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I don't think the probe is waterproof if that's what you're asking so either don't have the towel covering that part of the bucket (what I do) or make sure to keep the probe dry somehow.

This. It's possible you could have had an under attenuated beer already but even the best beers taste a little sweet when I drink the leftover from a bottling session. Rich malty sweet probably won't go away, but a faint, simple sugar sweetness usually will. As others have said, carbonation and...

It's a bit of a pain but I usually just use a couple pieces of paracord to tie a towel on if I'm using buckets.

A great place to start would be Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. For each style he goes over the defining characteristics and ingredients as well as actually providing some actual details of commercial and successful homebrew recipes using which ingredients and in what proportions. I find...

Making water evaporate takes a lot of heat energy and most of that energy comes from your beer, making it colder. I use this method exclusively for chilling beer. The towel will keep pulling up water through capillary action and is a really effective surface for evaporation to occur on. If I...

Whoops, suppose I should have clarified.

If I understand you're trying to only run heat to one of the two outlets? Most 2 socket plugs will have a brass tab on one of the sides that can be broken with a pair of pliers to allow them to share a ground and neutral but have separately switched hot sides (though you should double check...

I suppose I should have clarified, no I don't use them on the corny flare disconnects because of the little gasket thing built in. I typically do for my other stainless MFL to FFL connections.

+1 for spraying starsan everywhere to see if it bubbles. Fwiw I had a co2 tank a while back that leaked because the safety valve on the tank was not screwed on tightly and could leak an entire tank in a day without even opening the valve. Also if you use 1/4" flare fittings, make sure you have...

Did you happen to notice which bottles you filled first/last? It could be that some of the bottles have had this level of sediment all along and you just happened to open some of the cleaner ones earlier.

I think that they may become more popular but I don't think they will ever replace regular brewing as most of us do it. For one thing, the machines would be cost prohibitive for a lot of people (even though some people spend a lot more on their traditional brewing gear). I also think that...

The temperature can be hugely different at the top and bottom of the fridge, make sure you take that into account. It also doesn't seem crazy to me that the stout could freeze at a higher temperature than the others because the increased alcohol depresses the freezing point. (This is why you...

One thing I can say for sure is that if you want to do 5 gallon batches, get a 10 gallon pot. This way you can do full volume extract boils and won't be out of luck if you decide to move on to all grain in the future. A 10 gallon pot should even be big enough to do 5 gallon BIAB batches. This...

Good point. The other thing that I've had cause bubbles like that is accidentally lowering the pressure below the carbonation level of the beer. Same story: allows the co2 to come out of solution before it hits the tap and causes mad foam.

The bubbles in the lines mean that the beer will be slamming into the faucet and causing foam. The reason they happen is because the top of your fridge is warmer than the bottom so the co2 in the lines comes out of solution. The fix is to put a fan in your fridge to blow the air around and...

If you're feeling curious, you should try brewing the same beer with a belgian strain just so you can compare for future batches. I did something like this where I used the same malt and hops for a red ale and did one with 1272 and one with wlp530. Extremely interesting comparison.

I should really open a restaurant and trademark a signature dish called "Pepperoni Pizza." That'll show my competition who's the boss.

Yep. Probably has to do with the ratio of surface area to volume.

If you think of it, before you brew your next batch post a picture of your grain crush so we can at least see if it's in the ballpark.

An efficiency that low could be the result of an inaccurate thermometer. If you missed your mash temp by, say, 10 or 15 degrees, you may not have had complete conversion during the mash. I could believe efficiency in the 60s bring a result of bad crush but not that low.