'Cue_Queue
Wandering around with a bag of matchlight, looking for a match.
Hey guys,
I have recently been put in charge of a club I belong to's commissary, i.e. I have to cook for 25-50 people every weekend during the summer, and we have a small wooded property where I have been introducing the common folk to the wonders of smoking, an art I have only been practicing since I found an old brinkman bullet on craigslist for $20 last Christmas. I gave that to my buddy and bought an $80 Brinkman offset for the commissary. After buying some $150 tuning plates to fix my $80 purchase, I have since smoked a boston butt, a whole chicken, 15 racks of ribs at once, 80 hamburgers, 45 drumsticks, and just last weekend my first briskets, smoked 14 hrs on red oak, held for two. I definitely used too much rub, but it was not burnt, and it was very moist. A win I'd say for my first time.
Next year is our 110th anniversary, so with that background information in mind, I have been campaigning that we as an organization divert some funds for a custom built installation-piece smoker, kind of like the fourth picture below, as a commemoration plus enjoyment in the future. I have so far drummed up pretty good support, giving me a tentative budget of approximately $3,000 from my initial estimates. Additionally, the assistant commissary position is going to be filled next year by my buddy who is a professional welder, so we have a chance to custom build an extremely well-built and efficient, but also good looking piece of equipment.
I've been looking for some engineering-type information on pertinent design elements for a custom masonry-based smoker, which is difficult to find besides the obvious. Before I spend all this money, I thought it would be good to find a community to help brainstorm some ideas, as well as giving y'all an inside view of the process from start to finish for archival purposes. Below are the preliminary schematics (drawn approx. to scale), that I hope will give you an insight into what we've come up with so far.
My maternal Grandfather was from North Carolina, and as such I feel it necessary somewhere in my bones to learn how to do a whole hog as I have both the facilities and the opportunity to learn how to cook a whole hog regularly, and I sha'n't be passing it up; therefore preliminary designs for the smoker include a 6'x4'x4' (big enough for probably more hog than we need) solid masonry smoker lined with firebrick. At $1.80/brick quoted by my local brick guys to line the inside with 4.5"x9"x2.5" (or 40.5 sq. in.) firebrick will be about 450 of them, or ~$900.
We also thought it would be good design to have a built-in burndown (i.e. "charcoal chimney") underneath the (firebrick) pizza/bread oven to pre-heat it, as I also make fresh breads; in addition to a 3'x5' open flame chargrill we would also build from firebrick. We have no designs for the pizza oven (part of the information difficult to find), but figure a well-built smoker could be fired-up Friday night and fed minimally (relative to my leaky offset) to keep it steady at (250 +/- 25) right up until Sunday evening. This is our main goal.
We have also entertained a rotisserie for chickens/gyro meat, iron inclusions for dutchovens/crockpots, vertical vs. horizontal, cross-equipment efficiencies (burndown under pizza oven), etc. Our fuel is primarily wood, with briquettes only in a pinch to make sure food gets out on time while we figure out wtf we're doing. We can build this any way we want, and the goal is to build a outdoor cooking system that be used just the smoker, just the pizza oven, etc. depending on what we decide to do.
We have 6 months or so to finalize designs before finding materials: I figured this would lend to some pretty good discussion here over the coming months. We want to stick with brick, masonry, iron, steel, and wood for materials to make it pretty but durable and long-lasting.
So I ask thee, barbecue enthusiasts, if you had several grand $$$ to build a custom smoker, what would you do and what considerations follow therein?
I have recently been put in charge of a club I belong to's commissary, i.e. I have to cook for 25-50 people every weekend during the summer, and we have a small wooded property where I have been introducing the common folk to the wonders of smoking, an art I have only been practicing since I found an old brinkman bullet on craigslist for $20 last Christmas. I gave that to my buddy and bought an $80 Brinkman offset for the commissary. After buying some $150 tuning plates to fix my $80 purchase, I have since smoked a boston butt, a whole chicken, 15 racks of ribs at once, 80 hamburgers, 45 drumsticks, and just last weekend my first briskets, smoked 14 hrs on red oak, held for two. I definitely used too much rub, but it was not burnt, and it was very moist. A win I'd say for my first time.
Next year is our 110th anniversary, so with that background information in mind, I have been campaigning that we as an organization divert some funds for a custom built installation-piece smoker, kind of like the fourth picture below, as a commemoration plus enjoyment in the future. I have so far drummed up pretty good support, giving me a tentative budget of approximately $3,000 from my initial estimates. Additionally, the assistant commissary position is going to be filled next year by my buddy who is a professional welder, so we have a chance to custom build an extremely well-built and efficient, but also good looking piece of equipment.
I've been looking for some engineering-type information on pertinent design elements for a custom masonry-based smoker, which is difficult to find besides the obvious. Before I spend all this money, I thought it would be good to find a community to help brainstorm some ideas, as well as giving y'all an inside view of the process from start to finish for archival purposes. Below are the preliminary schematics (drawn approx. to scale), that I hope will give you an insight into what we've come up with so far.
My maternal Grandfather was from North Carolina, and as such I feel it necessary somewhere in my bones to learn how to do a whole hog as I have both the facilities and the opportunity to learn how to cook a whole hog regularly, and I sha'n't be passing it up; therefore preliminary designs for the smoker include a 6'x4'x4' (big enough for probably more hog than we need) solid masonry smoker lined with firebrick. At $1.80/brick quoted by my local brick guys to line the inside with 4.5"x9"x2.5" (or 40.5 sq. in.) firebrick will be about 450 of them, or ~$900.
We also thought it would be good design to have a built-in burndown (i.e. "charcoal chimney") underneath the (firebrick) pizza/bread oven to pre-heat it, as I also make fresh breads; in addition to a 3'x5' open flame chargrill we would also build from firebrick. We have no designs for the pizza oven (part of the information difficult to find), but figure a well-built smoker could be fired-up Friday night and fed minimally (relative to my leaky offset) to keep it steady at (250 +/- 25) right up until Sunday evening. This is our main goal.
We have also entertained a rotisserie for chickens/gyro meat, iron inclusions for dutchovens/crockpots, vertical vs. horizontal, cross-equipment efficiencies (burndown under pizza oven), etc. Our fuel is primarily wood, with briquettes only in a pinch to make sure food gets out on time while we figure out wtf we're doing. We can build this any way we want, and the goal is to build a outdoor cooking system that be used just the smoker, just the pizza oven, etc. depending on what we decide to do.
We have 6 months or so to finalize designs before finding materials: I figured this would lend to some pretty good discussion here over the coming months. We want to stick with brick, masonry, iron, steel, and wood for materials to make it pretty but durable and long-lasting.
So I ask thee, barbecue enthusiasts, if you had several grand $$$ to build a custom smoker, what would you do and what considerations follow therein?
