New toy
 

My mom said, the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys, well, in this day of electronic toys, I'm not so sure..
I've (sort of) replaced my first plastic conical fermenter with a brand new shiney stainless steel one, I bought a 7 gallon Brewtech Chronicle pro, with heating and cooling options,I got it all cleaned up, installed the cooling lines. And tested it on a trial run, I like it better than the grainfather, first batch for real this weekend.. we will see any flaws pretty quick.

Nice!!!!

Now that I've made a few batches with it, i can give a good review, first off, it took a fair amount of assembly and a little "mcgivering " to get it to work on my chiller and inkbird controller the way I wanted, to obtain both heating and cooling, had i gone all in with their system for heating and cooling, it would have been a breeze, but i wasn't about to dish out another $300 for misc. add on's, cleaning is a little harder( more involved) than the Grainfather, due to the internal cooling coil, but as far as the butterfly valves go, they are a breeze, and if I fill the unit with PBW and let it sit overnight, everything rinses clean...no scrubbing.
I like it better than the Grainfather, I'm on my second controller for the grainfather and the way they attach it is prone to problems, i siliconed the last one in place..
My last batch in the Brewtech was an Imperial IPA, which I dry hopped 4 ounces of hops right in the fermenter, the large butterfly valve made dumping the spent hops a joy...I could never do that with the grainfather, it would have clogged and i would have had to siphon the beer into the bottleing bucket ..

I give it an A plus... I have an Imperial stout fermenting in it now.