Is there a way to set the Bpm to a default value?
Renoise now just seems to randomly give a new bpm whenever Renoise is restarted?
(or is this a feature to encourage songs in different tempos)
Yes, Nice feature don’t you think?
set your bpm, go to song settings, save it as the template song.
there you go!
360 BPM @ Speed 3! 
there IS no speed 3 
would be:
360 BPM @ LPB 8! 
I guess I’m missing something, or I’m out of date.
yes, you are missing something AND are outdated: since Renoise 2.0, the speed concept has been abandoned. However, if you load a song made with previous Renoise version into 2.0, the speed will still remain until you press “Song Settings => Upgrade”, which will try to convert the song for you
2 is still being Beta Tested by many of you fine folks, right? It hasn’t been officially released yet, right?
Or am I all wrong?
as long as you’ve paid for Renoise, you can download and try the beta
I was sure you did post something in the beta forum section, that’s why I assumed you already tried Renoise 2.0, but now I saw you did not post anything there, so sorry for this wrong assumption
Would it be terrible of me to still be using the demo version? 
Yeah, confession time. In the past I didn’t use Renoise much so I’m still using the demo version. 
Lately I’ve started using it more, and I’ve learned a lot about how to use it well, so I’m going to be getting the full version this week. I’m definitely going to be using it, so I should definitely support it. 
The beta of 2 is a motivating factor to buy as well.
Something tells me this might be intentional 
also, speed still exists; D# (where # = a numerical value, not D Sharp!) in the panning column still works on speed, and the line speed lives in song settings rather than up top-left…