wood burning pits?


 
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Lee-Rowlands

Lee-Rowlands

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I've read a lot of threads over the last few months and a few of you have mentioned using other pits.

Do any of you own and use wood burning pits aswell as your WSM?

Are Klose pits as good as they're made out to be?

Has anyone made their own wood burner?

Thanks for any input,

Lee
 
No, yes, no!
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I just have the WSM and a weber kettle.

Lurking on "other" BBQ Forums, it seems that Klose pits are the Cadillac, er Rolls Royce, of the off-set pits, but looking into the details of operation, they need much closer minding than the WSM. Some have modified their off-set with a charcoal basket and claim to get up to 6 hour burns without adding fuel. With wood, it seems that another stick has to be added every hour or two. This is just from listening to other BBQer's experiences.

Me, I'm lazy and cheap, so the WSM fits the bill perfectly!
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6 hour burn maybe but that will use 20 pounds of coal. I looked very close at an offset wood burner but the WSM with the Weber name won my affection.
 
The UK contingent is alive!

Back in the states I've used wood burning offsets, they take alot of continual work (as mentioned)

The WSM is really nice because of the level of conrol available through vent adjustment alone.

The use of smokewood is primarily (in my opinion) to mimic the quality of a wood burning fire .. add a little or alot, whatever, you have the consistency of charcoal to provide steady, reliabe heat.
 
So for all the constant tinkering needed with a wood burner to keep it going long enough to cook anything, is the cooked meat worth the extra effort in the end?

Don't some people have gas installed in their wood burning pits?

Is that so they don't have to use charcoal?
 
OK I'm going for a record - three adjoing UK posts
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Lee - do you have reason to stray from the hallowed WSM path? I know you were concerned about charcoal availability over here through the winter and in another thread you asked about gas (I wondered about the Aussie gas kit but it's only suitable for the bigger 22½inch so I guess it wouldn't fit a WSM, vent positions aside) or are you so hooked you are looking for every way to smoke!
My guess is you will always be able to find charcoal somehow - which reminds me I meant to check if "the sheds" had briquettes on sale - probably missed the second wave.
My guess is it's a purist thing - WSM delivers the food but a woodburner would deliver the process (in trumps). The same probably applies to the guru debate to put it in context.

Good luck on your quest....
 
Figure I better break this UK streak.

First I only have a WSM, but I have begun scouring and info gathering on offset pits. Biggest reason is cooking space limitation of the WSM, but thats for another discussion. I don't really feel qualified to make judgements one way or another.

At a recent competition, I observed that a team uses an offset as their primary cooker, however, they also cook butt and brisket on a WSM because of its consistency. They are quite successful. Many competitors are quite successful with the WSM (the brisket that took first at that comp. was done on a WSM).

The WSM / offsett debate will rage forever. Throw in pellet smokers, Backwoods type smokers, and ceramic smokers and the debate gets more complicated. In the end, its your hobby, and you have to follow your own longings of how you want to cook.

No answers to your questions, just some thoughts.
 
Lee,

I have built a couple of offsets. Here is one picture of the one I use in competition and for larger cooks. I have to tend to the fire about once every hour or so, but I don't mind that at all. For me, it's theraputic. I also use my WSM in comps as well. If you need lots of room, it's tough to beat a big offset.
 
We also have a trailer-mounted log-burner in addition the WSM. 1/4 steel pipe, 20-inch firebox, 48-inch horizontal, 48-inch vertical, all mounted on an old horse trailer frame. It's an Oklahoma Joe's clone, made by an older friend of ours who made one for himself and one for his son. When he figured out that son was doing most of the cooking for the family, he decided to sell his.
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We like our logburner, but the WSM gets used much more often. The logburner is great for those few times when "the boys" are able to get together to sit around the smoker, sip on refreshing adult beverages, lie to each other, and play in the fire every 30 - 45 minutes or so. That opportunity doesn't arise often, though. We have pecan, hickory, and peach in our woodpile, with a couple of apple trees coming from a neighbor's back yard in the next few days. Most offsets have an area near the firebox that you can't cook on due to the heat, so remember that just because the horizontal is a certain size, you can't cook on all of it. We will do ribs and poultry on the log-burner, but I won't sit up all night to babysit briskets or butts on it. They ALWAYS go on the WSM.

