Wooo hooo the title says All Things BBQ so thread wander is fair game. If anyone is thinking of a serious but affordable smoker I highly recommend THIS GUY . IMO noone can hold a light to him for service,price and quality. If you can't drive down to pick it up,call a trucking broker in your area to compare transportation costs with freight companies. An owner/operator without a full load coming out of Dallas to some place near you will haul it for less than freight companies.
Looking at everything out there on the market is enough to make your head swim but "process of elimintation" can make it easier to choose. Pellet smokers are a good choice for those not addicted to outdoor cooking and us with the addiction love offsets. Connoisseurs go for eggs that turn out best food of the bunch. Lite weight big box cookers offer an inexpensive way to try out various styles before diving into a quality cooker. One that intrigues but I've never tried is La Caja China Roasting Box. Anyone know about those?
What about the guy with a flat wallet, the taste for an egg,15 people showing up to eat every weekend , pretty good fabricating skills but no welder. The UDS aka Upright Drum Smoker aka Ugly Drum Smoker says "I'll be your huckleberry.

That should about cover it,right ? Wrong ! We haven't talked about Pauvre vieux moi yet. I've been using a small offset and a large offset for quit a while and haven't mastered either but love working with them. I might not have to work as hard if I'd stick to one wood with consistant moisture but my pals and I like trying to out do one another. Seriously we must have tried every fruit and nut wood known to man and a few that aren't. After me and my side kick burned grapevine another guy gave it a try with disastrous result. He mistook a huge poison oak vine for grape and the smoke landed him in intensive care. Since my can do has increasingly lagged behind my want to (that's to say I get drunk and fall asleep while tending the fire) I've dreamed of an offset which allows me to be hands on but occasionally take a nap without ruining the meat. The prototype inside my head will be an offset with a salvaged LP gas oven serving as the cooking compartment. The idea is have oven t-stat ignite burner in the event temperature drops below what I choose
epoxy floors gold coast. At same time t-stat signals burner it will trigger an alarm. A t-stat from an electric oven will sound an alarm in the event temperature exceeds setting by 10%. As I said this is a prototype that helps me tweak air control so alarms will really help with that. If I'm pleased I'll build (or have Phil build) a smoker using what I learned from prototype.