Ugly Drum Smoker

h20loo said:

There are lots of regular contributors here since almost day one who have shaped this thread. They can be crusty sometimes but then you read back a few pages and you find them busting their balls helping someone- guess we all have good and bad days.

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Yeah, you're absolutly right. I guess I just took it to personal when Norco pointed out my repost, probably because of some unsolicited criticism he gave me in another thread. But having said that I owe him a big thanks because it was his build thread and videos that I used to build mine.

jetfxr27 said:

Thanks again, Nabbed the last 4 in my area! Even better the blue ones were only $3.00!

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Glad I could help you out!!

1FUNVET said:

Thanks the price here as well. Bought 3 cause they were on sale-helping the economy.

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Good to see that my post is stimulating the economy!! I think I'll grab a few more if they still have any when I get home this weekend, if I get home this weekend!!(I drive a truck so I'm gone all week!)

hello everyone,
1st post here. I've been reading away here on this thread and all the info is great. I appreciate the ingenuity that it took to make something so cheap work so well, yet it's so simple.
One thing I have noticed in a few posts are the comments regarding people being concerned about visit from the fire department on the barrel burn day. I live in a condo in a thickly settled area and was concerned about the neighbors calling the FD since they are all significantly less redneck than I. So I called Fire Dept. and they said, contained fire is no problem, just give us a call on the day you're doing it so we don't have to respond to a false alarm. the proactive approach can pay off.

cheers & happy grilling!

highchief welcome to the insanity. You picked a good smoker to build. You'll love how easy they are to use. Please post pics of your build. Good day to burn in Ma. with all the rain so get out there and get it started. Your right in the heart of the New England BBQ Society competition circuit area. If you get a chance join us for more info.

Here are some pics of my first smoker that I built recently. I bought the drum and got it sandblasted for $50, then painted it up and oiled the inside.

For intakes I drilled 3 x 1" holes, and control the airflow using fridge magnets. The lid has 8 x 1/2" holes and by having one intake open, one closed and the third one half way, I can keep a nice stable 230 or so temp during the cook.

So far I have only cooked three beer can chickens in the smoker, using hickory chunks on top of briquettes. The flavour is incredible, and now I am keen on getting into some ribs at the next use.

The forum has been incredibly useful in working out the design, and it was great being able to draw on others experiences to avoid any pitfalls.




cheers,

Crundle

Crundle- that looks like the perfect simple barrel. I bet it will turn out lots of Q with very little babysitting.
I'm curious about the bolt head on the side of the barrel?
Could you edit your last post and throw an "enter" between the last two pictures- some peoples work computers won't allow them to see the third picture.

h20loo said:

.... I'm curious about the bolt head on the side of the barrel? .....

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My exact thought too? What's the bolt for?

QuietOne said:

My exact thought too? What's the bolt for?

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you can see from the other pics that he has the cooking deck mounted down by the first rib in the barrel. That's the deck mounting bolt.

Nice drum Crundle!

I am not sure your thermo in your lid will give you an accurate temp with the cooking grate so low. You might be off over 50 degrees depending on how long the stem is.

Drifter said:

Good to see that my post is stimulating the economy!!

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It did? Who's economy?

"MADE IN CHINA"

Old Hippie said:

It did? Who's economy?

"MADE IN CHINA"

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Yes, it is made in China, just like a lot of stuff we all use every day. But in in order for us to purchase it in America, an American truck hauls it from and American port and delivers it to American stores for Americans to buy! And yes, I drive one of those American trucks (made in Mexico!!!!)

h20loo said:

Crundle- that looks like the perfect simple barrel. I bet it will turn out lots of Q with very little babysitting.
I'm curious about the bolt head on the side of the barrel?
Could you edit your last post and throw an "enter" between the last two pictures- some peoples work computers won't allow them to see the third picture.

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I am having some trouble finding the edit button for that post, but will keep looking for it!

The bolt head on the side is simply a 2" bolt with a washer on each side of the drum body and a nut on the inside to hold it nice and tight. There are 3 of them on the drum and they seem to hold the grill quite stably.

I figure that after a few attempts at using the grill I will get to know the temps fairly well, so I settled on throwing the thermometer on the lid, also partly because it had a 3" probe only, so it wouldn't really be reading the temperature correctly even at the grill height.

