I love home brewing in my kitchen.
One of the biggest ‘upgrades’ in my fairly new HB hobby (2 years, ~50 batches) was this kettle:
https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80120-002DS-Stainless-20-Quart/dp/B00FGB28Z8
It’s a HUGE upgrade from an ‘economy’ kettle, with its 5mm aluminum sandwiched in the base, heavy-duty all around, substantial lid that seats beautifully, and built to last a lifetime. Also a wonderful stock pot.
With all that conductive metal, wort cooling is also simple by just placing the kettle in a sink, with ice water, and a slow trickle of cold tap water. I don’t feel a need to think about a wort chiller. No scorching, and I no longer remove the kettle for extract additions.
I think NB would do well to offer something like this. I know you can move into cladware with Tall Boy (8-gal), MegaPots and Blichman products, but this kettle hits a sweet spot for the 5-gal picobrewer like me. I don’t really want to try to handle an 8-gallon kettle in the kitchen. (I’ll call the 1 and 2-gal batchers femptobrewers I guess).
