getting ready to place a stout brand kettle order

i've got the quotes and pretty much picked out my system.

i brew mostly 5 & 10 gallon batches, have only done extract & partial mashes so far, so i'm jumping in the deep end for the all grain but i can't wait...

anyway, i'm going with the 15 gallon system, site glasses, tangential inlet on the boil kettle for whirpooling, rims options on the mash tun...

i just wanted to check with anybody who has used these so far, i read the other threads but was looking for recent updates/reviews from users...

also, question for everyone, should i go with the 15 gallon or step up to their 19 gallon system? the pots have the same circumference so that's not the issue, the 19 gallon pots are just about 4" taller...like i said, i don't think i'll really need them for 10 gallon batches (or would i?) or is it better to just have that flexibility up front just in case?

other question is since i'm going with a rims setup i'm not going to have a burner for my mash tun, they offer a bottom drain option for the mash tun underneath the false bottom...opinion? should i go with this or should i keep the bottom open so that if i need to i can throw a burner under there later...i haven't done step mashes yet but have also been doing a lot of reading about the flash boiler for that...

thanks everyone!

dan

A 15 gallon boil kettle is good... it's what I have and use for 10 gallon batches and it works. However! I do fairly large IPA's and I always wish that I had a couple more gallons of kettle to play with. If I'm planning a longer boil or a ton of hops it would just be nice to have extra space to put that 13 to 14 gallons of initial wort.
15 gallons will work, 19 gallons would be fantastic!
Cheers!

You'll want the 19s almost as soon as you break in the 15s.

For big beers and long boils you'll appreciate the head space.

luhrks said:

You'll want the 19s almost as soon as you break in the 15s.

For big beers and long boils you'll appreciate the head space.

Click to expand...

That's what I was wondering...so there's no downside to having "too much" spaceor geadroom in the kettle when making a smaller batch?