Just got my first offset ordered

[ryan johnson]

Hi guys, 

I've been lurking around here on and off for the past couple years.  I have owned a green mountain pellet grill for nearly 4 years and I absolutely love my pellet grill.  Have produced a ton of good meat on the pellet grill.  However, it is now time to step my game up a notch.  I just purchased an oklahoma joe highland offset smoker. I want to learn to get proficient at using a stick burner.  I am really looking forward to the challenge of using one.  

 

[pit 4 brains]

Welcome aboard the SMF Ryan! You can check into Roll Call and post up about yourself. Sounds like you have some experience under your belt. Congrats on getting a new rig. There's a ton of info here and everyone is always willing to help. Post up whenever you can and always include some Q-view (pics) as a picture tells a thousand words..

-Pit

 

[SmokinAl]

Congrats on the new smoker!

Looking forward to seeing it in action!

Al

 

[joe black]

Ryan, I see that you've been around here for 4 years, so you've had a good beginning. Go to the smoker section and look up your particular model. You will get to read a wealth of stuff. Season your smoker, find something easy ( chicken ) and inexpensive to smoke and go for it.

Have a great time and a lot of practice. Remember, you can always eat your mistakes. Keep a log of your efforts and when you have a specific question or two, just ask.

Good luck and good smokin', Joe. :grilling_smilie:

 

[bbqbrett]

You should have a lot of fun with that. Thumbs Up Let us know how the 1st cook goes.

 

[SmokyMose]

Just got an offset this spring and haven't had gas hooked up to the MB yet! Quite a learning curve, but you're going to love it!
Thumbs Up

 

[ryan johnson]

The smoker is being shipped yet so I have not received it yet,  I am in eager anticipation of getting my new toy!  Cannot wait to get this thing in acton and start using it!  Hopefully it will be here by next week.  

 

[ryan johnson]

Finally got the smoker, had some issues with Walmart.  Man they are horrible to work with.  When I received their shipment the smoker was all damaged, dented and scratched, box was crushed and in terrible condition.  I was not paying top dollar for a piece of junk!  Then they didn't want to refund my money since it was a special order.  What Baloney! I had to chew a lot of tail with their store manager and finally I got my refund!  Since they were jerks I did not reorder it from them.

After that episode..... i reordered it from Lowe's and I received my smoker in excellent condition without any issues. It took another week to have it shipped, but it is worth it.   I assembled it last night and sealed the area between firebox and the pit with high temp RTV.  I also put a good bead of rtv between the top and bottom halves of the firebox.  I also sealed the area around where the chimney attaches to the inside of the pit.

I'm going to let the RTV setup for a couple days as I will not have time to play with the smoker until this weekend...(The job thing takes up too much of my time during the weekdays.) I will be seasoning the smoker on saturday morning for a couple hours.  Then I think my plan is to smoke a couple whole chickens to get the feel for the temp control and the grate temps.  I don't want to run an expensive cut of meat for the first smoke.  And I really cannot mess up whole chickens too bad.

 

[cksteele]

nice congrats  i have one of those  its a  pretty good cooker when  you make  a few of the slight mods to it to help seal it up  have fun 

 

[ryan johnson]

I was able to sneak out of work early today so I got the new smoker seasoned tonight  I greased the inside down with crisco and lit a fire in it for about 2 hrs tonight.  I just ran nice dry oak through the fire box tonight.  let it get nice and warm and i even got to play around with the door damper.  It is definitely going to take me a bit to get the heat control thing down as  I had some fluctuation in temps.  I also noticed that I definitely will need a gasket to seal up the door.  It is leaking a lot of smoke along the top edge of the doors in both the cook chamber and in fire box as well.  I think it is all ready to play with this weekend though.  Cannot wait to try my first cook on it this weekend!

 

[SmokyMose]

Don't get too radical about sealing doors until you've played with it a little :-)
The temp control is part of the game...
Welcome to stick burning.

Dan

 

[joe black]

What Dan said.... Get your smoker good and hot a couple of times and a lot of the smoke leaks will set. Then if you can't live with it you can get some gaskets. Don't forget a stick burner needs a good air supply to work properly. Besides, if your neighbors can't see the smoke and invite themselves over to eat, you'll have left overs to freeze.....what a shame.

Good luck and good smokin', Joe. :grilling_smilie: