Smoker Advice

Go horizontal. I own a New Braunfels Smoker but it looks like they got bought out by Charbroil.

http://www.charbroil.com/smokers/offset_smokers.asp

The one I own looks like the Silver Smoker.

 

Behad where are you?!

 

I have the bandera (verticle), and it's been awesome for me. Still, if I was doing it over, I'd probably go with horizontal just to have the flexibility of using the cooker portion for large scale grilling. I love my gas grill, but let's face it....fajitas, burgers, steaks.....they all taste better over real burning wood or charcoal. You can use the firebox in the bandera as a cooking area, but it's awefully small for large scale grilling. (Of course, I'm accustomed to cooking for large parties, so my needs may be different).

When did Charbroil buy out New Braunfels?

I'd also check out Sam's and Costco....sometimes they have offset smokers at pretty good prices. They'll still be more expensive than New Braunfels/Charbroil, but the gauge of steel will be significantly better. Spend a few dollars and buy one of those misto oil sprayer cans and keep it filled with vegetable oil. Once you burn off that protective paint, always spray the exposed areas with the vegetable oil after use, and that will keep your cooker from rusting through.

 

I'd recommend the Vaugner Char-King Imperial. I tell you what.

 

this is the sucker i am looking at getting a friend to make, once the backyard is a bit more closer to complete

Pole, Tex, GrandMaster-Behad and others, what do you think??



Hank will be proud

 

damn reply instead of edit

 

I'm not real crazy about it.....in fact, I thought it was a bit of a joke until I went to the smokering and checked it out firsthand.

First of all, it appears that your cooking surface will be uncomfortably high. It would be good for Yao Ming, but it doesn't look like it would be easy to open and close the cover because of the overall height....perhaps I'm wrong though.

55 gallon drums are awfully thin to be burning wood in. Sure, you can do it, but any protective paint will get burnt off immediately....so if you don't protect the outer (and inner) surface of the firebox after each use, rust through will become a huge problem. The biggest problem with this is that your firebox will be supporting the weight of your cookbox, chimneys, cooking surface, and anything you're cooking. That's going to be a lot of weight on top of a quickly thinning firebox. I can just envision slamming the lid down over some cooking briskets just to have the whole thing crash down through the bottom barrel. Definitely a liability issue.

Also (this could be fixed), the current design allows for all of your dripping grease to flow directly on top of the burning wood. This will create flare-ups that will cause very high heat directly above the flue openings...so your heating will be somewhat inconsistent. Also, too much grease in the smoke gives a poor flavor.


Anyway, just my $.02

 

That grill looks like something we are seaching for in Iraq.

 

thanks for you comments Pole

any advice/links on designs for making your own... have a friend who does metal work..

being in australia, i can't just go into a store and buy a smoker, except a very small and expensive webewr brand one, so i am limited to the build your own kinds.... any suggestions would be great...

 

I had one in college (and like a moron, I sold it) that was on a trailer. Here in Texas, we have a lot of people who will drill for oil on their own property using small, portable drilling machines. When I was in school, I even cut steel for my GF's dad....this was angle iron and I-beam that he used for making these small oil pump jacks. Anyway, an oil well can't be drilled in a day, so you'd often have crews working on location in make shift camps. Potable water was needed, so it was often brought in on trucks or trailers specifically designed for that purpose. My pit was built on one of these trailers that had been converted. Essentially, the existing steel water tank was used to make the pit. The tank was akin to a heavy gauge steel 48" diameter pipe that was cut about eight feet long with round 48" diameter "ends" cut from the same gauge of steel and welded into place (I'm assuming this was how the tank was originally built). Regardless, it looked much like a 55 gallon drum on it's side.....except that it wasn't corrugated, it was much heavier steel, and it was a LOT bigger than 55 gallons.

Anyway, someone got hold of it, cut a door out of the top, used heavy guage plate steel to form a firebox, and offset attached this to the back end, and added a chimney. There wasn't much more to it other than things like handles and inserts for the cooking surface. The thing was massive.....and heavier than ****.

But boy did it cook well. I'll see if I can find some pictures of something similar. Your buddy should be able to duplicate it if he has the right stock. Of course, you don't need it to be on a trailer, but I can't recommend enough having one like that. It's SO cool to be able to drive that thing to the beach or family reunions or just big parties. Also, if you any festivals there (of any type) you can make some extra money selling BBQ with your portable pit.

With the water issues that Australia has, I bet it would be easy to find just such a tank that's no longer being used.

If you ever plan another trip to Houston, and you're big on BBQ, you should really plan to come for the Houston Rodeo BBQ cook-off. It's one of the biggest of it's kinds, and you'll see some really incredible cooking rigs. Who knows....you might even start something down under and you and your steel worker buddy might get rich!

 

thanks Pole

not really sure about the trailer idea though...... a tad bit of overkill.... need to walk before runnin

will certainly ask my mate about parts to use

what about the box on the side option, surely that can't be that hard to make...

currently buidling a new backyard, paving at the moment and then will plant and have a large pergola going in, which on one side would like to build the smoker into, sort of so i can have a bench next to it and all

wonder if i could some sort of drum thing built into my bench for the cooker and then have the heat box below it, with the weight of the cooker drum on the bench and not the heat box