Remember, once the ribs are foiled, having all sides exposed to the smoke/heat is less of an issue as you are basically now steam baking the ribs in their little foil ovens. Heat is the only issue at that point. You can have them touching more and not worry about it once they are foiled. Of course you still have to un-foil and sauce them for the final phase.
Then there are those who would say you do not "have" to foil at all with proper low temp smoking.....
They did not make the 22" when I got my 18.5 back in 2005. The only downside is a little more fuel consumption as it's a bigger chamber to keep at temp. That being said, I wish I had a 22" but cannot justify the expense and space for both of them. If I had to do it over again from scratch, I would buy a 22" now.
One thing to keep in mind with either
WSM model is there is a ring of hotter temps around the outside edge of the smoker when using the water pan, clay saucer or whatever in the mid section. Those items form an obstruction and force the rising heat out around the edges. A
WSM does cook evenly, but there is a hotter and dryer band of air around the outer edge so don't plan on packing it to the edges unless you will be rotating the position of the food at the edges of the grates. I did a load of pork candy (pork shots) on the top grate this week and the ones at the edge were noticeably more done than the others. They cook fast anyway, but we still ate them....
