Rick Jones
TVWBB Fan
I just got back from my first competitions, the back-to-back Surf and Turf (which is a KCBS contest) and World BBQ Contest in Imperial Beach, California.
Dave Klose was kind enough to loan us a beautiful, big smoker he had sold to someone else. The new owner was going to be picking the unit up after the contests. I was quite excited to finally be getting my hands on what is considered by many one of the finest smokers made.
What happened was I turned out some of the worst barbecue I've ever done, mainly because I had no idea how to control the temperature on the Klose monster. Many people came over to offer advice, but we were either at 170 deg. or at 300 deg., with brief periods of 230-250 deg. which I could only manage to hold for an hour or so.
I realized how much I love my WSM when someone told me that all he had to do on his Klose was throw a log in every hour. As one who has a good comfort level with all-nite cooks that require virtually no tending of the fire, this seemed like a tremendous amount of bother.
I don't want to make it seem that the Klose is a bad product; quite the contrary, it is a finely built piece of equipment that I would by in an instant if I wanted to get into catering and/or festival food work. For future competitions, however, I'll make the much smaller investment in 2 or 3 more WSM's and let the bullets do the work for me.
Rick
P.S. I have to brag about the World BBQ contest. Our little Team Brer came in fourth, and was the second highest ranked American team.
Dave Klose was kind enough to loan us a beautiful, big smoker he had sold to someone else. The new owner was going to be picking the unit up after the contests. I was quite excited to finally be getting my hands on what is considered by many one of the finest smokers made.
What happened was I turned out some of the worst barbecue I've ever done, mainly because I had no idea how to control the temperature on the Klose monster. Many people came over to offer advice, but we were either at 170 deg. or at 300 deg., with brief periods of 230-250 deg. which I could only manage to hold for an hour or so.
I realized how much I love my WSM when someone told me that all he had to do on his Klose was throw a log in every hour. As one who has a good comfort level with all-nite cooks that require virtually no tending of the fire, this seemed like a tremendous amount of bother.
I don't want to make it seem that the Klose is a bad product; quite the contrary, it is a finely built piece of equipment that I would by in an instant if I wanted to get into catering and/or festival food work. For future competitions, however, I'll make the much smaller investment in 2 or 3 more WSM's and let the bullets do the work for me.
Rick
P.S. I have to brag about the World BBQ contest. Our little Team Brer came in fourth, and was the second highest ranked American team.