I finally completed the restoration of a New Braunfels (NB) smoker that a friend gave me several months ago. He said his family probably had it somewhere between 25 to 30 years. Some steps I took to bring it back to life were to replace all nuts/bolts in the firebox/cooking chamber with stainless steel, replace both wooden handles with wood I cut from a wooden dowel, build a new shelf using birch strips (old shelf was missing except for the metal brackets), add a Tel-Tru temp gauge, replace charcoal and cooking grates, and add a Lavalock heat baffle to the cooking chamber. Other than a couple of other small items, the rest was removing rust inside both chambers and re-painting the exterior.
Was the investment & work to restore this smoker worth it? Well, I’m not so sure. I’d probably pass on restoring if I had it to do over again. While it says “Made in USA” on the NB badge, the gauge of the metal is only 3/32” which is disappointing as it’s not even 1/8” thick. Overall, I think the money I put into this smoker would have been better spent on a newer offset, but I have the satisfaction of restoring a NB and plan to use it.
I went back to my original post on this smoker and read that putting in a heat baffle changes the NB from a top-down to a bottom-up smoker. Per the post, the top down is supposed to be better. I’m new to offset smokers as I normally smoke with my WSM or kettle, so I don’t have an opinion on which is better. But I will say that I’ve cooked two pork butts and one turkey so far, and they both came out great. I haven’t tried the biscuit test yet, but I haven’t noticed any hot spots.
Btw, for both smoking sessions, I used a combination of B&B charcoal briquettes & charcoal logs, along with wood chunks or half splits. This combination worked extremely well and almost made both cooks “set & forget” which really surprised me. I don’t know how this offset would do using only wood splits, so I’d like to read any opinions on that approach. It’s a pretty small smoker so I cut all my wood splits in half.
Was the investment & work to restore this smoker worth it? Well, I’m not so sure. I’d probably pass on restoring if I had it to do over again. While it says “Made in USA” on the NB badge, the gauge of the metal is only 3/32” which is disappointing as it’s not even 1/8” thick. Overall, I think the money I put into this smoker would have been better spent on a newer offset, but I have the satisfaction of restoring a NB and plan to use it.
I went back to my original post on this smoker and read that putting in a heat baffle changes the NB from a top-down to a bottom-up smoker. Per the post, the top down is supposed to be better. I’m new to offset smokers as I normally smoke with my WSM or kettle, so I don’t have an opinion on which is better. But I will say that I’ve cooked two pork butts and one turkey so far, and they both came out great. I haven’t tried the biscuit test yet, but I haven’t noticed any hot spots.
Btw, for both smoking sessions, I used a combination of B&B charcoal briquettes & charcoal logs, along with wood chunks or half splits. This combination worked extremely well and almost made both cooks “set & forget” which really surprised me. I don’t know how this offset would do using only wood splits, so I’d like to read any opinions on that approach. It’s a pretty small smoker so I cut all my wood splits in half.
