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Welcome to HBT! In addition to the other responses, you should know that you do not need to go to a secondary. Wait 10 days or you have 3 days with no FG change (whichever comes later) and then bottle. The secondary is great for dry hopping of fruit beers, but generally an unnecessary step.

I don't think you will have bottle bombs either. My guess is that you did not pitch enough yeast to get much lower. I need to pitch a 2 liter starter for hybrid style (see Mr Malty's Pitching Rate Calculator). This is one of my favorite styles and with a good starter I can get down to 1.011...

+1 on the wine thief. I picked one up 3 batches ago and love it. So much easier that the turkey baster.

On my Better bottle, I filled up and drained my bottling bucket. I used a sharpie to mark every gallon. I did that in case I wanted to ferment a half batch.

I would also put in a plug for Jamil Zainasheff's and John Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles. I think it a great baseline for extract brewers and has a lot of other information (such as the hops chart and carbonation volumes) that help a lot. I like listening to the brewing network (particularly...

What yeast did you use and does fermentation appear done? Ales can completely ferment out in just a couple of days, particularly if you have a low OG. Take a reading tomorrow and then again Monday. If it is the same each time then it is time to bottle.

In the "Brew Strong" show discussing fermentors, they suggest getting a new bucket every 6 batches or so. They do this to specifically avoid infection. I don't know anyone who throws out their fermentors that quick, but if you are sure the batch was infected, I would buy a new bucket.

I used them for my beers that need long storage/cellaring, but I have not done any experiments to find out if they make a difference. You should fall run an experiment and tell us if they prevent oxidation!

I use http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html to figure out how big a starter I need. Style and beer size have a lot to do with how big a starter you should use. Ales need small starters, hybrids need bigger, and lagers need huge starters.

I'm a White Labs guy so I have no experience with Wyeast, but the London Ale yeast that I used and harvested always smelled yeasty/bready. The strains may be very different but it sounds like an infection. I hope I'm wrong.

I get the same when I brew the my Cal Commons. I have learned to tell SWMBO that the basement smells, its the yeast, and it is supposed to smell that way. I was thinking about a Kolsch soon so that is good to know!

You may not be paranoid. I know that some yeast stinks and others are pleasingly bready. Depending on the strain, I might just chuck it and buy a new vial. What was the yeast strain?

You added a lot of oxygen to your beer by using the spigot and not a bottling wand. Oxygen = Oxygenation, Oxygenation=Staling. Once your beer is carbonated (2 weeks) I would store it as cold as possible. You have shortened the shelf-life of your beer and may notice a cardboard flavor in a few...

FWIW, making a starter and having a proper pitch can also clean up the taste of your final product. I noticed a the slight extract twang disappeared once I started making a starter.

+1 on not needing a secondary. I use my carboy as a second fermenter so I can have 2 batches going at a time! Use some irish moss the last 15 minutes of your boil and use good technique with your racking cane when transferring to the bottling bucket and you will get very clear beer...

I've learned about the importance of mixing to get an good OG based on several batches, but I still know that the number is sometimes a bit off. When the carboy is really full, I am not sure getting an OG that matches calculation is worth risking contamination. The extracts have the sugars...

I have only been in the bottle for a week and a half, but I love this one. Unfortunately I definitely missed my color. I need to change the name because it is really not red (haven't checked but SRM is more like 19 than 16 or 17). If you swap out the pale LME for 6 lbs of extra light LME you...

They are both important tools and important additions to your equipment. In my brief experience, unless you do a full boil batch, OG is tough to measure accurately. The added water creates a layering effect and my readings have been typically low compared to my beer calculus estimations. I do...

I am curious how your impressions of the yeast. I pitched this into a biere de garde 2 days ago and it is still blowing off like crazy. I let the fermentation creep up over 70 and was wondering what the ester profile will be like. How did your beers come out?

Sounds like a very painful lesson. I hope the beer came out OK! I am currently using the snowbanks to chill my wort, but will keep that in mind when I eventually build myself a wort chiller. From what I understand, Cali Common can have a rather powerful blow-off so maybe that batch will...