Their marketing department deserves a raise because I got about 5 emails about this from Anvil and different retailers.
It looks like a nice compromise that gets the important features of the fancy stainless conicals from blichmann, ss brewtech, grainfather, etc, at a more reasonable price. Like hard plastic between the legs and conical area seems like a real pricing win to eliminate messy welds where metal isn't strictly needed since 7 or 14 gal is not that heavy.
Things that I might miss from the ss brewtech conical bme I have now:
- TC port on the top
- Butterfly valve on the racking arm
- Higher placed small sample valve
- Optional shelf under the dump valve
CIP is pretty important to me, since I'm lazy, so it'd be nice to have the TC port on the top for that, but if this lid is similar to the one for the Foundry, then it shouldn't be impossible to get a CIP ball on there with some diy hacks, but it might be hard to get it to not spray hot cleaning chemicals out the top.
Wonder if you could replace the sample's ball valve with a butterfly somehow, but I'm not sure if they make one that small.
Might be a little hard to get clear samples with the racking arm, but not a huge deal either.
If I could figure out a good CIP solution, I could see going with one of these to save a few hundred bucks.