New Guy here.
Took a while but I have read all pages, 631. I purchased my cooker after reading about 300 pages. I ordered it on a Wednesday and they delivered it to Houston Saturday. I had it going in about an hour.
I've worn out two verticals and upgraded to the Pit Barrel. I love my vertical for it's size and capacity, however it is a lot of work. For me, a vertical was hard to cook low and slow and get the setup to handle wood chunks correctly, the burners either ignited the chucks and spiked the temperature or the chunks just died. It also took me a while to get the taste profile I knew I could achieve, I ended up making my own Amaze-N pellet candle out of a piece of Stainless Steel Well Point pipe. That would still be an option in the Barrel for cold smoking.
Stumbling on hot-n-fast cooking, I realized I was spanking myself trying to force a vertical to cook low-n-slow. While reading Bludawg's posts, the Pit Barrel thread caught my attention.
This is my first charcoal grill/smoker. My first cook was chicken and skewered veggies. The food was great but I didn't know about letting the Kingsford Briquettes settle and we got the full Kingsford Original Smog Flavor. Heck it was still good but lesson learned. I tried Stubbs and it was better but, as I understand it, Stubbs has been phased out. I went to HomeDepot and picked up some Royal Oak lump and Kingsford Hard Wood. Will try those soon.
I rolled out some fatties to get more surface area and smoked those using Academy-supplied Bad Byron's Butt Rub. They were really good, exceptional. I realized that would be a simple and inexpensive party pleaser.
Yes, the Pit Barrel Cooker is fantastic!
