Generally speaking I really like my Northern Brewer Gigawort. It's lightweight, simple, easy to clean, and is the perfect size for small-batch all-grain brew in a bag brewing.

My one beef with the Gigawort is the EZ Clean flush mount bulkhead. In theory it's a great design since nothing protrudes into the kettle, but in practice when I had a small leak on the bulkhead and ball valve assembly that shipped with the unit, it proved to be quite a pain to diagnose the problem and remove everything, only to find that didn't solve the leak problem.

I contacted Northern Brewer support and they said if the threads weren't damaged (they weren't), I'd just have to purchase another assembly. That felt to me like a "you're doing it wrong" response which I didn't appreciate, but since I had purchased the thing many months before and hadn't used it yet, and since the Gigawort is (to my knowledge) still the best option for all-in-one kettles for one-gallon all-grain brewing, I spent the \$50 to get a new assembly.

The new assembly fixed the issue but I still argue the design compromise to have nothing protruding into the kettle may not be worth the drawbacks, the primary one being there's nothing to grab onto inside the kettle when you need to install and remove the assembly.

To explain this as best I can, the issue is that you're often working against yourself because when you're trying to tighten one part, you wind up loosening another part, and there isn't enough to "grab onto" with a wrench to easily stop the other side of the equation from moving. Or, I feel like I wind up using the kettle itself as the brace against unwanted opposite motion on one side of the assembly and that always makes me feel like I'm running the risk of denting or damaging the kettle which might ultimately cause a leak in the kettle itself.

I still like this kettle and perhaps I'm overthinking it as is my tendency. I'm looking at the smaller Anvil Foundry as an option for 2-3 gallon batches, but currently it's still either the Gigawort or a kettle and induction cooktop for one-gallon batches. With a kettle and cooktop you're having to work a bit harder to keep the temperature stable so we're back to everything being a tradeoff.

All this said the Gigawort is definitely what I'll be using for my next batch, which I guess best expresses my true level of frustration.