Not trying to sound rude, but spend a little more time in the engine search. A lot of your questions can be answered, grasshopper. There were big discussions on glass versus plastic, but in a nutshell, use plastic for the primary and glass for the secondary, or carboy. But know one thing, there are literally thousands of ways and methods you can use to make your brew, and it will still be good. It depends on the space you have, where you brew, how dedicated you are to the craft, etc. etc. A lot of us started off bottling, and then jumped to kegging. Fact is, bottling is a pain in the arshe. Lots of extra work and cleaning involved, not to mention all the bottles and having space to store them. Kegging greatly simplifies that. I'm going to tell you what I did and what I wish I would have done when I started brewing two years ago. Remember, this is my method and style and can be critiqued, but I didn't do so bad at the annual homebrewers competition and could have done better if I'd pay attention to the style instead of my taste.
I'm doing extracts, which I'd say 90% of us started off this way. A lot say all-grain is the way to go, but if you like your brew a certain way, then by all means, brew what you like.
I started off with a kit, two cases of bottles, plastic primary and glass secondary with all the other stuff needed. After about 4 brews of bottling, I quickly looked into kegging and decided that is the way I'm going to go. I only bottle when I'm wanting to enter a contest or know when I'll have some friends over.
Now, this is now and I'm giving you the benefit of my experience, I wish I would have started off kegging with only the primary. You can keg with either partial or full boils. For full boils, that's more expense, but some say the brew taste better.
First, I made a decision to myself that I was going to brew my beer, no matter what it taste like or how much work was involved. Second, forgo some of the initial expense and purchase a kegging system. That is the Sanyo 4912 refrigerator, 4 kegs, CO2 tank, regulator, a splitter off the regulator (for two kegs at once in the kegerator off of one CO2 tank) two check shut off valve, hoses, back up parts like seals, springs, hoses, etc. etc. For the actual brewing part of it, I should have got a primary with lid, racking hoses and cane and a thermometer. Notice you see no secondary, I don't use secondaries any longer. From reading on here, the secondary purpose is for clarification and maybe for adding some different flavors, but that's about it. It doesn't bother me if my brew is not crystal clear because the cloudiness is the yeast and some styles, like the hefe's, require that to be part of them....which is my favorite style anyway.
I either partial or full boil, I have both setups, but then after chilling (either use the ice water straight into the wort method, or put ice around the boiling pot and place in sink) dump into primary. Once it's cool to the touch, then simply sprinkle the yeast on top, seal it up and let it sit for two weeks. From there, rack into the keg. Seal it up and add some CO2 to it to get the air out, and then let it sit for 3 to 4 weeks. Put keg in kegerator with CO2 gas for about a week, then serve. The first 6 ounces or so will be really murky, that's from all the extra stuff falling out of suspension, what the secondary does, dump that glass out and then drink on. Like I said, a lot of members here will tear up this methodology, but it works fine for me. All my friends that have tried my brews really like them.
I've had really good things to say about Austin HomeBrew. I use their gold seal extract kits and they have all been really good. I also use Brewer's Best kits, they are excellent, but getting expensive.
