Ok, It appears that I am a few years late on this deal, but you guys have my attention! I am gathering the supplies for a uds as we speak. I have been cruising this thread (it seems that it just doesn't end). Lots of great info. I'm sure the info that I am seaking is in here somewhere, but since I am a newbie, I can not search the thread, so I'll ask:
I get it that you drill the holes in the bottom of the barrel, I'm doing 3-3/4 inch holes, then burn the $%^# out of it to get rid of the lining. Burn the paint off of the outside, sand and repaint with high temp paint.
When the drum is built, you need to test burn. This is where I start to have questions. Is there a standard procedure that has been developed over the course of this thread for this seasoning burn? How high of temp, and for how long? What works best to coat the inside of the drum?
What is giving the best results for the vents in the lid? I am considering using the 2" bung hole and the electrical plate and spring setup. I have seen the other theory of several holes drilled in the lid. What is the tread favorite?
Next question is about cooking on the drum. What are the cooking temps and times on the more popular meats? I am a complete rookie in the smooking world. I have never smoked anything, but love to grill. Can any of you guru's help me out?
I'm not a guru, but I'll give you a few answers that I'm pretty confident about.
- Seasoning: Someone on here mentioned at one point that there's probably a law on the books somewhere mandating that you cook a fatty during your seasoning run. They're just too easy to cook, and since the drum is burned out and clean, there's no reason not to!
- The lid vent doesn't need to be variable... a 2" bung opening is perfect, and apparently so is Norco's 8x 0.5" hole setup. If your bung hole is threaded, :heh: you can get a 2" threaded pipe nipple (8" long or so) and thread it right in. Finish it off with a 2" cap to close it up when you're not using it, and you don't have to fabricate anything. Remember to lube up all of the threads with cooking oil or they WILL RUST. Same goes for the caps on your 3/4" inlet pipes.
- Charcoal basket: There's a video in my signature that I put together on making my charcoal basket. If you can weld, this design works well. Just do yourself a favor and cut the expanded steel sheet in the opposite direction that I did, i.e. make the diamonds stand up vertically rather than horizontally. It's MUCH easier to bend that way, so you won't have to go through the contortions that I did. In that case, my video is a good example of what NOT to do. ;-)
- Thermometer: I have in my build pics one example of many different ways that people install 12" turkey thermometers in a UDS, so take a look at that and see what you think.
- Starting the fire: I've only done about 5 runs on my UDS so far, :redface::doh: so I'm fairly new at it too. My biggest impression? When starting the charcoal via the Minion method, don't use too much charcoal in the chimney! Load up your basket with charcoal and a few chunks of smoking wood, start NO MORE THAN 12 briquettes in a charcoal chimney, let them get gray, and dump them into the middle of the basket. 12 briquettes in a chimney is actually tough to start, because it only covers about half of the bottom of the chimney and the flames from the starter paper just go around the briquettes. You could even light more than 12 so you cover the whole bottom and then just pick 12 with tongs. I made the mistake of putting about 20 lit briquettes into the basket and it ran away from me a little bit during startup. As I'm sure you've seen in this thread, it's much easier to ramp temperature up in a UDS than to ramp it down!
Finally, here's an awesome post from Norco that was very helpful to me that summarizes the whole starting and cooking process:
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1172028&postcount=4937
Good luck!
-Rodney
