I bought a BruGear 15 gallon kettle during their kickstarter campaign. I mainly do 5 gallon batches, and it is a little too big for that volume, but I was thinking that I would be moving up to 15 gallon batches soon thereafter, but that really has not happened. If I were to do it again, I would buy a 10 gallon kettle and may still do so. I would not pay extra for a thermometer for my BK again, and I mash in a cooler, so it mainly just gets in the way. I have not bought a cap for that outlet yet, but should. No sight glass, but a nice 3 piece valve, and tri-clamp fittings make it nice to work with. The main complaint I have is that the thing is a beast as far as weight goes, no lifting cooled wort in this kettle and it is really too wide to fit into my fermentation freezer to finish cooling, so I have to rack it earlier than I would like in order to get the final 10-20 degrees I need to be where I want to be at pitching. They have dropped their prices some since going into production and besides the weight (which likely any 15 gallon kettle will have) I am really happy with the purchase