British BBQ Society Forums

Just seen this on ebay, love the fact that someone is trying but it just screams problems to me...........http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BBQ-Smoker-/1 ... 500wt_1413

That's big enough to feed an Ed.

Trust me mate it would feed a few, poison a few and provide charcoal for its next cook all in one go..........

Although it probably would not be much good for competition cooking it does not look that much different to many of the small town commercial BBQ shack smokers that I see next to the BBQ cafe/restaurants when I have been travelling in the US over the last 20 years. They tend to cook different meats requiring different cooking temperatures at different points along the cooking chamber - from links (sausage), chicken, pork and brisket - and the bit furthest from the fire is usually used to finish off any slow cooking and to keep things hot. If you want the traditional small town America BBQ taste then this would probably do the job. I have regularly eaten from BBQ places that cook in smokers like this and so far I have not been poisoned. Maybe I have been lucky or just have a strong constitution.

Although I wasn't talking about competition cooking I understand the style you are talking about, the langs / peoria and other similar models of the world, I guarantee none of them have a fire box that size. I am just curious how many times they have tested it, the volume of food they are talking about is ludicrous, to cook it all you would have to be moving positions every hour and a cooker that size without being insulated will have a recovery time of about an hour, Cant be reverse flow due to the chimney position (forget the height for now) and level of firebox therefore the heat is going to rise and cannot possibly get to the latter half of the cooker effectively if at all.

The heat is only as high as the size of fire you build in the box and I guess it would take someone to try it out to know how well it actually worked. Unfortunately for me it isnt worth the £10,000 to find out as I think it looks quite ugly and impractical.

Now if you want that real small town BBQ taste here is Austin's home crafted BBQ from a small town just outside of San Antonio Tx. The meat tasted fantastic but I think he may have forgotten to clean it that morning !

As you cant see anything on the right, the fire box and chimney are both on the same side which gives the reverse flow affect. That is one of my concerns about the ebay smoker, there are plenty of plans out there it will be interesting to see what answers i get back from them.

Edit, the second pic now shows the whole setup so an incorrect assumption of reverse flow, but the stack being positioned half way down means that heat has to travel through the middle of the cooker rather than in low / out high on the ebay smoker.

The firebox and chimney are at oposite sides. Sorry about the ugly fella in the middle...

That is true. However they do appear to have a butterfly valve in the flue to control the hot air flow through the unit - which would help compensate.

Not enough for a 3m cooking chamber when the draft is high.