My homemade smoker.

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Pabst Blue Robot

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Location
Puyallup, WA
Today marks the one year anniversary from when I begin construction on my homemade smoker. She is a vertical offset wood smoker built from two 55 gallon drums and a cast iron stove kit. The design was based upon Mike Sell's "Big Smokey." I call her the Green Demon.

As a homage to all of the joy, not to mention weight, that this fine machine has brought me in the last year, I would like to post photos and comments on the build process and few of the smokes.

:rockin:

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It all started last June when I discovered that a building near to where I work was a salad dressing manufacturer with access to food grade 55 gallon steel drums. I stopped in to have a chat and ended up leaving with three barrels for the cost of a smile and a hand shake. Having admired the designs of Big Smokey, Big Baby, and the Texas Hibatchi for some time, I set out to designed and build my own smoker.


Here are the three barrels in my garage, a molasses drum, a honey drum, and a sesame oil drum:

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All were food grade so there was no worry about chemicals. The first step was to take them down to the steel and repaint with something that could handle the high temps and the wet Washington weather.

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An angle grinder and many hours later, I could have a barrel down to the steel. They sell paint stripping wheels for the grinder at home depot that seemed to do the trick, it took about 1 wheel per barrel. A word of caution, unscrew the barrel cap before doing this as the heat may build pressure. It goes without saying but a breathing mask and safety glasses are also important here.

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First barrel stripped. The heat caused what honey was left inside the barrel to liquify and form a puddle on the floor, what a mess. If I do this again, I'm going to collect the honey first as there was probably a couple pounds left.

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Rustoleum High Heat BBQ paint. I can't remember how many cans of this I used throughout the process, but it was probably in the neighborhood of a dozen and a half. At $5 per can that really adds up. I opted for green because I like it and all the other smokers I've seen were black. They stopped carrying it at the home depot about half way through my project so I had to drive around to 4 of them and buy up what was left. They still make the black and white as far as I know.

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The first coat finished. Each barrel got three coats plus touch up.

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The third barrel is only needed for the lid. I will note that it is important to select drums with ribs that line up so that the top barrel and the lid barrel can overlap evenly.

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I measured the lid to be 1 inch wider and taller than the opening. I used a dremel for the pilot cut.

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The sawzall was invaluable in this project. I used 1/8" metal scroll bits to do all of the cuts on the barrels, including the door, because it will take the corners nicely.

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This was a sesame oil barrel. One of the bits worked loose of the chuck when I was cutting and you can see it down in the oil. I recylced the rest of this barrel when finished as I only needed the lid.

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I traced out the font of the bottom "fire" barrel for the stove kit doors. The cast iron doors will insert and overlap, allowing you to fasten them to the front of the barrel. The bottom plug can be cut out carefully.

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The cuts finished. They don't have to be pretty as there is a good 3/4" overlap on the stove doors. This was a honey barrel.

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Drilling the holes to hold the door in place. The stove kit comes with a single piece, double door. The top is for loading wood and the bottom for controlling air. I lined the door up with the top plug so it was symmetrical.

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Mounted. The insides of the doors and lined with stove rope and the air door has two air control dials that are of limited usefulness, more on that later.

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Redneck leveling setup to mount the bottom legs. The legs are cast iron, designed for the curvature of a 55 gallon drum, and included with the kit.

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The fire barrel standing on its own two legs.

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Front hole cut for the damper collar and drilled for the next set of legs. This is a 6" diameter hole and the collar will overlap it, however the damper machanism must clear the hole.

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The damper collar fitted. The collar is also fitted for the curvature of a 55 gallon drum.

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Hole cut for the rear damper collar and top legs mounted. Being able to control the airflow via the two dampers is handy when you're cooking two sides that require slightly different temps and/or times. Most of the time I have both dampers full open and use the air intake to control the temp.

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Second collar mounted on the fire barrel and test fitting the cooking barrel.

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Test fitting the connecting flues. I used 3 inch lengths of 6 inch diameter aluminum heating duct painted with black BBQ paint for the flues. One thing that was very difficult for me to discern from the Big Smokey design was how the flues connected between collars. As it turns out, on the top barrel one of the receiving collars is male and the other female, making the end piece of ducting necessary.

