The advantage of a 40L urn is that it's virtually a turn-key brewery out of the box, just add bag :icon_cheers:
This size is perfectly good for your normal 4 - 6% ABV beers, never had a boilover.
However I must admit that a 50L size, if they made them, would give a lot more flexibility for the occasional 8 or 9 % barley wine or malt liquor etc.
I get 75 to 80 percent efficiency using straight full volume BIAB.
For the average grain bill for a 5 percenter beer you need to start off with 33 to 35L of strike water (depending on your final batch size, i.e. is it just for one corny, a corny plus four for your archive cupboard or a full 30 bottle batch)
Because the grain bill absorbs a heap of water you'll still have heaps of headroom, and when you hoist, you should end up with a pre boil in the region of 28L, which the urn can handle perfectly.
If you have access to gas and a burner of course then that's a perfectly good system as well but at the end of the day works out around the same $$$$ to set up, but remember
- gas though quicker can cost three or four times $$ per brew compared to electricity
- You'll need to drill your pot and fit a ball valve etc if you want the same usefulness as an urn
- Trips to the gas swap store