TDaddy
Is lookin for wood to cook with.
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2011
- Location
- Chicago, IL
What up fellas?!?! The internets is a wonderful thing; of my friends I'm probably the only one that takes BBQing seriously and ever since I found this website i've been pouring over as many threads as I can during the day, trying to keep myself from doing any actual work. Back when I lived with my folks I always used charcoal. I loved starting up a fire, maintaining the fire, and cooking over an open fire. When I got married we got a sweet Weber Genesis grill as a present and I've cooked many a good meal on it. Just last weekend I laid down some baby backs in the gasser using an asian marinade (I love marinades that use sugar or honey because of the carmelization effect):
But then not too long ago, I found this site and started researching how to make a UDS. When I told my buddy about how I was going to build myself a smoker, he gave me his old New Braunfels grill:
Notice how it's missing a firebox, so I took a trip to the local Lowes to see what they had. Fortunately for me, they had the price marked incorrectly and in my favor by $20! they honored the mislabeled price and I walked out of there a happy man!
Now, the NB FB mounts on the left side of the barrel, and the Char Grill FB's exhaust is on its left side. So I researched on here and learned about "reverse flow smokers" and decided to mod the NB.
First, I had to cut a smoke inlet in the NB.
Mounting the FB onto the NB:
And with the hole cut out:
Being a cheapo I had to look around and see what the garage had to offer and I was lucky to have had a dad that liked to keep random crap. I ended up finding 3 ea. 6" by 36" 18 ga steel plates. It's like dad knew I would need these plates this summer even though he probably collected these 20 years ago! So I came up with a plan to cut these plates to size and to lay them in the barrel:
On my first try I realized the plates were too long. You can see the grill screw holes in the following picture. If left at this length, the plates would be too close to the grates and would inhibit airflow around the meat so I cut them back another 1/2" so they would sit deeper into the barrel
At this point I was getting sick of taking all these pictures, but as you can see, because I lowered the plates the original inlet hole was a bit too high. So I fit a 22 ga piece of steel over the exposed hole.
For this next part I need to disclose something. I have never, EVER, welded anything before in my life. I'm handy with woodworking, I've built my own furniture, and I love refinishing antiques, but metalworking is completely foreign to me. And what really sucks is that I have no friends that know how to weld or have access to a welding machine. So I plopped into my local tool rental place and picked up a MIG welder.
Welding was FUN! My welds were in no way pretty, nor were they at all strong. Honestly, if I were to show you guys a closeup of my work most of you would probably puke and refuse to respond or acknowledge any of my future posts, but at least they were functional because all I was worried about was making sure there wouldn't be any air leaks.
Once I got the thermometer in place and made sure it was all welded up, it was time to start SMOKIN'
First, a bacon-weave wrapped fatty, sporting habanero cheese in the middle with TN Pride hot sausage:
And I was too lazy to get a shot of the baked beans and the prepping of the spare ribs.
But at least I've got a couple pics of the finished fatty and meat lollipops:
Sorry I don't have more pics of the good stuff, but my buddies were hungry and we devoured those mofos like it was nobody's business. Nothing is better than standing around a table with freshly cooked ribs piled high and just grabbing them straight from the dish, then tossing the bones into a bucket nearby.
So some final thoughts on the offset smoker: MAN DOES IT GOBBLE UP FUEL! Getting it to temp was not an issue. It probably took about 45 min. for the temp dial to read 250, but then I noticed after about 30 minutes it would start to lose about 5 deg/10 minutes. I had to keep adding charcoal briquettes every 10 minutes to keep the temperature even. I smoked the ribs for about 4 hours and was able to keep an indicated temp of around 250. But I used an entire 16.6 lb bag of Kingsford charcoal. From what I read on here, this is to be expected though.
I noticed that because I had to reduce the height of the heat/smoke inlet hole, the FB wasn't operating at max efficiency. I'll probably come up with a deflection shield so that the heat doesn't sit stagnant in the top part of the FB.
As for the ribs I was quite impressed since I usually don't like spare ribs. The fat rendered out of the racks quite nicely and a beautiful smoke ring was evident on the surface of the meat. I marinated the ribs in a dry rub and then finished them with a sweet bbq sauce which left the meat pretty moist and fun to tear off the bone.
