Howtobrew.com

HowToBrew.com by John Palmer has a great crash course in how to brew. The course goes over brewing with malt extract, extract and grain, and brewing with all-grain. Each section is then split into chapters that include; hops, fermenting, bottling, how mash works, and more. This is a wonderful website with lots of good information. It is worth going through page by page.

They have a great section on common problems you find when you're brewing. http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-1.html

Here is one example from the website:

Symptom: The fermentation seems to have stopped but the hydrometer says 1.025.

Cause 1:
Too Cool This situation is commonly referred to as a "stuck fermentation" and can have a couple causes. The simplest cause and probably the most common is temperature. As previously discussed, a significant drop in temperature can cause the yeast to go dormant and settle to the bottom. Cure: Moving the fermentor to a warmer room and swirling the fermentor to stir up the yeast and get them back into suspension will often fix the problem.

Cause 2:
Yeast The other most common cause is weak yeast. Referring back to previous discussions of yeast preparation, weak yeast or low volumes of healthy yeast will often not be up to the task of fermenting a high gravity wort. This problem is most common with higher gravity beers, OGs greater than 1.048.Cure: Add more yeast.

Cause 3:
Low Attenuating Extracts Another common cause for extract kit brewers is the use of extracts high in dextrins. Two brands are known to be high in unfermentables, Laaglanders Dry Malt Extract (Netherlands) and John Bull Liquid Malt Extract (UK). These are not bad extracts, in fact they are high quality, but their use is better suited to heavier bodied beers like strong ales, porters and stouts, where a high finishing gravity is desired.

Some links

Here are two links that I thought might be useful:
http://realbeer.com/jjpalmer/Howtobrew.html/ and
http://www.prochiller.com/.

The first link is for brewing a small first batch at home. Early on, I found it to be tremendously useful in regard to the terminology. The second link is for some industrial-strength cooling when you eventually decide to open your own brewery/brewpub. The products here will cool your wort in a jiffy.

This has nothing to do with brewing

However, this is one of my most favorite sites of all time:

http://www.castlemagic.com/

Imagine the lagering and cellar potential in one of these bad-boys!

Ahh, if I only had $48K

If I had the money and the space, I would snatch this system right up!

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From the looks of it, all copper for $48,000 seems like a steal for a 5 bbl system.