beginner questions

1. Not all hop pellets are the same, but I'm not enough of a hophead to be able to give you good advice.
2. Yes, many homebrewers buy hops in bulk and then store the unused portion, but to preserve the hops as much as possible it would help to vacuum-seal them and keep them in the freezer.
3. @VikeMan might have some helpful advice about induction brewing, I think he's at least looked into using induction to brew. Just make sure you have enough power to bring the wort to a boil in a reasonable amount of time. I have no experience with the brands of kettle you mentioned.
4. No, if you are boiling your wort, then you don't need to sanitize anything that only touches the wort before or during the boil. The boil itself will sterilize the wort (for all practical purposes). If you use your kettle for anything post-boil (for instance, I use mine as a bottling bucket), then it must be sanitized for those applications. Also please bear in mind the distinction between cleaning and sanitizing. You must of course clean your kettle thoroughly.

 

I have one of the Avantco 3500 watt induction cooktops. I'm very happy with it. It's probably not as quick as the bigger propane burners but it's still quick, almost silent, doesn't cost a dime in propane, and I can brew indoors with no worries about carbon monoxide. Keep in mind it is 240 volt and requires a dedicated 20 amp circuit with a NEMA 6-20R receptacle. If you don't know what that means you may need help with the electrical end of things.
I use a SS Brewing 10 gallon kettle on it with no issues. When I was looking at kettles the Anvil seemed just ok. The Spike seems very nice but more than I was willing to spend.

 

I would pull the trigger on a 15 gallon brew kettle if you are 100% serious about getting into it. It is nice to find a recipe and routine that you are consistantly getting good results, and brew a larger batch.

Devils advocate - You could always sell a quality stainless kettle to someone else in the hobby for a decent price, and put off the initial investment a while. Also another point, everything is relative. I have lots of friends that come over and drink our beer, 5 gallons goes quick. But when it was just my brew buddy and I, 5 gallons lasted a long time...

Regardless, welcome to the hobby!

 

I did look into it, but didn't pull the trigger. The electrician wanted too much (IMO) to run the 240V high amp circuit to where I wanted it. But the one thing I learned in researching it was to forget about even attempting to use a 120V burner for 5 gallon batches. So for @marjen: make sure you have the required electrical setup.

 

I'd recommend starting with a tried and true recipe for the first few beers before jumping into a trillium clone right away. My first few beers were very hoppy clone recipes and I struggled with the all of the hops and how to properly add them. I lost lots of volume due to hops and trub in the kettle. My siphon got stuck due to all the dry hops. I was constantly exposing the beer to oxygen as I struggled to figure out how to take gravity reading or how to rack.

In the end I've figured out how to deal with a lot of this stuff, but making really good hoppy beers requires that you learn a lot of tricks, and those first few you'll be getting the basics down before graduating to the more advanced stuff. If I had to do it over I'd wish I started with something that used a few less valuable hops and something that still tasted good with all the mistakes I made. By beer 3 or 4 you'll be able to deal with hops, minimize oxygen exposure, and how to keg.

 

It sounds like you are doing some great research into what equipment to purchase, and that's good, but it's not really the equipment that makes good beer... it's the brewing process that is the key. As recommended above, brew some easy recipes first so that you can get your process in good shape as well as getting used to your equipment. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned yet that reading John Palmer's HowToBrew.com is highly recommended. It is free to read online, and the later edition of the book is only around $15 in good bookstores or online. That gives you something in which you can write notes, use highlighters, etc.

Also, once you have selected your kettle, and if you are still in a position that you need to brew on your gas stove, try heating 6-7 gallons of water as a practice run to see how long it takes to come to a boil. (The extra water allows for some boil-off so that you end up at 5 gallons after a 1-hour boil, thus you need to use that much water for this experiment even though it is a practice run. And then let it boil for an hour before chilling it to measure and calculate how much water actually was lost to the air so you'll know how much water to use for the real boil.) The length of time of the practice run could test your patience, but patience is a great virtue to have when brewing. If it takes too long, you'll need to look into doing a partial boil for your brewing sessions, and a partial boil is not the ideal process for making hoppy beers.

 

I was just saying that I have tried brewing more than a 5 gallon batch in a 10 gallon pot many times. Whenever I turn around to grab my beer or put new music on, the pot boils over

 

How do you plan on cooling your wort?

Cheers!

 

Do you have a HUGE sink?

Most folks use either a wort chiller or a plate chiller.

Cheers!

 

Trust me an immersion chiller is the best 60 dollars or so that you will ever spend. much quicker and in the end cheaper because you don't need to keep buying a ton of ice.

 

If you go the immersion chiller route just place it in the kettle towards the end of boil and the boiling wort will sanitize it.

Cheers!

 

From my experience, sanitation is easiest/fastest with basic equipment...such as a kettle with no penetrations, immersion chiller, and a brewer that cleans promptly, and uses a quality no rinse sanitizer.

 

You need a hydrometer at the #3 position on your list.