Hi Jason and welcome to the forum. Where in the UK are you from? I am from Kent.
It is great that you are starting to get into low-and-slow BBQ and joining a growing number of us in the UK. You mention that you are looking at the Landmann Kentucky for your birthday. Is there any reason that you are going for an offset smoker? I know that they are what people immediately think of when American BBQ is mentioned however, whereas they are great when they are large, they can be more style-over-substance when they come down to the size of the one you are looking at as they often do not scale down well. Before you finally decide you may want to look at the bullet smoker options as, in addition to the much larger offset smokers, these are the ones most commonly used for competition BBQ.
Cooking good quality low-and-slow BBQ is mostly about temperature control inside your smoker. Whereas the large offset smokers have thick walls and have mechanisms inside (e.g. reverse flow) to maintain an even cooking temperature the challenge that you face with the smaller back yard versions is that they are made of relatively thin metal and have poor door seals - which result in quite a lot of heat loss along the length of the cooking chamber and therefore a temperature gradient. To overcome this whatever you are cooking will need to be turned regularly for it to cook evenly as the end nearest the fire box will be considerably hotter than the end by the flue. The lid seals on the firebox and air intake often leak too which can adversely affect the temperature control. Bare in mind that you are looking to maintain stable low temperatures of ~110-120 C inside your smoker for 6-8 hours plus, and so good temperature control is very important.
If you do go with the Landmann then there are a few modifications that you can make to improve temperature control and reduce heat loss, but you will still end up with a temperature gradient along the cooking chamber.
A bullet smoker on the other hand does not look so impressive (unless you are an R2D2 fan :) ) but they provide a much more stable cooking environment and are designed to give very stable low cooking temperatures over many hours, unattended. A couple that are readily available in the UK are the
Weber Smoky Mountain (WSM) or the
ProQ Frontier. They are a little more expensive than the Landmann however the ease of cooking and the quality of the food is likely to be better. I own both offset smokers and bullet smokers and use both types regularly. I have also cooked on both the
WSM and ProQ and although they are both great smokers my preference is for the ProQ as its split barrel design gives easier access to the food on the bottom cooking grate.
You can also buy or make an oil drum smoker (or Ugly Drum Smoker - UDS) which will also give you good results.
Here is a photo showing the use of bullet smokers at the Grillstock BBQ competition. Yes, that Minion is also a bullet smoker. You will also see that the standard Weber kettle smokers are regularly used too. Out of the 25+ competing teams over three quarters of them were cooking on a combination of bullet smoker and kettle BBQ.
If you would like more information please let me know.
Wade
