? not

[in. pred]

why arent there more smokers with fire box underneath? it seems it would be way more efficient? yea pain in the back being lower to load. lol but besides that. i bet it would use half the fuel as a side box. ?? thoughts ??

 

[SmokinEdge]

I’ve seen them custom built. They seem to work better as a grill though. Fire management is way different as well, more intensive management than a horizontal.

 

[JckDanls 07]

I think mostly because when the fire is right underneath obviously it's much hotter in the chamber... For this you will have to cut back on your fire... Then it doesn't want to flame ... That in turn creates the billowing white smoke... Just my theory... For a live fire ...
Otherwise there are charcoal burning cabinets out there...

 

[SmokinEdge]

There is a famous bbq place in the DFW area, I believe, that has 1500 gallon pits that are fired centrally. Makes sense there with such a large horizontal cooker.

 

[Elf@shore]

why arent there more smokers with fire box underneath? it seems it would be way more efficient? yea pain in the back being lower to load. lol but besides that. i bet it would use half the fuel as a side box. ?? thoughts ??

A few name brands have that idea:

Backwoods Smokers
Meadow Creek Smoker s 50X
Grilla Grills: Mammoth Smoker
Reds custom smoker (My favorite )!

 

[SmokyMose]

I think a firebox underneath would make it more of a grill than a smoker BUT it would solve the problem of having one end of the chamber hotter than the other. You would still have to deal with fire management.
As far as ??, I've always wondered why smokers are always black.

 

[in. pred]

i donk it would make it a grill. grill temps are way hotter than i run smoker. you would just need less of a fire.

 

[GatorAGR]

I've also wondered what would happen if you had two fire boxes, one at each end. Would this just be too much to manage or would it allow for more even temps across the chamber?

 

[Parshooter]

Is someone trying to reinvent the wheel ?

 

[nomoreusmc]

Mostly because heat goes up. You want the smoke, you don't necessarily want the heat, dirty smoke about guaranteed. Saw a 1500 gallon that was center fired but had a stack at both ends to direct it around and had fans inside. As an engineer I have to say Occam's razor is correct, the simplest solution is the best.

 

[in. pred]

no its about using less fuel.

Is someone trying to reinvent the wheel ?

 

[in. pred]

couldnt be any difference in the smoke. the side box dumps directly into cook chamber already. same smoke just directed upward more.

 

[DougE]

Well, heat rises so you'd have to keep the fire smaller. There is another issue. Grease ending up in the firebox and flaring up, making fire management even more fun. There are probably ways to mitigate this, but I think the offset is easier to manage.

 

[in. pred]

fire still at one end just under. food wouldnt be over riser anymore than an offset.

 

[Fueling Around]

I'm going to try your idea with my fridge build smoker this summer.

 

[realdocBBQ]

I've also wondered what would happen if you had two fire boxes, one at each end. Would this just be too much to manage or would it allow for more even temps across the chamber?

You can pretty easily get even temps across a traditional flow offset design without difficulty. My buddy Mike built a 1000 gallon pit that had 10ºF difference from the throat end to the exhaust end - that's across a 16 foot run of cooking surface. If you design it properly and build it well, the regular offset design works quite well. I've built multiple 250 gallon pits with as little as 2-5ºF variation from one side to the other.

As for "why" don't people do it one way or another - tradition, preference, aesthetics, biases, whatever. There are lots of misconceptions in smoker design, just like in smoking meat/BBQing. Like "if you're lookin', you ain't cookin'". Whatever. Easily disproven myth with modern temp monitoring equipment, but people still say it all the time. Ok, gramps. lol

Anyways, a center-oriented firebox on an offset smoker can certainly work, sure. You'd have to adapt some things in the design, of course, but there's no reason it CAN'T work. It's definitely doable. And I've seen several that DO work that way. For me, it's just not my preference, aesthetically, so I've not built one like that.

 

[in. pred]

I'm going to try your idea with my fridge build smoker this summer.

i have an old uprite freezer to convert to smoker also. got as far as gutting it last year. i havent got into how most do the fire part yet. probably the same as my other rig but bigger. its a garage sale pan with a grate on/in it to hold the coals. lol

 

[in. pred]

you could trap the heat lost to offset box by putting it into the cook chamber instead of outside. i bet you wouldnt need much fire that way but you would loose space naturally.

 

[realdocBBQ]

you could trap the heat lost to offset box by putting it into the cook chamber instead of outside. i bet you wouldnt need much fire that way but you would loose space naturally.

One of the misconceptions in smoker design and building is that you want to 'keep' as much of the heat as possible. This isn't always the case - in fact, it can be a major problem with heavily insulated fireboxes. Namely, you keep too MUCH of the heat... bleeding off excess heat has its place. When using a heavily insulated firebox, you can easily get runaway temp spikes. This is most easily dealt with by having very specifically processed smaller wood splits and a shorter feeding interval (of splits) to help keep things more even - but who wants to feed a thumb-sized split every 15 minutes for 12 hours?

Smaller fire, less smoke and combustibles... some people claim this leads to less smoke flavor. This is a thing with reverse flows, especially insulated ones. Economical use of wood leads to less smoke flavor on food - how much? That's always a major debate, almost as big as the pellet vs offset debate. lol

Bottom line, though - shedding heat isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's all in how you utilize the cooker you've got.

 

[Fueling Around]

My wife is in the less smoke club. I guess I'm looking to cook faster with more heat and overall less less smoking time.