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Test fit of the collars for the cooking barrel. You can see the male/female in this picture.

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The top "cooking" barrel with the door opening cut out.

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A third damper, ordered separate from the kit, mounted at a 45' angle on the cooking barrel. This will be for the chimney which is the principle difference between my design and the other drum cookers.

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The cooking barrel test fitted. In hindsight, I probably would not have used a damper on the chimney as I almost never control the heat by choking the exhaust. It is useful on very cold days however as neither barrel is insulated.

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A view of the vents from the inside of the cooking barrel.

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The door mounted with three sets of hinges from the hardware store. I do not have a proper stop for the door, but it rests comfortably against the chimney and has a piece of angle iron inside (not shown) that acts as a counter weight.

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The door open, pre-chimney.

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I mounted two lengths of angle steel inside to hold the cooking grates.

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It was a challenge to find a grate/combination of grates that fit the drum to maximize cooking area without breaking the bank. I ended up with a set of three steel rock grates from the hardware store that were a perfect fit. The trouble came in removing the steel plates welded to them...

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Here is one of the plates after removal. I tried unsuccessfully to use a MAPP torch to heat up the joints and then a pry bar and a hammer to break them free. This resulted only in bending or breaking the bars on the grate. The easiest way that I find to remove them was to use the angle grinder and grind the welds from the rear of the plate. Time consuming, but cleaner.

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The grates fitting after plate removal, missing a couple bars.

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A 6" diameter aluminum heat duct knuckle, mounted for the chimney. It was painted with black high temp BBQ paint and once positioned correctly, the angle was secured using a whole bunch of sheet metal screws.

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Thermometer and handle mounted. The handle was borrowed from an old gas BBQ destined for the dump and the thermometer was a $6 hardware store piece. It does the job, but the range is way too large for BBQ. I would prefer a dial between 75 and 300 so I had better detail in the range of 200-250 that I typically use. This one covers 50-700 so you have to squint a little.

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Chimney mounted. The chimney is all aluminum heating duct that's been painted, even the cap is from the hardware store's heating aisle. I had some question over whether it would hold up vs stove pipe but it does a fantastic job and I've never had any issues, plus it's cheap. I also had concern but wind so I probably over secured it, but it has survived windstorms that have knocked over the closed porch umbrella with the 100 pound concrete base so I'm confident now.

The chimney stands an additional 3+ feet over the smoker and the length serves to draw the smoke and create better airflow from what I've read. Either way it looks pretty cool and spreads the smell around the neighborhood.

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I lined the bottom with red clay brick. This keeps the coals from resting on the steel, insulates and holds the heat, and provides weight and stability to the tall smoker. I used 17 bricks and they were regular red clay, it's not worth the extra money for "fire bricks" in this application.

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The coal grate. This was just a crappy aluminum grate out of an old fridge, I ended up putting this one up top to hold the water pans and using a rock grate from a dead gas BBQ for the coals. This keeps the wood up off the brick so that there is airflow and room for the ash.

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A load of cherry wood smoldering in the fire barrel. I use hardwood exclusively as the fuel for the smoker. Lump charcoal works nicely to get the fire going. Right now I have a face cord of cherry that's dry and another of maple that split and drying. I also have a few bins of apple rounds which are nice for building up the fire too.

Before using the smoker to cook, I did a long hot burn to remove any potential coating inside the barrel. The top barrel hit 550 during this burn and the bottom one was hot enough to fade the paint on top.

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Smoke wafting out of the chimney. It's about ready when the smoke is almost clear.

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A side table rescued from another doomed gas grill. Something to set the thermometer or beer on while cooking. You can also see the barrel locks that I used to firmly secure the door and keep as much smoke as possible from leaking.

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Furnace cement used to seal the flues.

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Stove rope used to form a seal when the door is closed. I still have problems with the furnace cement holding the stove rope on, the weather tends to wear it out with time.

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Here you can see the second grate beneath the cooking grate with the water pans. This helps keep the heat indirect for any meat over the vents, and also adds moisture.

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Here is the smoker today, nearly one year after its completion. As you can see a thick coat of grease has built up from many cooks, and there are spots of rust that have to be touched up from time to time. Overall it's held up very well through the wet winter and is back in summer service. The inside is pitch black from many cooks worth of smoke and grease.

