake of a free bucket. Nor am I going to double my fermenter cleaning effort for a free bucket either. Like how many batches to you get out of a bucket... 30-40 or more...

These new buckets sound like an albatross. I say ditch them and get ones that will fit the size you want to brew, rather than brew according to their size. Buckets really aren't that expensive. In 3 years of brewing I've bought... 4 of them? What you'll save in money is not worth cleaning an...

4 things that may be helpful: 1) The measuring lines printed on the side of fermenter and bottling buckets are notoriously wrong. Be sure to make your own lines using a measuring cup and sharpie. 2) Cold crashing (refrigerating) your bottles before opening them for a minimum of 2-3 days will...

8 gallons is just big enough for 5 gallon batches that aren't really high gravity, but you'll have to watch it like a hawk or you'll get a lot of boil overs. I use a 15 gallon kettle and I sometimes get boil overs. Ideally I wish I had a 20 gallon kettle so I could more comfortably do 10...

I just do this at my house prior to brewing... it makes sure there's no live bacteria able to get into the wort:

Your blow off jar bubbles because gas pressure builds up in the fermenter bucket and has no place to go but push out through the blow off jar. However, if the lid on the fermenter isn't completely air-tight then it's easier for the pressure inside the fermenter to come out of the imperfect seal...

Aside from your immediate question which I think others have answered well, I'll offer you advice on a slight tangent from your topic. But I've only used US-04 once, so take my advice with a grain of salt: The only time I used it I fermented for almost 3 weeks - certainly long enough for...

Don't screw around with recipes that you have no real idea if they're good or not, because then you don't know if your process is bad or the recipes themselves. Pick a few from here instead: http://www.alternativecommutepueblo.com/2011/10/ahanhc-gold-medal-winning-recipes-for.html

It sounds fine. Bucket lids are notoriously bad for having tiny leaks that kill any chance for your airlock to bubble. I only get bubbling airlocks probably about 1/3rd of the time. Let it go 4-5 days and if you're still worried then very briefly pop off the airlock bung and take a quick peek...

You have a kegerater at home AND at work??? You just wrote that post to show off... didnya?

It's very hard to tell from that picture. But by no means should you dump that. I'd guess yeast rafts at this point, which will eventually settle out, but it's possible that you've acquired an infection. The long and short of it is that you needn't panic. If the batch doesn't turn out then...