Smoker Choices

Let's stay focused on the goal, smoking a great brisket!

Choosing a smoker is like picking out clothing, everyone has an opinion. So here is mine.

As I considered all the options, I centered around 2 ideals. Those ideals distilled are, real wood burner and a well crafted solidly built unit.

Real wood was important to me because so much of what's done today it fake. When I'm eating, I like to eat as organically and simply as possible I don't like eating highly processed foods. To me good food involves ingredients I'm familiar with and can pronounce. I don't want all those chemical preservatives I've never heard of.

Let's face it, a pellet is a processed piece of wood at best. Why would I use processed wood in my cooking? It just doesn't appeal to me.

Another consideration is a smoker that burns real wood. It's simple to fuel. You don't have to buy pellets, chunks, chips. etc. from a supplier you know little about. You (at least I can) go collect wood from a known property with lots of old oak, apple or other hardwoods growing in a natural environment.

There was a time when barbecue was a low cost option. Collect some wood, light a fire and cook some meat. Of course, a company is going to try to sell you each component (pellet, , and I can't blame them, it's how they make money.

Solid construction of a smoker is important for a few reasons. A solid unit with thick steal will hold heat better, and therefore temperature will be more stable. It will also last the test of time, no surprise there.

Construction also really effects cooking. If air doesn't circulate properly, you may only be able to cook one or 2 items at a time. A good smoker let's you stack different meats during a smoke. If you are going to be smoking a brisket for 14 hours, you want to be able to cook multiple briskets, or ribs, sausage, etc, without waiting till one finishes.

How even is the cooking? Does everything get good smoke, or are there hot spots and a big learning curve? Can the unit be used in competition? This really wasn't too important to me, but it's something to think about.

At the end of the very long process of selecting a smoker, I was drawn to the KBQ C60, you can read reviews or buy it here on Amazon.

A pit master at your typical BBQ joint has years of experience controlling the fire. He knows how to keep that fire at the perfect temperature. This takes lots of experience, and not something I really wanted have to learn. The KBQ makes this simple, build and keep a nice hot fire, it pulls as much heat off it that is needed, but no more.

Another pit master skill I didn't really want to develop was smoke type. This unit makes it really easy to get that heavy over fire smoke or pull clean under fire coal smoke. Both of these are desired based on the type of meat, so controlling this with a valve and fan is a huge plus.

Here's the under coal inverted flame from the draw fan. It lights up the KBQ logo, cool!

There's a ton of reasons I chose this unit, but at the end of the day, it was simply the quality and fact it made burning real logs easy.