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I like this idea. I've tried to come up with a space-efficient way to store it, and keeping it in the bottling bucket in my closet makes me nervous due to the spigot on the bottom. I think I'll start using this method!

You have one built in. It's called your tongue, and if that doesn't work properly, there's always the rest of your digestive tract!

It seems like all but the most delicate lagers could be fermented with a very neutral clean ale yeast without terrible side effects. You may want to consider trying something like that.

I think that boiling maple syrup is fine. Maple sap is boiled for hours and hours to drive off extra liquid. Another few minutes isn't going to make any difference.

How to brew is an excellent book. I'm still a noob, I have less than 10 batches under my belt, and I find myself going to the book for descriptions of grains when concocting new recipes, and (especially with the Hops shortage) finding good cross references for hops. :)

The American Red is a mighty tasty recipe too! I found that the hop flavor didn't come out until about 5 weeks in bottles though. It was a little green a slightly more malty that I'd have liked before then.

I recently had a 2.5 week fermentation. I wouldn't sweat 8 days. :)

A good way to filter the water is to filter a couple gallons and store them in gallon jugs the day before or so. That allows you to just start going when you're ready to boil instead of spending 30 minutes filtering water.

Beers only go "bad" when a party tap is used, the type that pumps environmental air into the keg and oxidizes the beer. Using a CO2 tank skirts that issue and beer stays good indefinitely. A downside of kegging is not knowing how many you had the night before!

what temperature did it ferment at? Is it a true lager (lager yeast) or a lager style ale (ale yeast)?

lol. A good thing to remember is that most beers make great cooking beers. I had a blue moon clone that turned out tasting purely of coriander, and it makes a great cooking beer!

I just put a doubled up, sanitized piece of saran wrap over the top and hold it in place with my hand, then put the carboy on a towel on the kitchen floor, the kneel down and shake the bejesus out of it with 1 edge of it on the ground. Works like a champ!

It's fine. Summers in WA get cold for a week or so every now and again and it'll be nice up until late september to early october. I have an APA that's fermenting right now, and I've been switching out frozen water bottles in the water bath/cooler that it's living in to keep it cool! Until...

swirl the fermenter a little to get the yeast back into suspension. :)

a lot of people wrap paint strainers around their siphon.

aahhhhh! Global Cooling! But seriously - the forecast for today is high 60's. By the weekend it should be in the mid to low 70's, just like it's been for the last few weeks. This is summer in WA. How long have you been living here?

Kolsch yeast prefers lower fermentation temps, so be ready to do the water bottle exchange game for a week or so while it's fermenting if it gets hot.

http://leebrewery.com/beermath.htm It's about halfway down the page. The variation is so little, that if you're anywhere near 60º, it's not going to make a huge difference.

I wish there was a beer GPS. Then we wouldn't have to take readings and a nice Australian woman's voice would tell us when we've arrived.

But it makes the head better!