Grainfathers with the new control box are silly money, defo look for older stock, the combination of new control box and the nose dive with the pound have pushed the price beyond realism (these are imported from new zealand) for fresh imports.
I have 24 brews on my GF now and if you can afford it, it is great ! I get 26 liters in the FV regularly, I use the GF sparge water heater, it tops out at about 19liters and on lighter brews where there is very little water in the mash I have sparged over the 19 liters it can hold, I just add the extra water into the the sparge water heater as soon as there is space. One feature I really like is the ability to fill up the GF the night before and set the timer, I wake up in the morning and it is @65degrees, I dough in and let it do it's thing while I get the kids off to school, my brew day is done by 12:00, clean up and all. The chiller gets a full batch down to 19 degrees in about 20 minutes. Don't bother with hop spiders or bags or anything, even with 200 grams of hops in a big IPA, just give it a big whirl pool whilst chilling it in the GF with the chiller down to 80, let it sit for 10 minutes and then cont. to chill it as it goes into your FV.
If your looking at FV's, have you considered the FastFerment ? No need to rack to secondary (gives you time to use some of the Gym equipement) and super easy to harvest yeast, that alone will save you what it costs for fastferment over time.
If you have any more questions about the GF I will be happy to help.
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