I'm going to throw this in here as ideas for others who are pondering.
Between some money I had squirreled away, Christmas gift money, and selling off the items these have mostly replaced, I am upgrading:
1.
Jaded Brewing Hydra Chiller. Expensive, yes, but less expensive than a plate or counterflow chiller plus all the hoses and fittings. My old chiller has been sold to help pay for it.
2.
Spike Brewing 10-gallon kettle w/ valve and thermometer, horizontal couplings. My previous kettle, a Northern Brewer Megapot 1.2 8-gallon w/ valve and thermometer, has been sold.
The Spike kettle--which I've been lusting after for a while--is large enough to accommodate the Hydra. The Hydra would not fit in the Megapot with the thermometer protruding. I could have gotten a custom version of the hydra, but it would have entailed some compromises. Don't like compromising if I can avoid it.
Fortunately this was on sale.
3.
Thermapen Mk IV. I've been lusting after one of these as well. Everything I read about it is positive. Not cheap, but as a scientist the idea of measuring accurately is burned into me.
4.
Taprite secondary regulators (4). The ability to easily servie different beers at different carbonations been lacking; oh, I can change the regulator pressure, turn off the gas to the other kegs, and deal with one keg that way, but elegant it is not. Now I can serve at and maintain different pressures, even force carb one keg while serving the others.
This was also on sale, and I've not seen a setup like this for as reasonably-priced as this was.
I've sold off a lot of extra equipment to help fund this; it's one argument for buying good quality stuff when you start, so if you choose to move up, you can recover a lot of your cost in sales of used equipment.
There's one more thing I want/need/lust after, and that's a
Blichman Hellfire burner. I'll have to squirrel away money, sell off stuff, dance a jig in order to come up w/ the money, but it's next on my list.