Some of my favorites...

Classic ESB
8oz pale ale malt
4oz biscuit malt
4oz aromatic malt
8oz 80L crystal malt
8oz flaked maize
6lbs light DME
4oz wheat DME
1/2cup honey
1/2oz pride of ringwood hops (60min)
1/2oz phoenix hops (60min)
1/2oz kent goldings hops (20min)
1/2oz progress hops (0min)
1tsp irish moss
2tsp gypsum
WYeast 1275 Thames Valley ale Yeast
bottled spring water to 5 gallons total volume
3oz corn sugar to prime at bottling

Cream Stout
1 can dark extract
3lbs light DME
8oz special B
8oz cara-munich
8oz roasted barley
8oz roasted malt
1/4tsp burton water salts
2 1/4oz cascade hops (60min)
1 1/4oz kent goldings (15min)
1tsp irish moss
WYeast American ale 1056
bottled spring water to 5 gallons total volume
5oz corn sugar to prime at bottling along with,
8oz lactose at bottling for added sweetness and mouthfeel

English Porter
2/3lb 40L crystal malt
1/4lb black Patent
!/4lb roasted barley
1 can dark malt extract
3lbs amber DME
4oz Treacle
1tsp gypsum
1 1/2oz challenger hops (75min)
1oz fuggles hops (75min)
1oz bramling cross hops (8min)
1/2oz bramling cross hops (0min)
1tsp irish moss
white labs London ale yeast
Bottled spring water to 5 1/2 gallons final volume
5 oz corn sugar to prime at bottling

American Cream Ale
2 1/2lbs 2-row malt
3/4lb 40L crystal
1/4lb carapils
(mini mash cracked grains at 150 degrees F for 45 min)
4 1/2lbs extra pale liquid extract
1/2lb maltodextrine
1oz willamette hops (60min)
1oz fuggles hops (15min)
1tsp irish moss
White labs california V ale yeast
water to 5 1/4 gallons final volume
5oz corn sugar at bottling to prime

WiseAss Weisbeir
1/2 lb 40L Crystal malt
2 cans wheat malt extract
1lb light DME
1lb honey
2oz Hallertauer hops (60min)
1/3 oz Halertauer (2min)
White Labs Hefeweizen #300
bottled spring water to 5 gallons total volume
5oz corn sugar to prime at bottling

These should keep ya'll busy for a while
I know i havent included any procedures here so if you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Great home brewing is 10% Quality ingredients, 10% Good brewing methods, and 80% Sanitization. i cannot stress enough how important good sanitization practices are. you can have the best ingredients and brewing practices in the world, but if you arent clean you'll end up with a batch of swill rather than some awesome homebrew. I use a solution of regular unscented household bleach in tap water to sanitize all my equiptment. i then rinse everything well in clean cold tap water. for really sensitive operations, like containers used for yeast culturing, i sometimes rinse with boiled water, but thats not necessary for everyday purposes.

If you have any other questions please dont hesitate to ask.

Anything that touches the wort after it is boiled should most certainly be sanitized. Even though your stuff is new it is still covered in bacteria and fungus that could potentially be harmful to your beer.

I can tell you one thing for sure, racking to secondary will definitely decrease the amount of sediment that will end up in your bottles. When the bottles have more sediment in them the beer can be cloudy and have a sort of yeasty quality to it that a lot of people (although not all) don't really care for. So I think most people would agree that racking to secondary lends a noticeable improvement in quality to all fermented beverages, be it for improvement in taste and/or appearance.

Angus

Sorry for the delayed reply, I just saw this post now. You’re recipe is very similar to mine, so I have a good idea of what it looks like. But yes, this is one of the problems with using malt extracts. Extracts tend to be darker in color then the grain they were made from (just as a result of how they are manufactured) and therefore it is difficult to produce a golden colored beer from them. So no, the color will not lighten during the fermentation process….to produce something with a lighter color you would probably have to do one of two things….either use less wheat extract and more light (or even extra light) DME, but of course this would reduce the wheat flavor in the brew. Or you would have to decrease the amount of extract you use and replace it with fresh grains and do a mini mash. But although the color may be a bit darker than you were expecting, hopefully the flavor will come out pretty close to what you wanted. Let me know how this turns out.

Joe