Good Morning Everyone,
I have used this forum page a few times and have to say THANK YOU to all of you for all the help you've already provided.
I have a homemade single barrel smoker that I have been playing around with on and off for a few years now. I would like to get into it a bit more and try to use it more frequently. The smoker is a 55gal drum on a stand, cut in half with hinges (my grandfather and his cousins made it as a grill 30 years ago,). I put 6 clasps on it with a gasket to seal it as best as possible, an air inlet damper on the right side, a chimney on the left and fire bricks in the bottom for temperature control/retention. She’s not prety, the design is far from perfect, but I'm working with her and enojy the nostalgia.
I have 2 little ones that tend to eat up most of my weekend and free time and makes it difficult to attend to the smoker. This being said, last fall I purchase a bayou classic BG12 propane burner to use in it rather than charcoal. I recently ordered some lava rock to place over the burner to help. I have only experimented with this setup once with little success. I need to find the right flame height to get my temperatures correct and not burn the wood. I place the wood chunks directly onto the rocks and of course they ignited, but this was late one night after dinner while my wife and I chased after the boys. I was thinking about staring with lump coal for the first few hours to smoke then the propane to finish the job. Any suggestions/thoughts?
For Christmas I received the Thermopro TP08. I have used in once for cooking and it did well, but on this past test fire (with the lava rocks) the temps seemed WAY off. Any suggestions on how to reset/calibrate this bad Larry?
Cheers,
Shawn
I have used this forum page a few times and have to say THANK YOU to all of you for all the help you've already provided.
I have a homemade single barrel smoker that I have been playing around with on and off for a few years now. I would like to get into it a bit more and try to use it more frequently. The smoker is a 55gal drum on a stand, cut in half with hinges (my grandfather and his cousins made it as a grill 30 years ago,). I put 6 clasps on it with a gasket to seal it as best as possible, an air inlet damper on the right side, a chimney on the left and fire bricks in the bottom for temperature control/retention. She’s not prety, the design is far from perfect, but I'm working with her and enojy the nostalgia.
I have 2 little ones that tend to eat up most of my weekend and free time and makes it difficult to attend to the smoker. This being said, last fall I purchase a bayou classic BG12 propane burner to use in it rather than charcoal. I recently ordered some lava rock to place over the burner to help. I have only experimented with this setup once with little success. I need to find the right flame height to get my temperatures correct and not burn the wood. I place the wood chunks directly onto the rocks and of course they ignited, but this was late one night after dinner while my wife and I chased after the boys. I was thinking about staring with lump coal for the first few hours to smoke then the propane to finish the job. Any suggestions/thoughts?
For Christmas I received the Thermopro TP08. I have used in once for cooking and it did well, but on this past test fire (with the lava rocks) the temps seemed WAY off. Any suggestions on how to reset/calibrate this bad Larry?
Cheers,
Shawn