burner question

I'm looking into moving into the all-grain world and was wondering what the majority of homebrewers use as far as burners go. I'm currently in the process of designing a brew stand and I'm stuck between the 10" banjo burner and the 6" banjo burner. I'm only brewing 5 gallon batches now but would probably want to move up to 10 gallon batches in the future. Would the 6" burner be enough for 10 gal? Would the 10" burner be overkill for 5 gal?

Any info/comments would be greatly appreciated.

If you're looking for room to grow I'd definitely be going with the 10". The 10" has a greater surface area (obviously) which means most importantly a more even heat distribution, you can turn it down if you need to. With a 6" when you crank it for a big batch you could risk some burning/scorching due to the heat being more concentrated in a smaller area. So basically, either way I'd go with the 10"

That's just my $.02 though...

Go with the 10". I was borrowing my buddy's turkey burner for my first several brews. I now have the 10" banjo and it is amazing. Hands down the way to go if you are wanting a quiet kick ass burner

Thanks for all the input everyone. I think I'm definitely gonna go with the 10" burners, just for the sake of growth. And it looks great when it's fired up.

Again thanks for all the input.

Yep, room for growth is the key.

If you buy the bare minumum now, then 6 months or 5 years down the road when you decide to upgrade, that will just be that much more equipment you have to buy to do it.

As long as you're sure that brewing is a hobby that you're going to stick with for a good, long time, then you can never go wrong by going big.

You can always turn down a gas regulator, or close a ball valve a little bit, in order to make overkill gear work with your current system. But if you have little gear and are trying to move to a big system, you can't turn things up the same way you can turn things down. At that point you're buying new stuff and hoping and praying that someone on craigslist will give you a fair price for the expensive stuff that is now useless for you.

Just buy the big stuff right away. You know you're going to go bigger eventually, so why not just get that component taken care of right now?

It may or may not take you a little longer to upgrade your system with that approach, but at least when you buy big you don't have to worry about replacing anything....