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so then you're only boiling your wort with 1 gallon of water? how have you been able to do that?

ok, this is going to be bad... i was proofing my yeast in a bowl, waiting for my wort to cool when my wife came into the kitchen. she saw the slimey brown **** in the bowl and thought it was leftovers from a bowl of shredded wheat. she poured it down the sink. so there i was, with wort...

well, there was very little i could do with my last batch. no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't get the wort cooled down. it probably has something to do with the fact that it's 110 degrees in baltimore right now! i'm not brewing again until i get my freezer with an external thermostat...

What are your recommendations for the best stores online to buy beer ingredient kits? I've seen some that vary pretty wildly in price, have high shipping charges, etc. What are the best, and where should I look?

the best way i've been able to avoid boil overs is to add my malts off the heat, then add a package of hops as soon as i am done stirring in the malt. once you put it back on the heat, the oils in the hops break the surface tension of the bubbles really quickly. or you can use nose grease...

could it be that the wort was not oxygenated enough in the first place, and your yeast died off at a higher rate than what you might have wanted?

Just a question -- what happens if you don't chill your wort down to 70 F before you add your yeast? How much yeast will be killed at, say, 85 F? how will this affect the taste of the beer and the length of the fermentation process?

I am looking to get a brewing refrigerator that would be flexible enough for both ales (bringing the temp down to about 68 F from my warm, baltimore home) and for lagers. Does such a device exist or would I have to rig something up?

and just to be sure -- the secondary fermenter is the second bucket i got with my equipment kit -- the one that has a bottling spigot on the bottom? just siphon it over, wait a couple of weeks, take another specific gravity check, and then bottle?

Thanks. So if my specific gravity is close to where the recipe says it should be, I should siphon it off into another fermenter and let it sit for a while? How long before I can bottle it?

I was hoping someone could give me some peace of mind regarding my first home brew. I am using a basic ale kit that I bought at the brewery outlet along with the plastic tub that came with the kit. Everything went well until the third day of fermenting, when the CO2 stopped coming through...