What would you buy?

[Soulshine2]

Hmm... decent pumps shouldn't break. A pump or pumps are brew house requirements. Would not imagine the Herms without a pump. Would not imagine sparging without a pump. Would not imagine running the hot wort thru the counterflow wort chiller without a pump, etc.

However, draining the primary conical simply using the lower side ball valve works very nice.

well, im not a "brewhouse" i run my chiller by simple garden hose, the ground water chilled it down from boiling to under 100*F in less than 20 minutes, good enough for me. Sparge- gravity. I dont own a counterflow chiller . I still use a simple racking cane to drain my glass carboy . Gravity works fine every time. I'm one of those guys who doesnt get into the gizmos and gadgets just to show off to people how I make beer, I make good beer. Hell, I still bottle. Thats all I need to serve my people.
I'm not saying you shouldn't .I'm just not into spending more money to come to the same result.
Matter of fact, I still remember when cars didn't have computers , they got us from point A to point Z and all points between just fine. If it needed fixing , it was simple - fuel, air, electric ...didn't require $100K worth of scanners to figure it out.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

well, im not a "brewhouse"

By "brewhouse" I meant homebrewer.

You must have great ground water temps. IMO, a genius invented the counterflow wort chiller, but now that I understand the principle, it really the same as a heat pump or A/C.

Initially I didn't trust the counterflow wort chiller. However, after a few uses I can take boiling wort to 60F within minutes. Photo follows.

I agree 100% with the car analogy. Wife has a 2018 car. Too complex and too many "press the buttons" for me.

 

[seatazzz]

I know some argue that aluminum oxide will form insulating the wort from the aluminum, and I don't know if that's really true or not. All I know is aluminum may be a dicey choice depending on what you're going for.

Seatazz, seems like your beer is ok, so this may not be an issue for you.

At this point in time my aluminum kettle is only used to catch the wort from the tun; I don't have a dedicated HLT so my keggle does double duty as HLT and BK. And I haven't gotten around to getting a port installed in the aluminum. The beers I HAVE boiled in the aluminum did turn out okay, because I was careful to passivate it thoroughly.

 

[Horseflesh]

Temperature control, all the way.

I got a fridge and built a controller—this was before Inkbird—before my first brew day.

If I couldn’t have pushbutton temp control, I probably wouldn’t brew at all.

Then, kegging. Then, a kettle or system upgrade.