I was looking at the new computerized pellet smokers and was intimidated by the price. In this blog I will "Keep it simple".
Smoking meat is all about the wood and temperature. I already have the wood and I know that the fire has to be hot or the smoke will be bitter. If it is that simple, exactly how do you make a cheap smoker that can do the job? I started off with a food grade 50 gallon barrel with a removeable lid. It cost me $15 and it was perfectly clean inside. I don't know if you have ever heard of a "rocket stove", but they are very popular in third world countries to save fuel and reduce smoke for cooking.
I first put three bolts equally spaced thru the sides about 12" down from the top with two nuts on each bolt. I put them in so that the head of the bold was on the inside as was one of the nuts. I put the second nut on from the outside so that the bolt head projected inside about 2' and the bolt just cleared the nut on the outside. I think you can follow this. I used a 5/16 inch bolt about 3" long. You have to drill a hole for the bolt to go thru, but I think you could handle that.
The next thing was to use that same 5/16 drill to drill some holes in the barrel around the barrel about 4" up from the bottom for combustion air to come in.
I then looked around my garage for an old Webber grill. The are normally just a little smaller in diameter than is a 50 gallon barrel. With the three bolts projecting into the inside of the barrel, they make a very nice strong rest for the grill. Hey, this is starting to look like a smoker.
Next comes the "rocket stove". The way they work is that they reclaim heat from the fire and feed that heated air into the burning fuel. Normally cold air enters the bottom of a fire and ends up going out the top with both heat and smoke and unburn gases from the fuel. The idea of the "rocket stove" is to get the fire so hot that no unburnt gas escapes. The smoke is also burnt too. How this is done in my design was to start with the tallest can that I could find in the kitchen and remove the lid just on the top. Near the bottom of the can, I drilled several holes to allow combustion air to come in. Now the trick. I found another can about the same height, but a little larger in diameter and put the smaller can down inside of it. With this arrangement, the air has to come down the space between the two cans where it is heated and then enters the inner combustion can at the bottom.
Now all you need is some fuel or wood. I first put in three charcoal brickets and a little starter fluid. Once I had the brickets lighted, I put several small pieces of my special White Oak and Hickory wood on top of the burning brickets. Smoke was already coming out. From here on it is up to you on how you want to smoke your meat. The temperature never got above about 150 f , so the meat was not cooked, only smoked. After my meat had enough smoke flavor, I put it in to my kitchen oven and did the final cooking. I did not add any water to the barrel because the heat was so low and the fire generated enough water all by itself.
You could select a larger can and thus generate more heat, but to do the smoking, you do not need a large fire because this small one gets very hot and produces high quality smoke. You could also use your own wood pellets too.
