I respect your decision and wish you well. You have made Homebrew Talk better than it would have been without you. Thank you for that! But, will you miss the brewing itself. For what it is worth, that is the part that I would miss.
All the time! Age, lager, brighten, clear, carbonate, chill, cold-crash, lots of things you can do in a keg without worrying about oxygenation, yeast autolysis or any of the things that can happen in a fermenter.
Look for the podcast by John Blichmann with Chris White as a guest. They did some batches at homebrew sizes and shared the data, and it showed a reduction in diacytel at all pressures and temps. See attached findings.
S04 is excellent, ferments in a couple of days leaving a crystal clear, clean, and malty brew. I think that it is best fermented right at 68 degrees, and it should attenuate to 80%ish.
I have two Spike Flex + fermenters. At first, they both held exactly 15 psi as advertised. Now one and two years in they only hold 12 and 13 psi respectively. I liked to ferment at 15 psi because not only did it ferment excellently clean lagers, they were almost completely carbonated at the end...
Some yeast strains ferment very fast! There is no problem except with some yeasts you must do a diacetyl rest at the end of the fermentation. If it is one that produces diacetyl, it could be a problem. I guess the question is what yeast did you use?
I use a Flex+ and ferment under pressure, and after a couple of days of cold crashing I keg right from the fermenter. If I am dry-hopping, I do a soft crash to about 50-55 F and dump the hops in the fermenter using a sight-glass hopper, completing the cold-crash after a couple of days...
I read this thread to see if this new way to brew is okay. After reading about all the hacks and work-arounds, I'm convinced that I might as well keep brewing the "old fashioned" way. It hasn't failed me yet.