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Late last spring I decided I wanted a smoker that would give me full access to visual inspection, probing, prodding, and turning meat over, without pulling out shelves like I have to do on my cabinet smoker. Handy when I have lots of pieces of smaller cuts or type of meat. Since I smoke a lot of meat at one time.... to make the fullest use possible of the charcoal I'm burning, I wanted a lot of surface area too.
Initially, I thought an offset would meet my needs, but after researching a while, maybe not. The following background info will help folks understand why I decided that high efficiency in fuel usage as a crucial element in my decision.
I have a small home business that brings me minimum wage if I figure 40 hours a week, though I often work more than that. My wife's not working and has no plans to go back to work. After two joint replacements and two more that will eventually have to be done, combined with diabetic neuropathy, I dont't want her too go back. Right now we're living on what my home business makes and on IRA's we're cashing in. We have about 3 years to go before we're social security age and will each start getting small pensions. In the meantime, frugality is a necessity.
I live in a city, don't have ready access to lots of hardwood, and certainly can't afford to feed charcoal to an offset cooker. After looking for the best deal I could find, and also for a cooker that would allow me to drop the coal grate as far as possible below the cooking grate, I decided on a CharGriller Pro, when Menards had them for $98 at their 4th of July sale. My plan was to use it as a dedicated smoker.
Here's a picture of my first cook with it:
That was with no mods and with the fire contained in a 8" fire ring on the coal grate, so I couldn't cook directly above it.
Temperature was way higher at the right side than the left side and it was hard to get the rest of the cooker over 190°. Before my next cook, I extended the stack down to the level of the top shelf, added a baffle, and also cut out most of the coal grate, which was nearly impossible to clean under. In it's place I put a wider coal grate that rased the fire ring up about 3/8", enough to allow the ash to build up underneath the fire ring without choking off the airflow under the coals.
When I take out a cooking grate to refuel, I pull the baffle back with a hook through an eye I put in the baffle. But the temperature was still way hotter at the intake side of the smoker than the exhaust side. The temperature was up some overall though. Just adding 4 1/4" to the stack made it "pull" the smoke out much better. Sufficient for the small fire I'm using.
For my next cook, I stayed with the single baffle, but moved the fire ring over one position(one 7" wide cooking grate) to the left, which put it closer to the exhaust side of the cooker. The result was still that the hottest place in the cooker, measured with oven thermometers as about 30-35° higher than anywhere else, was the 6-7" to the right of the fire ring, and the baffle... which I moved with the fire ring. Except for that small area, it was still pretty hard to get the temperature above 215°.
Next, and the final change as far as the baffles are concerned, was to add another baffle to the right of the 1st one. The baffle that is over the fire ring, slides underneath the second baffle when I have to add charcoal or wood. Here's a picture of the baffles as they are now.... right after firing it up before a cook.
With this change, the cooker was running more consistent temps throughout than previously, with the temps still running about 10° hotter on the intake side.
I was still using a water pan next to the fire ring, and temps were mostly 215° to 235° and that's as high as I could get them once loaded with meat. The last change I made was to put a couple of old cast iron smoker boxes I had next to the fire ring, filled up to the top(or holes in the side) with sand. That brought the temps in the cooker up to 230 to 255° once the meat's started to warm up, and also has brought recovery time after refueling from 20-30 minutes down to 10-15 minutes. I think that the cast iron and sand being able to hold much higher temps than the 212° that hot water can hold, makes a huge difference both to the temp inside and to the recovery time. Water is constantly converting heat energy to steam, and when trying to maintain a small efficient fire, that is really detrimental.
The orange poker in the picture is something I can stick in the intake vent during a cook and sweep the ashes to either side of the firering if I notice that ash is beginning to pile up when I refuel.
This was my most recent cook, last week. A 6 hour cook, during which I used 1 1/2 Weber chimneys of charcoal and 10 or 11 lumps of wood.