More often, there are other things that we need to be doing during cooking time, and the convenience of the independent little WSM is GREATLY appreciated. Because of the time currently required by senior family members, seems like night-times are about the only times that the WSM gets fired up - thus I have dubbed myself the Queen of the All-Nighters. I'm not even sure that my lil' ol' WSM will even cook during the day anymore!
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And, no, no geese were harmed in the course of this cooking session.

Keri C, smokin' on Tulsa Time
 
I have a burning desire to have a go at cooking on a wood burner because I have no experience of them.

I love using the WSM and it is very consistant in its results which I feel I benefited from as a first step into BBQ (and that was my downfall).

Now I find that the more BBQ I cook and eat the more I want to cook and eat BBQ and as my knowledge of BBQ expands the more I realise how little I know and that creates a yearning for greater knowledge (and the cycle continues).

So I need therapy but before that lets talk about wood burning pits.

We have horizontal, vertical and combination offset wood burners and each no doubt has its benefits.

Rob, the pit looks great, what did you use for the cooking chamber and can you explain the reverse flow venting system to me?

Many thanks,

Lee
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rob B.:
In what regards Morgan? Weather, vandalism, theft? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I meant theft, originally, but now you mention it ... all of the above.
 
Rob and Keri - nice log burners!

Lee - the offsets I've seen with gas mods, the gas was just used to get the wood started.

Chris and Keri make good points about the offsets - takes a lot of fuel and mostly gets used when you're cooking for an army.
 
Thanks guys.
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FWIW, it stays chained and locked up at my house as well.

The cook chamber is from an old propane tank. I cut and cleaned it, and it works great. The "reverse flow" is a little hard to describe, but I'll try. Imagine a 1/4" plate of steel running the length of the pit, about 8" above the bottom of the tank and about 6" below the lower cooking grate. It starts where the fire box joins the pit, and stops about 8" from the opposite end. It causes the heat and smoke to travel from the fire box to the opposite end of the pit before it enters the cook chamber. Once it enters the cook chamber, it is drawn back across the food to the exhaust stack which is on the same end. Imagine the letter "U" laying on it's side. That's the essence of the reverse flow.
 
Rob, thanks for explaining the reverse flow principle.
Is this method the standard in horizontal pits or do some people use other methods of distributing the heat and smoke a little more evenly than having a hole at either end?

Many thanks,

Lee.
 
Lee-

Currently I have a charcoal pig cooker made of an old 500 gallon flat top oil drum. I had this made for me. It is a direct cooking style where the cooking grate is about 18-20" (~500mm - I'm an engineer, what can I say
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)above the charcoal. I use wood chunks (like in the WSM) on top of my charcoal piles in this cooker to get the smoke flavor. You can see a few pics here - mine is the red one.

Recently I have been tinkering with the idea of getting into welding at the local community college. I think building cookers would be way too much fun! Build 1, figure out how to improve it, build a 2nd and sell the 1st...and repeat until you had "The" design for you.

I have been thinking of what my first design would be - I definitely think it would be an offset, but something more like The Good One - and as a disclaimer, I've got nothing to do with them and haven't ever even seen one in person, much less used one - but I like the concept. It is an offset cooker where the heat/smoke comes into the cooking chamber on the long side rather than the short side. I think this would give much more uniform heat - I've even been trying to think how you could have heat/smoke coming in from the long side on both sides from the same fire box with a stack in the middle on the top. But then I think you would have heat enter the cooking chamber indirectly from the heat of the fire box below. Obviously, my design is still in the very early stages!

Anyway, I didn't see where anyone had mentioned this style of offset and thought I would throw it out there. Plus, if anyone has any experience with one, I'd love to hear the comments!

Good luck!

Rob - nice looking work! Giving any welding lessons??
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edit to fix The Good One link
 
It's not really standard. I believe the idea comes from Ben Lang, who builds and sells Lang Smokers.

Klose builds an excellent example of the other basic style, which has the exhaust stack on the side opposite the fire box. There is usually a "hot spot" closest to the fire box with this style smoker. An option to help diffuse this hot spot is to add "tuning plates". Their purpose is to help deflect the heat throughout the pit more evenly.

There is one other popular style that has a fire box that runs the whole length and parallel to the cook chamber, usually along the back I believe. There is a baffle that separates the two and creates the offset effect as opposed to direct heat.

HTH...
 
I have a Klose. I love it. It's a bit pricey, but hey...
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It takes about two hours to get up to temp, but once all that metal is hot, the temp stability is amazing. I add about one stick per hour.

Of course, it is for heavy loads. Most of my cooks are on the WSM's.
 
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