Old Country Brazos heat baffle mod

[HillCountrySmoker]

I've had my Old Country Brazos about a year now. The previous owner took out the original heat baffle that faced down towards the bottom of the pit and I've been cooking with it fairly well, still had the hot spot on the grate while cooking so I tried various things to keep from burning my food on one end.

In one of Mad Scientist's videos when he was touring and cooking on that 1000 gal pit, he showed the heat baffle in there as an upward facing "scoop" so that got my brain going. I'm sure some offsets out there have this already, but I wanted to try it on my Brazos and see how it did. All in all, I was pretty happy with how things seemed to work out - check it out if you're curious! Happy smoking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6OQ478bVg&ab_channel=cbcazes

 

[Mike Twangzer]

Good video... nice mod !!!!

 

[Newglide]

Sorry to resurect an older post.
Great video, I looked at the follow up also. I have a Pecos with the baffle removed and stack extended, Love those changes, now you got me thinking about this one. In the follow up vide he had 3 racks of ribs on the far right of the cook chamber, I can't cook in that section to this has my attention, Have you tried cooking on it with a water pan shelf?

 

[HillCountrySmoker]

I do have a little water pan shelf - I have used it sometimes, other times not. I just had a smoke collector and new stack welded on so I'm planning to do a new video hopefully soon. I'm going to have that little shelf in the video so you can see it. I just bent some steel so that its removable.

One thing I've noticed with the heat baffle is the inside lid/top of the smoker definitely gets more soot build up on the right side with the heat/smoke going straight up compared to when I did cooks before this (no baffle in place). This water pan shelf - i'm still on the fence with it. Gives me a place to put the water pan - not on the grill - but I wonder if it will push TOO much air/heat straight into the food. I'm still learning to cook on this thing and now that I have it all set up how I want it, I need to really play around with the damper, heat deflector, etc and really learn this pit and the best way to cook with it. All part of the fun!!

 

[Lynn Dollar]

On my Brazos, I used a 16" loaf pan for a water pan. I set it under the cooking grate on top of the baffle. It fit perfectly.

Course, you don't have a baffle but ya find another spot for one.