New Here From Georgia

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bestbuttsbbq

Newbie
Original poster
May 29, 2014
29
10
Hartwell, Georgia
Hello Everyone! My name is Josh and I am from Southwest Georgia. I am a Bi-vocational Pastor and Insurance Agent and I love smoking meat. I am best at smoking Chicken. I also love to smoke Boston Butts and Ribs.  I have been lurking on this site for months and I finally decided I would make an account. 

I got into smoking when I was in high school, I started working at a Start Up BBQ restaurant in town. I had the privileged to learn A LOT about smoking meat. My boss had a dream to open up the restaurant but he didn't want just another average BBQ place so he traveled from Georgia to NY stopping at all the BBQ restaurants he could, talking to owners, talking to chefs...getting an idea of the BEST ways to do BBQ. He brought all that information back home and put it together and that was what we went by at our restaurant. 


My First Smoker was an el cheapo that I got from Walmart when I started college. It looked something like that. It was cheap, hard to regulate temperature, and really not very good quality, but I made some GREAT smoked meat from it. It made my friends in college go crazy over it. 

About a year and a half later I moved up to one of these. The Char Griller


This grill was more of what I wanted in a grill. It was still a little small but It worked for what I needed. I still have this grill but I mostly use it for charcoal cooking stuff like hamburgers, chicken, or steak.

My bbq dreams were much bigger than that, Last summer I bought  pull behind smoker. It was what I always wanted. Its big enough to cook for the masses, but it still does a very good job cooking just a couple of butts or some ribs.


I am about to overhaul this smoker. The firebox is too small- I am cutting it off and putting a bigger firebox on it. I am also going to make a place to store wood and other grilling supplies at the front of the grill. Right now the grill has a pipe that goes down the center of it that releases the smoke under the meat..I am cutting that pipe out and turning this smoker into a Reverse Flow Smoker. The Chimney will be moved to the other end of the smoker. Right Now I don't have the ability to cook on this grill as a charcoal grill, but after this project is done, I will be able to not only use it as a smoker but as a charcoal grill as well. So if need be, I can cook hamburgers for the masses.  I also am going to upgrade to a little bigger tires! 

It is actually my dream to open my own restaurant one day but I would love to start out using a concession trailer setup selling on weekends, I just love this stuff. It is in my blood and cant get it out! :-) 

I look forward to joining in with your conversations here and learning a lot about smoking meat! 
 
Last edited:
Hello and Welcome to our addiction.  A word of warning: There is no 12 step program for this one!  Many good folk here with a load of experience that they are more than willing to share.  If you have specific questions just start a thread and someone with experience will be along soon to offer advice.  All info you can provide us with such as smoker type, location and so on will help us answer any questions you may have, and pictures help a bunch.  Spend some time doing some research on the forums, tons of advice and recipes already available there.  We look forward to your contributions.  Have fun.  Good luck.  Keep Smokin!

Danny
 
Hello Josh, and a big welcome from East Texas. Looks like you have moved right along, and congrats on starting your mods. Just looking at the picture I see that your Fire box is small, a larger one would really help, another thing it looks like that has some pretty small tires, when you go adding a larger FB and firewood storage, be sure and check the axle and tire ratings may want to upgrade,Are you keeping you straight flow set-up or changing to Reverse Flow ?  

Gary S
 
I am going to convert it to a Reverse Flow Smoker. I luckily have a Father In Law that is a Welder for a living and he does a phenomenal job on building smokers and really anything with metal so that should help out A LOT!  

The small firebox is an issue. It does get up to the temperatures I need to cook with but the space I have to build a fire is so limited it hard to make it happen. It takes a WHILE to get the temperature where it needs to be. Once it gets there, it does well, but I know that firebox is not sufficient for my needs. 

Once I start the overhaul, I will post pictures here on the forum so that you all can see the progress.
 
Sounds like a plan. If you are not already check Feldon's pit calculator, this will help you a lot, A couple things that you need to do is, after you plug in your tank size, Play withe the FB dimensions till you get 100% Take the FB to CC opening and oversize by 1.5 %, also make your fire box a little larger maybe 25%,  These new calculations have been done and tested by several members that have spent a lot of time fine tuning smokers.   Looking forward to seeing pictures as you go.

Gary S
 
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