I was given a smokey joe ..Now what??

Addertooth said:

 
Race out and get another grill surface while the stores have stock.  Virtually all the stores are closing out on BBQ parts now that fall is approaching.  Read all the mini-build postings.  Shamelessly steal all the good ideas and use them on your builds.  I borrowed the Target Pizza Stone from one person's build, and Acorn nuts to hold the grills from another person's build.  There are a lot of very good ideas spread out among all the builds.Problem is he won't know what is the best from others.    Give it your own flavor, borrow the best from others, and enjoy. If your smokey Joe is a "silver", you will need the Tuna Can mod to keep the vent on the bottom of the smoker from clogging.  No just follow Case's (dirtsaylor) lead and put nipples /ball valve in the side.   In the next month I am likely to release a "basketless" design which gives a complete burn of all the charcoal without a basket, or a ring. 

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FWIsmoker said:

 
There are so many builds that look cool, seem like a good idea....lots of blind leading the blind builds going on.  I can tell you go SIMPLE!  A good example for a build would be mdboatman who learned simple is better.  Cfarmer would be another simple approach..  Case got me into the mini and since he has changed philosophy  to a more simple approach i would say. 

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dirtsailor2003 said:

 
Actually I started off as simple as it gets. NO extra vents no nothing. However I found that where I live having just the lower vent on the Silver wasn't enough to get the temps I wanted. So I added one side vent. That got the temps up but still no where near what I wanted. So I added the second vent. That did the trick. I do believe that the ash guard is needed with the silver for super long cooks. For high temp short cooks it is not.

All of my tinkering now is more towards developing other cookers out of the mini. Such as the Mini-ZA oven, and the cold smoker MIni.

I've found what works best for me, others may find different solutions.

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Lemans said:

Well I just ordered my 32 qt pot
Coming tomarrow so I will start gathering parts for the build
Top rack 41/2 inch from the top?

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Addertooth said:

LeMans,
What you are seeing in the comments, is the two schools of thought on smoking. 
*******************School one
Some people favor direct radiant heat.  They like the high peak temperatures it provides with ease. They feel the drippings from the meat, which hits the coals, improves the flavor of the smoke/meat. And, without the diffuser blocking radiant heat, less fuel is burned to obtain a specific temperature, which helps in long smokes (less coals burned per hour). Burns of 17 hours have been seen by people who use little or no diffuser. 
******************School two
Other people are from the school of "low and slow".  The low and slow crowd does not care if their smoker never sees a temperature above 350 degrees.  They do not like the fact radiant heat tends to cook the bottom faster than the top, or, it has greater impact on the bottom rack than the top rack (assuming you have large hunks of meat on each of the two racks).  They may be concerned about the risk of grease flare-ups. Even a highly diffused mini will go over 10 hours on a single load of charcoal (using the Minion method). 

Both points of view have merit.  That is the beauty of the mini, you can build it in a way which matches your style (or belief system). 

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Addertooth said:

FWIsmoker is correct, the ball valve is a superior way of controlling air flow without worrying about ash clogging intake air flow.  It is just a bit more expensive than the tuna can mod.  People do mini builds in a full spectrum of cost.  Some builds are amazingly frugal, others are very deluxe. A few builds are borderline insane.

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Addertooth said:

Welshrarebit,
There is a build thread where they built a mini with a 44 quart turkey fryer pot.  That is some very serious volume.  My most recent build is what car racers call a "test mule".  It is a framework where a lot of ideas are bolted to it, just to see if any of the ideas have merit.  The mules still has two more odd ideas which will be tested with it.  I will post the results (good or bad) when they are completed.  Sometimes posting bad results act as a caution to other people who might mistakenly come up with the same idea.  (Like my dreadful ABTs from the other day).

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