I am trying to source some oven thermometers with a longer probe to mount just below the grill, but unlike you guys over in the US, all of our BBQ suppliers seem to ignore the smoking aspect of BBQing.

I posted up pics of my UDS on an Aussie beer forum and someone responded with a PDF of cooking times and internal temps for smokers. The internal temp for chicken seemed low to me, but the cooking times were spot on, so I am hoping to give it a crack on some spare ribs for my next effort. With that in mind, does anyone have a link to a fairly concise thread anywhere that would explain how to prepare and cook up ribs for a BBQ newbie? I only ask because the search function is a bit restricted still until I get a few posts up, and I prefer to post about meaningful stuff rather than just to increase my post counts!

The site looks like it has a ton of information, and I obviously have a lot to learn about BBQing like you do over the pond - thanks for helping out.

cheers and beers,

Crundle

crundle said:

I am having some trouble finding the edit button for that post, but will keep looking for it!

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Click the FAQ button at the top of the page and type in "edit".

crundle said:

I figure that after a few attempts at using the grill I will get to know the temps fairly well, so I settled on throwing the thermometer on the lid, also partly because it had a 3" probe only, so it wouldn't really be reading the temperature correctly even at the grill height. I am trying to source some oven thermometers with a longer probe to mount just below the grill, but unlike you guys over in the US, all of our BBQ suppliers seem to ignore the smoking aspect of BBQing.

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Mount your short probe thermometer on the side of the drum just under the grill grate as described by many. Add 25 degrees F to this temperature and you will be in the ball park as to the temperature in the center of the drum. Center temperatures are GENERALLY 25-40 degrees F hotter than side wall temperatures.

crundle said:

With that in mind, does anyone have a link to a fairly concise thread anywhere that would explain how to prepare and cook up ribs for a BBQ newbie? I only ask because the search function is a bit restricted still until I get a few posts up, and I prefer to post about meaningful stuff rather than just to increase my post counts!

The site looks like it has a ton of information.................

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You answered your own question, there are a ton of recipe's and "how to's" here on THE BBQ BRETHREN web site as well as elsewhere. Are you using the SEARCH box at the bottom of the page? Have you tried a Google search off site?

highchief said:

you can see from the other pics that he has the cooking deck mounted down by the first rib in the barrel. That's the deck mounting bolt.

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Can't get them!

Crundle- I find that if I respect the "24 inch rule" I don't need to foil or flip my ribs. I don't do much mopping but I do sauce some and they all stay nice and moist. You can get some good videos off youtube. If you search 3-2-1 ribs on here I'm sure you will get lots of hits.

You could look for a turkey fryer thermometer- they're usually 12" long. I just drilled a hole lengthwise through a bolt so I can slide the thermo in and out.

Walmart and Home Depot usually have 12" thermometers.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

It seems my posts are time limited to edit, so I missed the boat on that one!

I intend to be able to mount 3 grills in the drum if required, but being fairly keen on beer can chicken I wanted the bottom one to be mounted low enough that I could fit chickens in with a flat lid as my drum is too large in diameter to fit my Weber lid. My plan is to have the other grill positions 6" above each other to make it possible to easily remove a grill if needed and to provide flexibility in what I can cook at the one time.

I was directed by a PM to an index thread of sorts, and that has enough info to keep me reading for a long time while I learn the art of using this drum smoker.

Thanks for the hint re the 24" rule - my middle grill position will satisfy that rule, but for chickens I needed a touch more room. I reckon I could fit 8 chickens in the drum if needed when they are standing upright!

Thanks once again for making a new guy feel right at home. I am still getting used to the way this forum works ( a bit different in the subscription area to the forums I am in over here) so forgive me if I seem to be a bit slow on the uptake as to how powerful the search function seems to be. I will give the google site search a try to see how it fares.

cheers and beers,

Crundle

Oh, here is the pdf that I got from a guy on the aussiehomebrewer.com forum about cooking temps and times. I think the times are fairly right (at least for beer can chicken so I am extrapolating that the rest are roughly in the zone), but the temps seem a bit low for chicken so I am guessing they are a bit low overall.

This probably came from this forum originally anyway, but a google search of the forum came up with nothing like it.

cheers,

Crundle

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