Kamado’s vs insulated vaults

I have a Weber summit charcoal grill, green mountain grill daniel Boone, uds and a lonestar grillz insulated vertical cabinet and I used to have a old country Pecos offset smoker. I like the food off of my vertical cabinet the best. I don't use it as much as the other cookers because of time and clean up sometimes but I really like it.

rwalters said:

Interesting as I would think that the cleanup on a vault would be fairly easy. I don’t want a cooker that is overly difficult to clean. I love pellet cooked food, how would you compare the LSG to your Green Mountain?

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I don't understand what is difficult unless it's cleaning up water. I don't use water. You can line the water pan will foil and chunk it after the cook. I dump my ash pan and charcoal basket and maybe wipe down the grates.

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The clean up isn't that bad. It is more of waiting multiple hours for it to cool down. I cook with water, but that clean up isn't bad. Once it cools down, usually the next day, I shop vac the ash out and spray everything with Pam. Clean the doors and spray down the inside with Pam. Not more than 15 to 20 minutes. I also like to keep it really clean. I don't enjoy scooping out the hot coals at the end of the cook, but if you don't, it will stay hot for hours. I also keep it in a shed, so I don't like having coals in it, even if they are extinguished, when it is in my shed.

I think that the food on my lsg is slightly better, but not drastically better.

I've cooked on an Akorn and a Grilla Grills Kong Kamado, as well as multiple offsets (direct and RF), a Rec Tec Pellet Grill, and now a Spicewine Insulated Cabinet. I never really enjoyed the food off the kamado, but that was a long time ago and I've gotten quite a bit better. My RF Offset (Johnson Smokers) was my favorite cooker with the best flavor...until I got my Spicewine. I figured I'd be going "backwards" in terms of smoke flavor going from an offset to a cabinet smoker, but I've been very pleasantly surprised by the insulated cabinet smoker. I bought it used and it had some good seasoning all around, and so far I'm loving the food coming off of it. The smoke flavor is surprisingly good and I'm using B&B Hickory Lump, and I'm chopping my wood splits down to chunks / kindling and using that for smoke flavor.

I was always curious how the food would taste from a cabinet cooker, in a very similar manner to the question which you've asked in this thread. All I can say is that I'm very happy with the flavor, I love the convenience of this cooker compared to the offset, and both me and my customers are loving the food coming off of it.

On a final note by swapping to the cabinet I've effectively more than doubled my capacity compared to my large "hog style" offset smoker. I have 4 racks and each rack is easily capable of doing 9 butts. My offset I was maxed out at about 24 racks of ribs, and that was using a $150 rib rack...now I can easily do 32 racks laid out normally (8 on each rack).

Finally, about flavor of kamado vs cabinet I feel like the cabinet has a better, cleaner flavor because there is more airflow. My kamado's had almost no draft at all and the food always kind of had that "stale" smoke flavor. My cabinet has a great draft and I do use a fan system to keep the temps right where I want them (Cyber Q wi-fi controller). Good luck with your choice, but personally I feel like the ISV's are a no brainer.

Had an Acorn yrs ago. A coffee can worth of coals would smoke for 12+ hrs.
My insulated vertical cabinet would burn thru smoking, the factory coal basket full in 10 hrs. A basket full is around 8-10 lbs of lump. 15 lbs of briquettes.
So like mentioned above. There is more smoke flavor profile since there is/was more air flow and more fuel burned.
Since I removed all the useless (to me) insulation. Besides other mods. After I shut down my vertical even cooking at 400*. With-in one hr the cabinet will be down to 100*. From smoking temps. 30 mins or less.
No insulation also allows faster temp adjustments up/down with in a 30 min window. Can't do that with insulation installed.

Having had food from both hands down my insulated cabinet "vault" smoker produces a much better smoke flavor than a Kamado ceramic cooker. Clean up with my cabinet is a breeze as it has a removable grease pan that's the same size of the interior dimensions so it captures all the grease, so basically I empty the grease pan and I'm done

rwalters said:

I have cooked MANY a meals on ceramic kamado’s. A number of years ago, after trying a pellet cooker and stick burner, I quickly began to realize that kamado cooked food was not my thing. I much preferred the flavor profile of pellet/stick cooked food. That said, there are times where I really could use a BIGGER cooker. For those of you that have cooked on both ceramic kamado’s and insulated vaults, how would you compare the 2 when it comes to the low n slow flavor profile? Do vaults impart a cleaner flavor than kamados?

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Do you have a particular brand in mind? When I go to a larger smoker in the future I think I am going the route of the insulated cabinet. Was wondering if you have completed much research yet?

It's also been my experience that vertical offsets put out great results. Probably because hot smoke wants to travel up, not horizontally. They draft well and I believe impart more smoke flavor.

This thread has got me thinking (again) about an insulated smoked as well (Thanks rwalters (instigator), but I'm on the other end of the spectrum in that I'm looking to go small as nowadays I'm just cooking for 2 most of the time. I too have been through the BGE and Akorn and never been happy with the smoky campfire taste. I'm interested to see if others have opinions/thoughts on this subject.

I'm probably not answering the question but the closest thing I've had to a vertical vault was a Redbox cooker. It's a mini insulated cabinet and I'm assuming the laws of physics and heat transfer are the same. It wasn't for me. It was marginally acceptable but the flavor profile I was after just wasn't there. I have had BBQ off of a BGE and it tasted better to me.

rwalters said:

Just put a welding blanket around your new trash can and call it good... LOL [emoji23]

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Good one! So true! LOL :clap:

WilliamKY said:

I'm probably not answering the question but the closest thing I've had to a vertical vault was a Redbox cooker. It's a mini insulated cabinet and I'm assuming the laws of physics and heat transfer are the same. It wasn't for me. It was marginally acceptable but the flavor profile I was after just wasn't there. I have had BBQ off of a BGE and it tasted better to me.

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Never owned a Redbox but from the looks of it it appears to be a nothing more than cheap attempt to replicate a quality insulated vertical in a small scale version. I think the Redbox's sold for a couple hundred bucks what could one expect?

You could always go with a Stumpville dual fuel. He builds insulated cabinets that can be ran off pellets or charcoal

luv2smoke said:

Never owned a Redbox but from the looks of it it appears to be a nothing more than cheap attempt to replicate a quality insulated vertical in a small scale version. I think the Redbox's sold for a couple hundred bucks what could one expect?

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I was actually impressed with the craftsmanship of the cooker outside of the fire box. It's a heavy little cooker and pretty well built but the charcoal tray and fire chamber are inadequate for it's cook chamber capacity