Decisions, decisions...

[eppo]

My birthday is coming up in June, and was hoping to get some nice tech toys.... 

looking to get the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and replace my phone with a Samsung Galaxy S III.

Then today i'm surfing these forums, and i'm thinking, Maybe I should get a WSM, I've been dreaming of having one of those for a while.

For those of you that use a WSM, do you think that the 18.5 inch is good enough, or would you rather have the 22.5?

currently i have a propane vertical smoker, and i'm not sure what the width of it is, but i have to cut Briskets, and ribs in half to fit them.

I'm not sure if anyone here has actually measured them, but what is the average length of a brisket or a rack of spare ribs? would i have trouble fitting them in the 18.5?

some new tech toys would be fun, but..... Smoking a whole packer in a WSM with charcoal would be awesome too.

 

[rbranstner]

How  about you save a bunch of money and build a UDS and then use the money you saved to buy  meat  to smoke or some of you tech toys that you were talking about. Sounds like a win win to me.

 

[eppo]

obviously, nothing is written in stone, but i was looking at the WSM because i've seen rave reviews about it.

 

[eppo]

After looking around, building a UDS looks very easy, and wont cost anywhere near $500. 

So, I'M DOING THIS! Hopefully i can get it ready and tested before fathers day, thats when i want to do my first smoke on it.

I'll defintily take lots of pictured, and post them here.

Thank you so much for your advice!

 

[rabbithutch]

Howdy, eppo!

Before you dive off into the UDS water, check out this link - Mini WSM Project - and the discussion thread link contained in it. The thread runs to 47 PAGES of posts and has been running for a few years and is still very active.

The mini-WSM is made from a Weber Smokey Joe grill and a 32-qt. tamale steamer pot. If you spend $100 on the whole shebang it's because you went and bought yourself some 'accessories', too. The SJS grill is about $30 new and the tamale pot is $19 at my local Wal*Mart. I haven't finished mine yet - not because it's difficult but because I'm old and too many other things grab my attention.

Check it out! Be sure to read the discussion thread. I started at the beginning and have skipped around. There's a ton of great information in it and a lot of helpful people.

Just to give you some more options.

 

[eppo]

wow, that looks like another good idea.  Depending on how the search goes for the 55 gallon drum, i might build one of those. It seems like it might be a nice way to get into using charcoal from propane. from what i've read, i should be good for about 6 hours, which will make it good for ribs. I'm going to have to read up on how to reload the charcoal and still stay at temperature.

I'm not sure what size it is, but i did buy a grill similar to that for camping a couple of years ago, but never used it. I'm going to have to go take a look to see what the diameter is.

Thanks for your input... so many choices!

 

[jrod62]

UDS all the way!!!!
Cheap to build . Temp it super easy to control. Uses very little charcoal.
(Put 16 lbs of charcoal in my basket and after 16 hours still had over half
Of basket )
And when your smoking you will be looking at it thinking i built that !!!

 

[eppo]

I might need to build both. I told my butcher what i was doing, and he said he could get me a drum. 

Is the learning curve of smoking with charcoal the same with a UDS vs mini-WSM?