Hanging meats in a UDS?

[thedonald78]

Hello all. I'm fairly new to this forum, but I used to spend a fair bit of time on the Smoking Meat forum (it's been several years since I frequented any BBQ forum - I tend to run hot and cold on my hobbies). I do most of my BBQ work on a home-made UDS. Pretty standard setup. 55-gallon drum with a kettle lid. a pair of ball valves on the bottom. Expanded metal charcoal basket. two racks, though I rarely use the lower one. I was reading about the PBC and how some of you have been hanging ribs and poultry and I'm curious if I should try the same in my UDS. I have two long-stem deep fryer thermometers on my UDS that extend approximately to the middle of the barrel. Typically when I cook, the lower thermometer shows hotter temps, particularly if I don't use a pizza pan a a baffle (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't). Does anyone else here operate a 55-gallon UDS in the same way that PBC's are operated (hanging meat, etc)? The UDS has always worked pretty well for me. I've attached a couple of photos of the smoker and cooks just to hopefully gain a little bit of street cred. I'm also curious in general if there have been any revolutionary "revelations" about the UDS that would improve what I'm doing. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

[Jerod Broussard]

Yes you can. The PBC folks tried a standard 50/55 gallon drum and never could achieve the same results they could get from a 30 gallon drum. But man I bet you could load a ton of briskets in a UDS hanging them.

I have seen a guy named Styme or something like that selling a 55 gallon drum system with rebar and hooks on ebay.

[Powersmoke_80]

thedonald78, Welcome to the pit and nice smoker, I'm curious about the UDS and capacity as well. Mostly PBC cooks that Ive seen here and looking forward to seeing your cooks. How much variation in temp is there between racks? Would a heavy baffle like a pizza stone bring temps closer together for hanging?

[thedonald78]

Thanks for both of your responses. I like the pizza stone idea. I just happen to have one that doesn't get used for much else. Early in a cook (before temps have equalized in the smoker and particularly in the meat), I'll sometimes get a variation between the upper and lower rack of as much as 60-75 degrees. After things settle in, the difference is typically more like 20-30 degrees.

[Powersmoke_80]

Cool thedonald78 , make sure that you let us know if the pizza stone works or not.
A buddy at work wants something to be able to hang hickory sticks for smoking and I was telling him about a UDS. Good luck

[thedonald78]

So if you're hanging ribs, do you actually hook through the meat and then lay them flat toward the end when they're getting to be tender?

[BigBear]

Welcome to The Pit thedonald78 . Glad you're here!

That UDS is not "ugly", she's purdy! And looks like she puts out some great looking food too! Congrats. I am a PBC owner and look forward to your posts about hanging meat.

[sfrancis353]

I did some research on the PBC, I've built 2 UDS's and was also curious about hanging meats. Couple things I've learned from reading about this topic.

Using a pizza stone is going to stop that fat from dripping on the fire and adding that extra flavor to your meat. It might not be a big thing but the PBC people swear by it.

From everything I've read, the main reason they use the 30 gal is because it "handles the fire correctly". The PBC supposedly has a learning curve of how to correctly start the fire in order to get it to properly cook. They weren't able to get the fire to act properly in the 55 gallon one and made it sound like it would potentially require a ton of fire management to get worthwhile results. In the 30, once you have the fire set, you will get spikes and drops of temps but magically it just all works. Not sure if this is 100% true or not, but that's what the research I did on the subject led me to believe.

To me it's a very interesting device. Not sure I'd do ribs on them because I'd always fear of half the ribs falling into the fire, but I'd love to play around with one.