My brewing time has been severely limited as of late, and I haven't brewed anything sine the end of the summer. That said, I finally splurged and picked up a few pieces of gear that I've always wanted, but were hard to justify as a 3-gallon kitchen brewer.
The first was a new 5.5 gallon Anvil kettle. I've always brewed using a regular 5-gallon stock pot. While it is high quality, the ladeling/pouring of hot water/wort was always a real PITA, and has led to my share of mild scalds over the years. Having a purpose-built brew kettle will allow me to run off to my mash tun without dumping anything. Plus, I can do neat tricks that all the cool kids are doing like underletting my mash. And with the kettle screen I can run off into my fermenter without having to try to carefully pour the clear wort off the top of 4 gallons of liquid, hops and trub (and not spill a bunch all over the kitchen hardwoods).
Although my juryrigged cold water bath in the kitchen sink has served me servicably well, I finally sprung for an immersion chiller. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to connect it directly to my faucet because of the faucet design, and I'm too far away from my hoses to use those from the outside. For the time being, I will just fill a few buckets with tap water and use a pond pump, but I'm planning on teeing off of my supply line on my sink in the near future to make things easier there.
Who knows when I'll actually get a chance to use all my new gear, but I'm looking forward to easier brewdays in the near future.