All in all, I think my effort into this project was waaay worth it. This smoker ain't gonna win any beauty contests, but as it's always said, it's pretty satisfying to cook on something you built.
So for now, the smoker sits and waits. I'm not sure what I'm gonna cook next. I'll have to wait for the circulars to come out to see what's on sale.
BTW, comments, criticisms, jabs at my work are all welcome! Thanks for perusing!
:becky:
But then not too long ago, I found this site and started researching how to make a UDS. When I told my buddy about how I was going to build myself a smoker, he gave me his old New Braunfels grill:
Notice how it's missing a firebox, so I took a trip to the local Lowes to see what they had. Fortunately for me, they had the price marked incorrectly and in my favor by $20! they honored the mislabeled price and I walked out of there a happy man!
Now, the NB FB mounts on the left side of the barrel, and the Char Grill FB's exhaust is on its left side. So I researched on here and learned about "reverse flow smokers" and decided to mod the NB.
First, I had to cut a smoke inlet in the NB.
Mounting the FB onto the NB:
And with the hole cut out:
Being a cheapo I had to look around and see what the garage had to offer and I was lucky to have had a dad that liked to keep random crap. I ended up finding 3 ea. 6" by 36" 18 ga steel plates. It's like dad knew I would need these plates this summer even though he probably collected these 20 years ago! So I came up with a plan to cut these plates to size and to lay them in the barrel:
On my first try I realized the plates were too long. You can see the grill screw holes in the following picture. If left at this length, the plates would be too close to the grates and would inhibit airflow around the meat so I cut them back another 1/2" so they would sit deeper into the barrel
At this point I was getting sick of taking all these pictures, but as you can see, because I lowered the plates the original inlet hole was a bit too high. So I fit a 22 ga piece of steel over the exposed hole.
For this next part I need to disclose something. I have never, EVER, welded anything before in my life. I'm handy with woodworking, I've built my own furniture, and I love refinishing antiques, but metalworking is completely foreign to me. And what really sucks is that I have no friends that know how to weld or have access to a welding machine. So I plopped into my local tool rental place and picked up a MIG welder.
Welding was FUN! My welds were in no way pretty, nor were they at all strong. Honestly, if I were to show you guys a closeup of my work most of you would probably puke and refuse to respond or acknowledge any of my future posts, but at least they were functional because all I was worried about was making sure there wouldn't be any air leaks.
Once I got the thermometer in place and made sure it was all welded up, it was time to start SMOKIN'
First, a bacon-weave wrapped fatty, sporting habanero cheese in the middle with TN Pride hot sausage:
And I was too lazy to get a shot of the baked beans and the prepping of the spare ribs.
But at least I've got a couple pics of the finished fatty and meat lollipops:
Sorry I don't have more pics of the good stuff, but my buddies were hungry and we devoured those mofos like it was nobody's business. Nothing is better than standing around a table with freshly cooked ribs piled high and just grabbing them straight from the dish, then tossing the bones into a bucket nearby.
So some final thoughts on the offset smoker: MAN DOES IT GOBBLE UP FUEL! Getting it to temp was not an issue. It probably took about 45 min. for the temp dial to read 250, but then I noticed after about 30 minutes it would start to lose about 5 deg/10 minutes. I had to keep adding charcoal briquettes every 10 minutes to keep the temperature even. I smoked the ribs for about 4 hours and was able to keep an indicated temp of around 250. But I used an entire 16.6 lb bag of Kingsford charcoal. From what I read on here, this is to be expected though.
I noticed that because I had to reduce the height of the heat/smoke inlet hole, the FB wasn't operating at max efficiency. I'll probably come up with a deflection shield so that the heat doesn't sit stagnant in the top part of the FB.
As for the ribs I was quite impressed since I usually don't like spare ribs. The fat rendered out of the racks quite nicely and a beautiful smoke ring was evident on the surface of the meat. I marinated the ribs in a dry rub and then finished them with a sweet bbq sauce which left the meat pretty moist and fun to tear off the bone.
All in all, I think my effort into this project was waaay worth it. This smoker ain't gonna win any beauty contests, but as it's always said, it's pretty satisfying to cook on something you built.
So for now, the smoker sits and waits. I'm not sure what I'm gonna cook next. I'll have to wait for the circulars to come out to see what's on sale.
BTW, comments, criticisms, jabs at my work are all welcome! Thanks for perusing!
:becky:
