Hi there everybody! Greetings from the Netherlands.....the what??...the Netherlands! You know...the country known by its wooden shoes, windmills, tulips......ánd of course the skaters that are going to kick your skaters' ass on the upcoming winter Olympics ;)
Did that set the proper tone? :)
No honestly...I am so glad I found this forum a couple of years ago. My name is Evert and I live in the middle of the Netherlands in a small town close to Arnhem about an hours drive from Amsterdam. I am 47 and I live there with my wife and 2 sons. I work for the regional fire department as a trainer.
For quite a number of years I have a lot of fun smoking fish mainly. My favorites are hot smoked Mackrell that I catch myself in summertime, hot and cold smoked trout which I catch at a local pond and my absolute favorite and specialism is cold smoked Salmon.
It is because of that salmon I once found this site when I was looking for a solution to create proper smoke with as less heat as possible as I don't want the temp to go above 27 degrees (celsius). I found a lot of ideas for cold smoke generators and I had a lot of fun experimenting with all kind of different designs from tin can, copperpipe,venturi systems to a full build smoke bullet with integrated fan. None of them ever became my favorite way to make cold smoke. I ended up making a sort of maze out of perforated stainless steel. I managed to tune it in such way that after lighting it will give me beautiful cold smoke for at least 24 hours. Later i found out my idea wasn't unique and it already existed but still i was proud of my own creativity. Anyway I can keep on talking for hours about smoking salmon.....
I don't know why but I never really took on smoking meat but it kept on triggering me to try that too.......I played with the idea of buying an offset smoker....or a Green Egg....but either the quality was pretty bad or the price was way too high!
And thén ....after years not really paying attention to meat smoking it happened! On our equivalent of what you call Craigslist (an online marketplace am I right?) I saw something that had my name written all over it....a large vintage looking offset smoker and I saw right away it was not one of those crappy thin Chinese smokers....no this one looked like a smoker has to look.
Looking at the broken logo I could see on the pictures I saw it was made by CharBroil which made me think that this one hás to be a Real American vintage smoker!!
I waisted no time and got in touch with the seller who luckily lives only about 25 miles away from where I live. On the phone I realised right away that he had no clue as to what he had for sale and also he didn't care at all......so after a "heavy negotiation" on the phone he was happy to sell it to me for only $30,-!!!!!! (He started with an asking price of 100 but the first thing he said is that he had no clue whether that would be realistic. I convinced him it wasn't ;)
I quickly went to his house and there it was.....hidden behind a pile of rubbish: a beautiful offset smoker in a perfect shape.....only a little bit of surface rust on the firebox but that will be easy to fix.....I closed the deal quickly and loaded it with the seller in my car. When I felt how heavy this thing is I was even more happy. Both of us thought we hit the jackpot.....the seller because he got some money in his pocket and me because I realised I bought something great that after a bit of TLC will give me joy for many years to come.
When trying to find out the model I found out that this is actually a model which was originally made by New Braunfels and that CharBroil acquired that company at some time?
When I asked my son to help unloading it he said "what's that dad are you losing strength?" But when he felt how heavy this thing was he took back his words and I was smiling!
You know what? I am happy as pigs in sh#t with this smoker and I can't wait to get it going. The best thing is the story behind this smoker. When I asked the seller where he got this from he said he got it from a colleague who got it from his dad who had bought it once from a US soldier who was based in Germany back then. This guy apparently had it imported from the States himself. True or not I love this story and I am proud and sure that I will use this smoker the way it is supposed to be used! With Respect!
I will light my beautiful smoker in the coming days hopefully as it hasn't stopped raining over here since early December 2017.....wel maybe it has been raining for about a week but it feels like forever ;)
Ofcourse I will then definitely take some pictures the way it is now and during restauration I will check back regularly for sure.
So why am I back on the forum? Cause I am flooding my brain with loads of interesting stuff I find here about offset smoking of course!! This is such a great source of info....I love it!
