New BPS Build First Real Cook

I have been lurking on this board for quite some time, and have quite enjoyed all of the lovely bbq pr0n so I figured I would see what you guys thought of my work, *I realize my camera leaves an annoying blue tint *

I thought about building a UDS for a while but my wife thought the big pappa smoker kit would save me time and effort and result in a much more attractive result, and she normally hates when I spend money, so I couldn't say no :-D

I found a 55 gallon drum used for lemon juice concentrate on craigslist and burned it out with a weed burner, after the initial joy of owning a flamethrower wore off, and my wife begged me to stop burning things in my yard, it only took about an hour to strip the paint, then I scrubbed it out with some simple green and a scotch pad, till it was shiny, rinsed it well, dried it out with the flamethrower for fun, and painted it while it was still warm

and the lid


for future reference I noted that I should have drilled the holes prior to painting it flat black... it was a bit harder to mark the barrel than I would have liked after the black paint. so it took me a whole day to assemble the kit, and I didn't take any progress pics till I had her oiled up and burning on my patio.


*note the Maverick 732 hanging out, I need to figure out a good solution for the probe cables*
it ran for 13 hours on the first run without me touching it... aside from lunch, I couldn't resist putting some chicken breast in it, made a great sammy

Tonight is the first real cook after two impressive in my opinion dry runs where it stayed within 5 degrees of where I put it for at least 10 hours. I am doing 3 racks of baby back ribs from Costco, and 3 fatty's, because I have never smoked a fatty before *It took me a while to figure out what you guys were talking about* I am just doing them plain out of the package with some rub on them, I might stuff them next time :wink:

anyhow here she is loaded up, ill post pics of the results when I pull them, if I remember before I start eating :biggrin1:


and here is the smoker all loaded up with what I think is the right color smoke, it looks blue to me

Carbon said:

Very nice build! I see your kettle is chained.

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my neighborhood likes to run off with light and shiny things, the bps is heavy and hot atm so I didn't bother chaining it... I did buy a chain and lock though.

I am still debating on if I want the barrel sitting directly on my paver patio, or if I want a mat of some sort to protect it from grease, the cardboard under it right now is testing its heat output on the bottom, so far it hasn't even singed it. but I am noticing a lot of black drippings coming off the lid when I open it.

Results and Question

Almost forgot to grab some pics of the results, first couple people were loading up their plates by the time I remembered :tongue:

here is a shot of the ribs, I cooked them to three donenesses, first one was taken off when it cracked as I bent it, then one rack was taken off every half hour after that, my guests liked the third rack that fell off the bone the best, I liked the second rack that almost fell off the bone, this pic is from the first rack.



and here is the fattys all sliced up, one of them was gobbled up in the slicing process by guests risking knife for meat.

the food was great, and nobody even reached for the bbq sauce I had on the table, so I consider it a successful cook :-D

the one thing that concerned me a bit, was my lid was dripping nasty black slightly greasy water, whenever I opened it I had to be careful to go slow and angle it to run the grease into the barrel and away from the food.

and then near the end of the cook it stopped dripping and started flaking, looking like this.



so I guess my question is, what is the flaking and should I worry about it? the lid was stripped to bare metal, and then wiped down with peanut oil, assembled and heated to 250 for 10 hours, so I think it was seasoned properly, and until this cook had a shiny black appearance, this stuff is flaking away to leave a shiny black underneath it. so I don't think it's paint, I wonder if this has something to do with the dripping?

aawa said:

Great looking UDS and food! I'm suprised they haven't ran off with your kettle, they can just remove the legs and run off with the kettle itself :heh:

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the lid and side handles were unchained in the pic because I was grilling on the kettle earlier in the evening, and It had not cooled off, I generally run the chain through the right handle then the lid handle and lock it.

oifmarine2003 said:

Thieves are generally to lazy to do any work to get something like that. If that can't just pick it up and go, it is too much work. If they had ambition and work ethic, they wouldn't have to steal....:icon_smile_tongue:

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Exactly, the chain could easily be cut but I don't think they would, so far I have had a bike, and some tools, and a garden hose spray nozzle go missing, I haven't lost any of my grills so far, I had a cheap offset smoker under that patio for the past few summers and I never chained it up even though my wife kept telling me I should, but it wasn't shiny, and it had custom work on it so it would have been easy to recognize if someone stole it, and I think that worked in its favor.

it looked like this *Note the wheels, and I had some mods inside but don't have a pic of them, I sealed it up with rtv silicone and it still leaked like a sieve and I never really got it to go more than 30 minutes without needing to be tweaked, and it needed to be fed every hour or so..


so I sold it on craigslist and replaced it with the Drum and the Kettle about 2 weekends ago.

Because I have had enough stuff disappear, the shiny and common Weber kettle looked to me like an easy grab and run, so I figured it needed chaining up, I don't know if there is a point to chaining up the UDS because its big dirty and I think the effort to grab it is more than the common thief would consider worth the effort. I am debating putting a u-bolt near the bottom on the back of the barrel and slipping a chain through it just to be sure, the chain doesn't cause much hassle to me as I rarely move the cookers.