What’s the feedback on a pellet smoker versus the Weber Smokey (or a drum smoker)? Are these apples and oranges or pretty comperable?
Yep. I use sand in my pan, and, yes, the Minion method.
lol i thought this was about cigarettes or pot lol
I had a Brinkman kettle smoker and it was ok only used it a few times and never got quite what i wanted tho id like to get a real smoker and try again
One can spend hours watching people barbecue on YouTube. I don’t have a Smokey Mountain though I cook on an Oklahoma Joe Longhorn
Pulled pork is definitely the easiest, but in my WSM, I always expect an 8-9 lb butt to take 8+ hours, but it seems to always finish faster with my sand set-up and with the way I set up my coals (fill up the coal ring, bury some oak and pecan or hickory wood in it, and dump lit coals on the top.) Like every single time, I budget 10 hours for it, and it always finishes at closer to 6 or 7 hours. So, yeah, you gotta know your meat, and use your senses. Thermometer helps, but you can tell when that sucker is done by the way it looks (it kind of slumps in on itself) and by sticking a fork in it. And if it finishes early, ain’t nothing wrong with that. Let it rest (which you should, anyway) tightly wrapped in foil in a cooler, maybe with towels around it for more insulation. A one-to-two hour rest is actually nice for the meat.
I think I’d recommend a shorter cook for an confidence-boosting introduction. OP mentions salmon which should only be a couple hours. Other shorter smokes are chicken wings, cheese-stuffed bacon-wrapped jalapenos, or meatloaf.
I gave up on briquettes a few cooks after I got my first grill. The lower cost is tempting but the final product is never as good. Lump smells like a wood fire. Briquettes smell like briquettes. And that’s even before the buckets of ash briquettes leave you with.
I’ve been using similar thermometers from Lavatools for years. It looks like what they used to call Thermowand (what I have) is now called Javelin. They’re great tools and less expensive than Thermapen while having similar specs.
This is a pretty good approximation of my smoker. Mine has the pipe on the left, and since our Auto Shop built it, the pipe is off a semi. 
Mine also has side shelves made from expanded steel mesh. The barrel originally held malt extract for brewing.
Based on what I read before I purchased the Weber, pellet grills basically:
- suck at smoking
- suck at grilling too unless you’re just cooking some Costco hotdogs for a kid’s birthday party or something.
Since they use pellets in a specially designed cooking chamber, it doesn’t really… smoke. Companies such as Traeger make various flavored pellets, but to me that sounds like a poor work-around. Ultimately the grill can’t smolder a nice chunk of hardwood like a dedicated smoker can.
Additionally, most pellet grills don’t get all that hot. Not a big deal for smoking, which they can’t really do, but if you want to sear a steak before grilling? Sucks to be you. Weber is coming out with a pellet grill that they claim can get up to 650°, but I’d like to see that independently verified. They also have a price tag north of $1K.
Pellet grills also take extra work to keep them clean and in good shape. There are electronic components (thermostat, fans) that can wear out and some models and manufacturers have a reputation for the hopper and auger that feed the pellets into the combustion chamber getting clogged. This problem is exacerbated by moisture. Woe be to the Traeger owner who leaves the pellet hopper half full during an overnight rain.
For me, they’re more trouble than they are worth. I guess some models can be fired up and brought up to temp remotely using Bluetooth or wifi, which is great… I guess. Not for me. I’ve heard people rave about the food that they produce but really it doest sound like they’re anything special. A “wood” fired convection oven is all it is.
Maybe a Traeger owner will pop in and tell me how wrong am I am.
Thanks for all this. I see HD has those thermometers on the shelf, I’ll go check them out.
Regarding hardwood lump v. briquettes. Someone online – probably one of the youtubers I found – claimed that hardwood burns a lot hotter and less consistently than briquettes. Have you experienced that? Do you have a preferred brand?
Yeah, I find lump hardwood burns through too quickly for long bbq times. I use briquettes (Kingsford is good) and briquette-sized chunks of wood in about a 70/30 ratio for long bbqs. Using the Minion method it can go for Up to 10 hours without needing more coals added.
I, too, have been considering taking up smoking.
I have a Weber natural gas grill - Genesis E-435 - and got a “smoker box” to put wood chips in, pre-soaked in water from what I can tell, to then place between the fire burners and the grate while cooking with indirect heat at low temps. So like, a spatchcocked chicken at 250-275F for about 3 hours. Then maybe to finish with a reverse sear.
That’s the plan anyway. I have only just gotten the smoker box for the wood chips, and have no idea if this would produce the right amount of smoke, if a gas grill can maintain that low a temperature (I don’t see why not), or how this would compare to using an actual smoker, be it gas or charcoal.