Well....that's it for now. Have a great time smoking and TTYL. ...or as we say overhere: Doei en spreek je later ;)
Evert
Did that set the proper tone? :)
No honestly...I am so glad I found this forum a couple of years ago. My name is Evert and I live in the middle of the Netherlands in a small town close to Arnhem about an hours drive from Amsterdam. I am 47 and I live there with my wife and 2 sons. I work for the regional fire department as a trainer.
For quite a number of years I have a lot of fun smoking fish mainly. My favorites are hot smoked Mackrell that I catch myself in summertime, hot and cold smoked trout which I catch at a local pond and my absolute favorite and specialism is cold smoked Salmon.
It is because of that salmon I once found this site when I was looking for a solution to create proper smoke with as less heat as possible as I don't want the temp to go above 27 degrees (celsius). I found a lot of ideas for cold smoke generators and I had a lot of fun experimenting with all kind of different designs from tin can, copperpipe,venturi systems to a full build smoke bullet with integrated fan. None of them ever became my favorite way to make cold smoke. I ended up making a sort of maze out of perforated stainless steel. I managed to tune it in such way that after lighting it will give me beautiful cold smoke for at least 24 hours. Later i found out my idea wasn't unique and it already existed but still i was proud of my own creativity. Anyway I can keep on talking for hours about smoking salmon.....
I don't know why but I never really took on smoking meat but it kept on triggering me to try that too.......I played with the idea of buying an offset smoker....or a Green Egg....but either the quality was pretty bad or the price was way too high!
And thén ....after years not really paying attention to meat smoking it happened! On our equivalent of what you call Craigslist (an online marketplace am I right?) I saw something that had my name written all over it....a large vintage looking offset smoker and I saw right away it was not one of those crappy thin Chinese smokers....no this one looked like a smoker has to look.
Looking at the broken logo I could see on the pictures I saw it was made by CharBroil which made me think that this one hás to be a Real American vintage smoker!!
I waisted no time and got in touch with the seller who luckily lives only about 25 miles away from where I live. On the phone I realised right away that he had no clue as to what he had for sale and also he didn't care at all......so after a "heavy negotiation" on the phone he was happy to sell it to me for only $30,-!!!!!! (He started with an asking price of 100 but the first thing he said is that he had no clue whether that would be realistic. I convinced him it wasn't ;)
I quickly went to his house and there it was.....hidden behind a pile of rubbish: a beautiful offset smoker in a perfect shape.....only a little bit of surface rust on the firebox but that will be easy to fix.....I closed the deal quickly and loaded it with the seller in my car. When I felt how heavy this thing is I was even more happy. Both of us thought we hit the jackpot.....the seller because he got some money in his pocket and me because I realised I bought something great that after a bit of TLC will give me joy for many years to come.
When trying to find out the model I found out that this is actually a model which was originally made by New Braunfels and that CharBroil acquired that company at some time?
When I asked my son to help unloading it he said "what's that dad are you losing strength?" But when he felt how heavy this thing was he took back his words and I was smiling!
You know what? I am happy as pigs in sh#t with this smoker and I can't wait to get it going. The best thing is the story behind this smoker. When I asked the seller where he got this from he said he got it from a colleague who got it from his dad who had bought it once from a US soldier who was based in Germany back then. This guy apparently had it imported from the States himself. True or not I love this story and I am proud and sure that I will use this smoker the way it is supposed to be used! With Respect!
I will light my beautiful smoker in the coming days hopefully as it hasn't stopped raining over here since early December 2017.....wel maybe it has been raining for about a week but it feels like forever ;)
Ofcourse I will then definitely take some pictures the way it is now and during restauration I will check back regularly for sure.
So why am I back on the forum? Cause I am flooding my brain with loads of interesting stuff I find here about offset smoking of course!! This is such a great source of info....I love it!
Well....that's it for now. Have a great time smoking and TTYL. ...or as we say overhere: Doei en spreek je later ;)
Evert
Last edited:
