I have been reading about all of your smoker builds, and am nearing completion of my own reverse smoker. On my dad's farm, more years ago than i care to discuss we used to make lots of deer sausage, and smoke it with chokecherry wood. As we were raising our family, there was less time (and Money) to spend hunting, and sausage making. Fast forward a few years (and it was really fast forward) our oldest was graduating from high school, and we decided to have a BBQ and invite a few friends over to celebrate. Well the few turned into about 125. I had bought a propane smoker from Costco, and was getting rave reviews, so we decided to smoke some beef for the grad BBQ. Since that one, it has become a yearly thing, and we have gone through 2 high school grads, and 3 university convocations, with one more high school grad this summer. Last summer I borrowed a rotisserie whole hog cooker, (it isn't really a smoker, it burns propane, but i had chips smoking inside) from my old school bus driver, and cooked he whole hog. I made arrangements with a local Hutterite colony to have them butcher me a hog that would be 125 pounds hanging, when i went to pick it up the day before the event, they said there was a problem, they had butchered 2 hogs that day, one light one for me, and one market weight for someone else. The market weight one was to be cut up, and yes you guessed it, mine was the one they cut up. So they tell me, no extra charge for the bigger hog, and with no real other option, I took the large hog home. It fit into the cooker no problem, and the event was a great success. The issue came at the end, when I had to take the 100 plus pounds of leftovers off the bones and freeze them for future use. Well I had had a pretty long day already, and bagging that pork nearly did me in. But eventually all done, and we have been eating pulled pork sandwiches every couple of weeks all winter. The pig cooker was a marvel of engineering, and someone spent a lot of time just designing it, and then a huge effort to fab and build it. It has 4 long propane burners, the rotisserie was all stainless, it had a clamp system to hold the hog on the spit. My bus driver said his son saw it sitting in an alley behind a house, and drove by for a few years before he went up and knocked on the door, owner said sure he would sell it, and he pulled it home.
I will post some photos of my smoker build in the proper forum,i have stolen plenty of ideas from some of you.
So sort of a long winded introduction, but you asked...
Doug
I will post some photos of my smoker build in the proper forum,i have stolen plenty of ideas from some of you.
So sort of a long winded introduction, but you asked...
Doug