Some pics across the seasons:

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Meat pictures to follow!!!

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Two racks of pork spare ribs, a couple half chickens, and some beef short ribs:

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Flanken makes a nice snack while you're waiting for the rest of the meat to smoke:

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Added some Munich malt for a smoked beer:

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Ribs and chicken after 10 hours:

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The ribs fell off the bone, they were impossible to even cut. Never mind the Beast...

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Looks pretty cool. I am really wanting to get a smoker - just need to move out of this apartment first!

Can you cold smoke with this just getting flavor and not actually cooking the meat? If so I might have to build one, if I can find barrels.
 
A beef brisket and two pork shoulders go on:

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Coming right along...

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Cutting the brisket:

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Pulled pork, corn muffins, and BBQ sauce:

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2 14 lb fresh Thanksgiving turkeys, brined and cured for 4 days and then smoked for 6 hours:

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The little bacon wrapped guys are dates. A coworker turned me on to this, it's really fantastic.

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Here's a batch of homemade andouille. The sausage making session is a whole other picture set, but the recipe is taken from the book "Charcuterie" by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. This book may have changed my life.

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A pork shoulder, a beef brisket, two racks of pork back ribs, and a "rack of pork" which was unfamiliar to me at the time but is basically a loin attached to some ribs:

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And for the grand finale, Smoketoberfest 2008. We smoked over 50 pounds of meat for the event and it was awesome.

4 pork shoulders, 4 racks of spare ribs, and an entire loin. The ribs went on in two batches to accomodate grill space and cook time.

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This is probably the fullest the smoker has even been.

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The pork loin pulled off at temp. It was cured before hand using a canadian bacon method outlined in Charcuterie.

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14 hours later:

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The meat was all foiled and put in a cooler for the following afternoon....

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The following afternoon was a house warming party for my friend Isaac. Around 80 people were in attendance throughout the day.

Pulling the pork:

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Thanks, Ed for posting the sauce recipe. It was quite good.

The ribs:

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Slicing the loin:

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Some folks enjoying the fine food and beer. I brought up my jockey box and we had Pumpkin Ale, Smoked Porter, and a cider for the kids:

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Isaac made some sauerkraut also, that's the red stuff in the jar:

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There was a TON of food. We'll be repeating this next year.

Well that's about it for the pictures, hope I made you hungry!

:fro:

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now I'm freaking hating you for posting all that hot food porn. :D

Stop it now...

If it's any consolation to myself, I am eating buffalo steak right now...remiscing about all I learned about smoking while I lived in Kansas city..and especially remembering one of the best smokings I ever did....took a buffalo roast and dry rubbed it with brown sugar and whatever spices I had around, then smoked it in hickory with one decent sized piece of cherry wood....and sliced it into rounds that were like filet mignons....the one piece of fat that ran through it was infused with a cherry rosemary flavor and was the consistency of cream cheese...medium rare it was awesome...

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O.... M.... F.... G....!!!!!

I think I just made a mess in my shorts....

I bow to you, Oh Mighty Master of the Smoker....

And here I thought my puny Brinkman was worthy....

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Can you cold smoke with this just getting flavor and not actually cooking the meat? If so I might have to build one, if I can find barrels.


I have cold smoked salmon with it before, but it's high maintenance. Build a very small fire on one end, both vents closed, exhaust full open, meat opposite the fire. I could maintain ~ 100 F without too much trouble.

Even for hot smoking, it's not set and forget. I tend the fire at least once an hour and check the temps periodically after adding a log until they stabilize. To me the benefits of smoking on an offset far out weigh the effort, and it's not much more effort if you're out brewing anyway.

The nice thing is that 225 seems to be able the sweet spot with this design. I crack the air door about an inch and all three dampers open wide and it will cruise along.
 
I just got the green light on this.

I'll make the door bigger than the cut out so the gasket can be screwed down.

VERY nice job!
 
Super Cool! I doubt I'd ever want a smoker that big, but building it looks fun!

Oh, sweet, KISS is on now with their disco anthem, I Was Made For Loving You"! Dig that tune!
 
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