What an overwhelming hobby.

[JuanKenobi]

+1 to buying 2 hydrometers. One of 'em will probably be better calibrated as well.

 

[brian_g]

I just want to comment on your last point:

"3) Give me some brew recommendations. I'm a pretty open guy. I love my craft brews and spend way too much money on them, but I can easily bring myself down to bud light mode if needed. I want something that is fairly quick and straight forward to allow me to get the basics of brewing down."

There are several ways of brewing beer: no boil kits, extract and specialty grains, mini mash, and all grain. You can get high quality beers from all these methods. Brewing your own Bud light clone wont be any easier then brewing a craft beer. A bud light clone will probably be harder, since you'll probably have to create your own recipe. All brewing methods take about a week for fermentation and three weeks for bottling. What you save is time on brew day. The no boil kits can be done in under an hour (including sensitization and clean up). When you do a boil you'll add at least couple of hours. (time to heat up the water, 20-30 min steeping the grains, 1 hour for the boil, cooling time) The mini mash and all grain takes even longer, because you have to soak the grains in 150 degree water for a full hour before you start the boil. What you gain from the more difficult methods is control over flavor. The no boil kit is easy, but you have to make the beer styles as their sold. There are a couple of dozen kinds to choose from, but all the ingredients are prepackaged: hops, grains, etc. There's not much room for experimentation, but in the end you can make great beer from any of the methods.

Another tip for keeping it simple and straight forward. Stay away from specialty yeast, at least for your first couple of batches. Specialty liquid yeast can cost around $6. The problem is that specialty yeast is much more sensitive to fermentation temperatures. I had a beer come out tasting like bubble gum, with my Trappist ale yeast, because the fermentation got too hot (85+). If you stick with a "boring" yeast like Coopers Ale yeast, you wont have to worry about it as much. My advice, stick with the plain yeast for a few batches, until you are sure you can keep your fermentation temperature under control.