My Newest Project: Barrel Smoker

[beepbeepmyredjeep]

 

Weber Charcoal Grill

55 Gallon Barrel Drum

Assorted nuts, bolts, washers, and brackets.

Took about 5 hours to build.

Test fired it today, managed to maintain a temperature of about 160 degrees for an hour, using only 9 charcoal bricks.

 

Barrel lifts off the kettle so charcoal can be added without losing existing heat inside the smoker.

 

The smoker is bolted together, not welded, for easy disassembly.

 

TODO:

Add handles on each side

Add brackets to the top so the lid is attached better (right now there's a small gap at the top)

Paint the barrel black

[fiatslug87]

Now that's some Yankee ingenuity.

[1990 Pioneer 4x4]

Cool stuff :thumbsup: Did you forgot to use the high temp black paint?

[Wildman]

1 question.........are the legs heavy enough to support all that added weight :hmm:

 

Other wise........great idea :thumbsup:

[beepbeepmyredjeep]

The barrel is discolored because I haven't repainted it yet.

Before I built the smoker, I burned a bunch of paper and cardboard inside the barrel to clean it out. It had vegetable oil in it, but I still wanted to burn away the coating inside the barrel, so it doesn't affect the flavor of the food. The fire got hot enough to not only burn away the inside coating, but also part of the outside paint. I actually expected this, and was planning on buying the special paint used for grills and wood stoves. By the way, the original paint color was blue...but the entire barrel was black on the outside by the time it was done burning.

 

As far as the legs go, I was able to get the kettle to hold my entire body weight prior to adding the barrel.

Tomorrow I'm going to test it further by loading a bunch of water inside, and making sure it doesn't collapse.

 

If all is good, I'll be testing it tomorrow by smoking some hot sausages.

[beepbeepmyredjeep]

...and the results! YUM!

 

[beepbeepmyredjeep]

Diagram for anyone interested.

 

 

Lower grate is accessed by lifting out the upper grate.

 

Both grates are resting on 3 bolts evenly spaced apart.