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The color of the extract is not going to affect the OG. If you're concerned about hitting a specific color in the finished beer, you could find out the details of the extract from your LHBS and add it as a new ingredient in beersmith, perhaps using the pale LME as a reference. Personally, I'd...

Sort of makes me wonder why white would be the first choice for a 'default' color. I mean, most of the things I would expect homebrewers to stick them on (buckets, kegs, fridges) are either white or silver, in which case black seems a much more suitable color.

Has anyone gotten a HBT decal in a color other than white? I'm beginning to think they don't exist :P So far I've gotten three: Got a white one when I became a paid member a year+ ago, and since black would have gone a lot better with my kegerator, I went and separately paid for another...

Steeping is no different than making tea, you're just dissolving compounds in the grain that give you color, flavor, body, etc. Mashing is a chemical process wherein the naturally occurring enzymes in the grain convert starches from the grain into fermentable sugars. The technique isn't...

Well for one thing, many of us ferment in carboys or buckets without spigots, in which case getting a pump primed isn't so straightforward. The biggest problem I can see is that when racking you want to avoid disturbing the trub. Pumping would increase the flow rate which may cause you to stir...

Beer is beer, there is nothing special about stout that makes it "incompatible" with CO2. Think about it, there are tons of commercial stouts available in bottles on the market, but only a select few of them (guinness, murphy's, et al) come bottled/canned with the nitrogen 'widget', the rest...

You should be more sure of what it's made of and/or plated with. For instance, zinc plating is supposed to be unsafe for wort use. I don't know about the other platings specifically, but generally you're better off sticking with brass, copper, and stainless unless you're absolutely sure of the...

The "normal" things to add are a valve, a thermometer, and a sight glass. As far as the welding, if you just get two or three 1/2" NPT full couplers welded in you can do whatever you need, the rest is just plumbing. Mcmaster-carr carries all kinds of aluminum fittings. One would imagine that...

Exactly. The only way to know how much CO2 you have left is to weigh the tank - otherwise you just have to keep an eye on it, and when the pressure starts to drop it's just about empty.

Stupid question, but are you sure you're pulling hard enough on the lever? It can take quite a bit of force, more than you might think. It might be worth donning some safety glasses and really putting some force on it just to be sure.

Well the dimensions of a #10 stopper are 1-5/8" at the narrowest point and about 2" at the widest, so it's somewhere in there... I don't think you'll find vinyl tubing anywhere near that big locally - you can find something suitable from mcmaster if you're willing to pay like $5-15 a foot. But...

Exactly as Yuri said, if you run a 220V element at 110V it will give you only 1/4 of the rated power. If it's designed for 4500W@220V it'll do 1125W@110V drawing 10A which is fine for average household breakers. But it's for you to decide if 1125W is going to be enough heat for your system.

Not sure how adding hops during fermentation counts as "hot side"...

The heineken kegs are proprietary and have a built-in CO2 cartridge and dispensing system, AFAIK they are not reusable. The "normal" 5L kegs have a gravity tap at the bottom and a rubber bung in the top, no other fancy equipment attached.

To expand on that, it's best to put this boiled sugar solution into the bottling bucket before you rack your beer into it so it gets mixed thoroughly. Just don't try to prime each bottle individually, whatever you do.

I once fermented a 10g batch in two carboys, each with a different yeast. In one I used Nottingham (recommended temp 57-70F), in the other S-05 (recommended temp 59-75F). Because I didn't even think about it beforehand, they both fermented at around 72F, which is too warm for Nottingham but...

I can only imagine that you must have confused ABV % with the recommended daily values in the nutrition information on food ;) If alcohol in beer was in fact indicated as a percent of some recommended daily value, then doubling the bottle size would in fact double that figure... that confusion...

Top-fermenting versus bottom-fermenting isn't really a special quality of the yeast I don't think, it's dependent on the fermentation. Ales ferment warm and have a strong krausen (although in actuality it's the yeast floating around in solution that do the fermenting, not the yeast floating on...

Rehydrating is really easy and it greatly increases the percentage of viable yeast cells you get out of a packet of dried yeast. I just don't see much reason not to do it. And like others, I would also say to aerate before pitching. But, if I pitched and realized I had forgotten to aerate...

That's assuming it will even make it through one use. Those harbor freight step drills are titanium nitride coated. A week or so ago I ruined a couple regular drill bits of the same material trying to drill through the handle area of the keg, so I would be wary of the step drill's ability to...