Do you really need an expensive SS Boiling Kettle for brewing?

Stainless Steel Stock pots are quite expensive, also add a "home brew kettle" tag to it and the price jumps many folds. Many homebrew sellers will tell you that only an SS Pot is suitable for brewing and if you were to ask them if you can use an Aluminum pot, they will scare you with stories about flavor content loss and acidic reactions.

None of the scare stories are true though. Caterers use Aluminum pots all the time and still manage to prepare mouthwatering treats in them. Cake makers and bakers also use aluminum containers to make really acidic sourdough breads and lemon pies. Reasons why Aluminum is preferred in commercial setups is because it's a better conductor of heat than Stainless Steel, less heavy and costs much less. That means your wort takes less amount of time to reach boiling point compared to when using SS pots.

A 50 liter Aluminum pot costs roughly Rs. 3000

There is something you can do to completely terminate a chance of acidic reaction if there was any while brewing. Just fill the pot to the brim with water and boil it for 2 hours. By the end of it you'll be able to see formation of a black coating inside of the pot where water was. This is Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3). This coating removes the risk - potential, real, or imagined, of anything negative happening from the equation.

A new pot with water boiled in it. The black film you see here is Aluminum Oxide

I personally use a 50 liter Aluminum pot for my larger batches. I'm yet to experience any difference in beer quality between it and my smaller 30 liter SS pot. Eexcept, it weighs about same and cost me less than of what I paid for the 30 litter SS one.