New to the world of smokers

[crazyforsmoke]

Hi,

I am new to the smoking world. I love the taste of smoked meats and I wanted to try it myself. I have a Char-broil offset smoker. I haven't done any mods if anyone can give me ideas on the mods it will help  me a great deal. I used the smoker yesterday  and I had trouble keeping the temp at 250 it would either get to hot and I would remove some coal and it would be fine for a little while and then the temp would start to drop I would add more coal but it would take to long to come back up to 250. I also tried adding dry wood chunks but once they started to burn the temp would get to hot again. I also would like to know should I soak my wood chunks for an hour or throw them on the coal dry for the smoke. Please help.

crazyforsmoke

 

[eman]

welcome to the best smoking site around. there have been others w/ the same problems as you

are having. I don't own that smoker so i will let one of them explain the mods you need to do . I can tell you that you do not need to soak any smoking wood(s).

 hang around and i'm sure someone will be here to help

 

[eman]

Allso If you do a search of snp mods you will find alot of them listed.

 

[sawruff]

will i had one of thouths thing and it when back to the store the next day u can mod it like a lot of people do   not me it made me build now

 

[mballi3011]

 First off welcome Sawruff to SMF. You'll like it here cause there are alot of really good folks that would just love to help you with anything to do with smoking. Now we like having new folks here to give a new prospective on some of the ways we do things around here. Now if you are really new then I would suggest that you sign up fir the 5-day E-course it free and it will give you the basics on smoking and a few recipes too. Here's a link to it:

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/forum/list/127

then you will have a method to your newly found madness and believe me it will be a madness. Then when you start smoking things you will have to learn how to post the pictures / Qview 

here. So here's a link to a tutorial on how to post your Qview so we can see what your doing.

 http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/forum/thread/82034/how-to-post-qview-to-smf

Now the next thing you have to do is run out and get something to smoke. Then just smoke it and if you have any questions just post  them here and we will answer all your questions that you might have. Oh yea there's no stupid questions we were all there in the beginning and we just really like to help others enjoy the fabulous smoked foods that we do. So again

 

Welcome to Your New Addiction

 

[etcher1]

Welcome to the SMF forum, You came to the right place. Good people and good info.

 

[meateater]

Welcome to the SMF. Glad to have you here. Lots of good folks, great recipes and knowledge. Looking forward to your first qview.

 

[bayouchilehead]

Welcome to SMF! I hope you find the info you're looking for. Which Char-Broil Offset do you have. I have the American Gourmet and it does a pretty good job without any mods. I do put a thick small cake pan on the coals and then put the wood chunks in that. If you have a small cast iron skillet you could use that. I have found that soaking the wood is not worth it, the water only penetrates about an 8th of an inch and is dried out in a matter of seconds. I hope this helps!!

 

[crazyforsmoke]

Hi,

I have the American gourmet. I was wondering do you use a charcoal basket, what do you use for fuel, and which method of fire building do you use. My smoker does leak a lot of smoke around the smoking chamber lid and around the stack, if I sealed those would that help with temp or is it just that I am a newbie. If you use charcoal when adding charcoal do you add unlit or lit coals. Thanks