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berninga87

Smoking Fanatic
Original poster
Jul 13, 2011
330
32
SW Wisconsin
So this past weekend I did my first overnight smoke after I made some modifications to the vertical smoker I built. I've been going through a lot of trial and error with this smoker for the last couple years and I think I finally got it dialed in. I smoked 2 butts, a 9lb and 7lb, both went on at 10:00pm Saturday with temp at 245 degrees holding steady. I watched it until about midnight and went to bed, leaving it at 242 degrees. I woke up just before 8:00am and went out to check on things. A little nervous, as I had never left it alone that long, I was very happy to see it still running strong at 238 degrees, after over 8 hours! The 9lb butt came off around noon. Overall the smoker ran for 14 hours almost untouched on Stubb's charcoal with apple and mesquite chips mixed in and used less than 1lb of coal/hour. I just wanted to share this since I owe a lot of the knowledge I put in this smoker to the members here. Unfortunately I don't have an updated picture of the new vent set up...or a picture of the pork, which turned out great! but I just attached this for reference since it looks pretty much the same.

 
icon14.gif
  Dude, beautiful smoker!   So do you have a pic of the inside and the door?    I bet that thing holds heat like a champ!
 
icon14.gif
  Dude, beautiful smoker!   So do you have a pic of the inside and the door?    I bet that thing holds heat like a champ!
Thanks! Here are a few pics of the inside, they are around the forums somewhere too from my first post when I built it. First pic is just of a grate from the top, second is the grate rack, I built it out of flat steel, that pic is about mid build, now it holds 3 grates and a water pan(charcoal pan from ECB filled halfway with sand works perfect). Third pic is the charcoal basket I built with the bottom section in the background before paint. The basket will hold at least 30lbs of charcoal, and it stands tall enough to handle the ash. There actually is no door, which is kind of a pain at times, just the bottom, middle and lid, which are all quite heavy. I am currently looking for another Identical tank to build another with doors, but this one is perfect for long smokes, I only open it when the food is done. I will try to get more recent pics of everything soon.



 
Yea....very cool and seriously heavy duty.   Not everyone wants to spend $ on them but you could hook up something like a PitMaster IQ , i swear by them now ( $140) into a ball valve, ....either 3/4 or 1 " adapters and i guarantee you that you could sleep all night regardless of the weather.  
 
I've looked into them before and I believe they're great, but for now I probably will just stick with what I have since it does run so smoothly on its own, however I could definitely see it coming in handy should the weather turn ugly in the middle of a long smoke. Thanks for the compliments!
 
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