Anybody do this before, and could say if it’s worth buying a whole 'other thingy, much less a differently fueled thingy? I mean it’s not like I’m averse to a charcoal smoker, I’ve helped to use them before (other people’s), but if I could save the money and equipment space, I would.
Lump can burn a lot hotter than briquettes (great for grilling & searing) but that’s overcome by proper vent control. The coals simply cannot burn faster than the air allows.
In addition to T-Roy, watch any video from Malcom at HowToBBQRight (and his basic rub is pretty damned good).
Make your own rub in large batches, and save in a good shaker (I use this one).
Good/cheap mods: Add handles ($5) and wheels ($25; video).
Stick with Kingsford (white bag, blue top) briquettes, which are usually on sale (2 bags for $18-20).
Keep a good log of times/temperatures so you can refer back when things don’t go the same…
Briquettes are basically ground up lump that is pressed into briquettes, with a bonding filler to hold it together; the filler does not burn as efficiently as the lump dust. When open-air grilling the uniform size and slightly lower burn rate of briquettes make it easier to maintain consistent temperatures.
The Minion Method, however, maintains temperature by manipulating how much oxygen reaches the coals; the various sizes of the lump chunks make no difference and the bonding filler just ends up as ash in the bottom of your smoker. You should be able to get longer cooks with the same volume of lump because it burns more efficiently.
I tend to use Wicked Good Charcoal but that’s largely because it’s (somewhat) local to me. If you have three or more BBQers together you can start a good-natured argument by asking which lump is best. If you’re a nerd like me and have too much time on your hands you can peruse this DB of lump reviews. I’ve used a number of different brands and in the end I’ve never observed any difference that had a material effect on the results, even the lower-rated brands like Cowboy. The only thing I’ve noticed is that some brands (e.g. Cowboy) have a higher variation of chunk sizes and you’ll occasionally see pieces that look like scrap lumber. This drives some BBQers nuts but IMO as long as it’s all hardwood the Minion Method makes it moot. (Some BBQers claim to have seen pieces of treated wood–e.g. stained or painted–in bags of the cheaper brands. That would be bad.)
That’s a long-winded way to say that I’ll use any lump if necessary but prefer WGC, Royal Oak, and Basque, in that order. I’ve never had a cook ruined because of the lump.
A while ago I put together an Ugly Drum Smoker FAQ. A Weber Bullet is similar to a UDS so most of the information is apropos.
That’s interesting. I’ve found exactly the opposite. I used to be a purist about ONLY using lump, and would go to a commercial distributor on Goose Island specifically to buy giant bags of lump. (A place simply called “Charcoal Supply.” It’s at 1186 N Cherry for the Chicago dopers reading this thread. Great place.) I use the Minion method, but I’ve always found I’ve had to replace the coals at around the 6 hour mark or so with lump. One day, being too lazy to make the drive to Goose Island, I just got some Kingsford Briquettes (and also because they were on sale 2-for-1). And that cook lasted 8-10 hours on one load of coals. Now, generally, I do smoke with the vents all fully open – sometimes I’ll have them 2/3 open, but never any more closed than that. I like to make my barbecue a little on the hotter side, which I guess is why I get a whole butt done in 6-7 hours.
Lump burns hotter and faster than briquettes. Also the irregular sizing of the individual pieces produces an unpredictable result. I found a quarter of a brick and a handful of nails in my last bag of lump leading me to believe that it was made from construction scraps. I even suspected that it was possible that some of these scraps could habe been from chemical treated lumber.
A couple people have suggested using sand instead of water, I’d never heard of that, and have no opinion on it. But if you do use water, start with hot water, not cold. I would boil a large pot of it. Starting with cold water seemed to overwhelm the heat source, slow things down too much.
If you use aluminum foil, be careful during cleanup. The foil can really stick to the metal parts and slice you like a razor as you try to get it off.
I smoked a lot of things, but found the very most satisfying and delicious was hamburgers.
When I used water, I never had this issue. I just used the water from the garden hose.
As pulykamell said, when I used water in the pan I just got it out of the tap or the hose and it didn’t seem to take a lot of time to get the smoker up to temp. I also used to try adding stuff like apple juice or wine to “add flavor” to the meat as it evaporated. Never made a bit of difference I ever noticed. And afterward the leftover water mixed with grease drippings was a huge mess to clean up. So I started using sand and never looked back. I fill the pan with sand to about an inch from the top, then I put foil over the sand to catch the drippings. Easy peasy cleanup after.
The only time water might be better than sand is really hot Summer weather-- sometimes on hot days I’ve had to close down the vents so much to keep the temp down I was afraid I would cut off oxygen to the point it might stop the burn.