I monitor the temps without opening up the cooker by sticking candy thermometers through holes at grate level, and a replacement thermometer I found that fit in the 2" hole the original wildly inaccurate thermometer was in.
Initially, I thought an offset would meet my needs, but after researching a while, maybe not. The following background info will help folks understand why I decided that high efficiency in fuel usage as a crucial element in my decision.
I have a small home business that brings me minimum wage if I figure 40 hours a week, though I often work more than that. My wife's not working and has no plans to go back to work. After two joint replacements and two more that will eventually have to be done, combined with diabetic neuropathy, I dont't want her too go back. Right now we're living on what my home business makes and on IRA's we're cashing in. We have about 3 years to go before we're social security age and will each start getting small pensions. In the meantime, frugality is a necessity.
I live in a city, don't have ready access to lots of hardwood, and certainly can't afford to feed charcoal to an offset cooker. After looking for the best deal I could find, and also for a cooker that would allow me to drop the coal grate as far as possible below the cooking grate, I decided on a CharGriller Pro, when Menards had them for $98 at their 4th of July sale. My plan was to use it as a dedicated smoker.
Here's a picture of my first cook with it:
That was with no mods and with the fire contained in a 8" fire ring on the coal grate, so I couldn't cook directly above it.
Temperature was way higher at the right side than the left side and it was hard to get the rest of the cooker over 190°. Before my next cook, I extended the stack down to the level of the top shelf, added a baffle, and also cut out most of the coal grate, which was nearly impossible to clean under. In it's place I put a wider coal grate that rased the fire ring up about 3/8", enough to allow the ash to build up underneath the fire ring without choking off the airflow under the coals.
When I take out a cooking grate to refuel, I pull the baffle back with a hook through an eye I put in the baffle. But the temperature was still way hotter at the intake side of the smoker than the exhaust side. The temperature was up some overall though. Just adding 4 1/4" to the stack made it "pull" the smoke out much better. Sufficient for the small fire I'm using.
For my next cook, I stayed with the single baffle, but moved the fire ring over one position(one 7" wide cooking grate) to the left, which put it closer to the exhaust side of the cooker. The result was still that the hottest place in the cooker, measured with oven thermometers as about 30-35° higher than anywhere else, was the 6-7" to the right of the fire ring, and the baffle... which I moved with the fire ring. Except for that small area, it was still pretty hard to get the temperature above 215°.
Next, and the final change as far as the baffles are concerned, was to add another baffle to the right of the 1st one. The baffle that is over the fire ring, slides underneath the second baffle when I have to add charcoal or wood. Here's a picture of the baffles as they are now.... right after firing it up before a cook.
With this change, the cooker was running more consistent temps throughout than previously, with the temps still running about 10° hotter on the intake side.
I was still using a water pan next to the fire ring, and temps were mostly 215° to 235° and that's as high as I could get them once loaded with meat. The last change I made was to put a couple of old cast iron smoker boxes I had next to the fire ring, filled up to the top(or holes in the side) with sand. That brought the temps in the cooker up to 230 to 255° once the meat's started to warm up, and also has brought recovery time after refueling from 20-30 minutes down to 10-15 minutes. I think that the cast iron and sand being able to hold much higher temps than the 212° that hot water can hold, makes a huge difference both to the temp inside and to the recovery time. Water is constantly converting heat energy to steam, and when trying to maintain a small efficient fire, that is really detrimental.
The orange poker in the picture is something I can stick in the intake vent during a cook and sweep the ashes to either side of the firering if I notice that ash is beginning to pile up when I refuel.
This was my most recent cook, last week. A 6 hour cook, during which I used 1 1/2 Weber chimneys of charcoal and 10 or 11 lumps of wood.
I monitor the temps without opening up the cooker by sticking candy thermometers through holes at grate level, and a replacement thermometer I found that fit in the 2" hole the original wildly inaccurate thermometer was in.
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