Glad to see another home brewer on the forums! It's a pretty satisfying experience to share your brews with people and see the look on their faces when they find out you made it. I started brewing about 3 years ago, getting into it with my brother in law and my father. We started off just using extracts to get familiar with the process than moved to all grain after about a year or so. None of us are big mead/cider drinkers so we usually just stick to beer. The brother in law had a kid about a year ago and my father stopped drinking so I haven't brewed up a batch for awhile now. I'd always be interested to find some new friends to brew with if you're ever interested. I've got a pretty good setup, nothing super extravagant. I batch sparge in a Colemann 100qt. (blue of course ) and boil in a converted keg on a turkey fryer. Last year I purchased a chest freezer and a dual stage temperature controller for fermenting (best purchase one can make for improving beer quality imo). Always nice to have an extra hand as most stuff is super heavy especially pre boil. My setup can handle 10 gallons post fermentation as long were not brewing a 15% abv. beer and can be easily split up for 2 separate 5 gallon batches.

Pic of the kegerator in the basement. Soooooooooooooo much easier than bottling.