Hello Everyone!!
I too just registered this morning. I live in St. Petersburg, FL, the city where a lot of great restaurants have gotten their start, but for every great steak house, wing house, sandwich and seafood place we have here, there's a huge lack of good
real BBQ places. So I decided to take things into my own hands and start making my own.
I'm familier with smoking, but haven't owned a real smoker until now. Every year for Thanksgiving I brine a turkey and grill/smoke it on my
Weber kettle grill with great results. It comes out more moist than a deep fried turkey, and the flavor and clean up is much much better.
I just bought a used Brinkmann SnP smoker that's in great shape for $50. The last owner mainly used it as a charcoal grill and rarely smoked anything. He said everytime he smoked something it either came out over or under done. When I asked him what temps he was cooking at, he gave me a confused look and pointed out that he didn't have a thermometer
.
I'm planning on doing a few mods to it before I smoke my first hunk of meat. I want it install a couple thermometers in the door so they're close to the cooking surface. I'm going to extend the smoke stack inside the cooking camber so it's closer to the cook surface. Today I'm heading to my friends metal shop to configure some sort of heat baffle for the fire box and try to even out the temp in the cooking chamber. Later today I'm going to fire it up for a "dry run" with no meats on it just to see how well I can control the temp.
Really looking forward to reading and hearing everyones feedback and tips on making some good BBQ. Football season is just around the corner so I hope I can tweak my smoking skills a bit by then with a little help from everyone here.
