Weber 22" Kettle as an electric smoker.

[hoagiehut]

Hi fellow SMF members. First post, but a long-time lurker. I've been learning a lot in my quest to smoke meat. I am focused on sausage and snack sticks right now. I am repurposing an old Weber Performer as a smoked sausage hut. I purchased the Onlyfire Extention, which allowed me to hang the sausage, which I wanted to try instead of laying flat in my Yoder YS640.

I am using an amazing pellet tube as the smoke source, but I wanted to add some heat. I could use charcoal, but getting temps below 200F seems problematic. The performer has the propane ignite option but using that on a simple test produced way too much heat. Lastly I put in a 200W space heater with a fan. That option seemed most promising. However, my max temp is 120F. I would like to achieve 200F max.

First question: I notice many people use hot plates as a heat source. Why not a space heater since it has a fan? I was thinking of getting a 1500W ceramic version. Eventually, I would control it with an Auber PID.
2nd question: What do you recommend regarding a heat source for those of you who have gone down this path or something similar?

Wild card... I typically finish my snack sticks in a Sous Vide.

I really appreciate any advice you can provide.

 

[chopsaw]

I'm currently working on this . 1500 watt analog , that will be controlled with an Auber 1510 . I'm not doing it for sausage though , and you certainly don't want to cut into that nice vintage performer . That's a nice rig .

I fired it up just to test it out . No controller .

Wouldn't know why a hot plate or a heater wouldn't work .
We used to heat our lunches in a card board box and a 500 watt halogen work light .

This is a charcoal grate from an Old Smokey smoker . This is from a 22 " Fits in the Weber just below the cook grate . I'm going to use it as a deflector . You could get your heat source as low as possible and see if it works if you're worried about to much direct heat .

 

[chopsaw]

Wouldn't know why a hot plate or a heater wouldn't work .

After thinking about it , they might not like being in the hot environment , and could fail ?

 

[hoagiehut]

Thanks, Chopsaw; I was hoping you would reply. I read that you were doing something similar. I like your approach a lot.

Unfortunately, my 27-year-old performer rusted out at the center of the ash sweep. :-( So I might cut into it... Fortunately, I have another blue one I use for my daily cooks.

How did you cut into the kettle?

 

[chopsaw]

How did you cut into the kettle?

I picked my location and cut the hole small with grinder and a cut off wheel . Then I worked the rest of the cut by hand with a file .
I'm made my living as a commercial metal stud and drywall Carpenter . So I'm used to cutting metal and different profiles and shapes .
I worked the penetration with a file because I knew the shape wasn't plumb straight and square due to the compound radius of the lower bowl of the kettle .
I got it pretty close , but missed the top cut a bit . I thought the whole thing would be a " smile " , but the top was a frown . The bottom a smile , and the sides had a little splay to them . I just didn't want it to sloppy .


How bad is it rusted out ?
I have a 2006 Performer . Love that thing .

 

[hoagiehut]

How bad is it rusted out ?

Yesterday I went to sweep the ash and the sweep arms stayed in place and the arm spun around. But in the photo, you can see the propane igniter hole is showing signs of age too.

 

[chopsaw]

Never saw one do that before . Was it in a flood maybe ? You could patch that I bet , and you can still grill with it but if your into using it as an electric I say do whatever it takes .
I looked around this morning and found some coil type hot plate replacement burners for under 20 bucks . That set up I have was $34.00 . You could also use an element for a MES 30 or 40 , but you would have to have a controller .
I would say no to a heater . It would be prone to over heat and probably shut down and fail in the long run .

I need to get mine in some kind of stand so I can see how it runs .