crvan, I just bought my first Lang and sure would like to pick your brain as to how to cook with it, DWCowles has already given me some great tips on maintaining the temp but the more I learn from as many people as I can learn from the better. I have the 36 inch hybrid deluxe model and the charcoal side is awesome but I just need more experience and more knowledge with the wood side of it. So far I think it is an awesome cooker!
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vandy Congrads on your new Lang, I mostly use oak mainly because of the coast, down here in Florida hickory is very expensive a 4X4 pallet is around $230 where I can get a pickup truck full of oak for around $90. DWCrowles also helped me out early on and like he said use smaller pieces of wood and keep the fire box door open until the wood catches on fire then control the flow from the lower vents. What I did early on was to start the fire at least 2 hrs before putting the meat on, this will help you to stabilize the temp. There is a lot of steel in the Lang that needs to heat up. This weekend I did pork butts and chicken wings, I started the cooker at 6:00am, the butts were only 6 lbs each so I counted on about 8 hrs. At 7:am I through some brauts in the warmer box and the butts on at 8:am when the temp settled at 225 there was enough coals I did not have the add any wood until about 10:am only adjusted the vents. I do use the chimney vent starting at a 45 degrees and the lower vents half open as the temp starts to fall I open the chimney until it is fully open, by that time it is time to put another log and 1 maybe 2 smaller logs. The stall started around 11:am and stopped about 3
m, at 4m the wings went on and butts came out and we were ready to eat by 5m. Hope this helps
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Love the discussion and feedback from folks who own each type.
​As Huskee said, you can cook wonderfully on all of them if you get a good cooker and practice.
The distinction between a regular offset stick-burner and the reverse flow seems to be that the traditional offset, set up like Aaron Frankin has it, since the original questioner used him as a reference, is set up to have a great deal of airflow. Higher airflow produces a more robust bark. And that's why Aaron F. doesn't prefer Reverse-Flows. (Corrected sentence structure, lol)
Lots of guys absolutely LOVE the reverse flows, including most all of the active posters on the BBQ Breathren, it appears. The interview of the owner of Lang on the BBQCentralShow was interesting to learn about him and their cookers, or "Fat-Sizzling Cooking Machines" as he calls them.
I own a 22" offset now, built like a Yoder Cheyanne, with a vertical baffle plate. I've got a Jambo Backyard on order, and I just rented a warehouse where I can build my Big Offset! (1,000 gallon propane little 'ole cooker) in the future. I bought the Jambo so I could cook with it and learn, and since the waiting time is forever, I'll probably sell it on Craigslist to someone in Houston for what I paid in a year or so.
Did I mention I LOVE that Mrs. Brown!
I need to borrow a reverse-flow from someone so I can learn to cook on them as well.
This is fun!Last edited by PaulstheRibList; October 31, 2015, 08:26 AM.Comment
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PaulstheRibList This paragraph's a little confusing. I think you may have juxtaposed a negative? Aaron prefers standard flow.Originally posted by PaulstheRibList View Post
You are becoming the smoker king! Can't wait to see your smoker project! If I lived near you and had welding skills I'd love to help out! 0 out of 2 ain't good.
Last edited by Huskee; October 31, 2015, 08:05 AM.Comment
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My long-winded sentences can produce some unclear antecedents, as in this paragraph.
Aaron doesn't prefer them...Reverse Flow Cookers.
The Big cooker is a little bit away. Need to take next steps with, can you keep a secret, BBQ Stand and Catering bus., then see if I'll need to cook lots and lots of briskets at a time. -
Huskee, the fishing and hunting down here on the Gulf Coast is legit! #ManTrip -
PaulstheRibList I'd love to fish on the gulf coast. A buddy of mine's dad moved to Corpus Christi and I hear stories and see pics of the good times on the water down that way. I'm used to pike bass and walleye, I wouldn't know what to do with something I pulled out of the Gulf!
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After cooking on a El Cheapo Brinkman, Weber Kettle, PBC, Cheap offets and numerous Weber gas grills -- there is one thing in my experience that holds true: Pretty near any contraption can cook good meat with experience and there is ALWAYS a learning curve - no matter the dollar amount of your cooker.
I can honestly say I have ruined at least one or more cooks on every rig I have ever owned - its all part of the process of understanding how your cooker generates, holds and distributes heat and the burn rate of your fuel.
That being said, I am gearing up to order my first EOS - a Lang 36" Stretch Runabout w/ warmer box. My wife has insisted that I take the Lang cooking school when we go to pick it up so that the cooker gets seasoned correctly and that I learn the ins-and-outs of how to operate the cooker from the people that made it. I also know even after all of that I'll probably hose up a cook (or two or three) with it somewhere along the line experimenting -- it is something one just has to accept.
Don't let one (or even a few) bad cooks ruin your attitude. Like any other failure in life all you can do is isolate the mistakes made in hindsight and try not to repeat them.
Like an old boss of mine once said, "If you never screw up, you ain't doing s**t". All we can do is do our best, and each bad experience should be a learning opportunity.
The way I read Franklin's comment is the same as many other have -- he was not used to working with the unfamiliar equipment and had a bad experience. Actually it makes me feel better to see that even a master Frankiln doesn't know everything and even has off days.Comment
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Well said! Totally agree.
I made some bad ribs one night last winter when some close friends of ours came over for dinner. It was bad enough that they took forever to get done (it was after 8pm when I told them dinner would be 6-6:30ish) so I decided I'd 'sear them' over the coals in the firebox. Bad idea. Mostly because it was dark and I couldn't see how "seared" they were getting. So we ate charred ribs at 8:30pm, it was altogether terrible. Ugh. I was more than a little embarrassed despite their encouragement that they were fine. Nah, we were all just starving, the ribs were a disaster according to my standards. But we had wine so that was good. We learn from our mistakes for sure. -
Haha - been there! Ribs never seem to get done just when we expect them too when smoking them! The only way I have made ribs where they were done close to expected time was on the PBC, but unfortunately that is my least favorite way of preparing them (don't like hanging vertically and the higher temps).
My worst rib making experience goes all the way back to college in the early 90s. A buddy of mine and our girlfriends were on fall break up in the mountains of NC and the girls wanted ribs for dinner. It was a comedy of errors:
Error 1: We bought beef ribs because they were on sale. "Ribs are ribs - right?"
Error 2: We cooked them like steaks on an open grill -- the kind you see at public parks, etc.
Error 3: We had a few beers and it was getting dark -- so when removing the ribs from the grill we dropped one in the gravel.
Error 4: We picked up the dropped one, brushed it off and put it on the platter.
The ribs were completely uncooked on the inside - nice char on the outside, but raw in the middle and tough as nails.
Since we were now inside, the rib with gravel, dirt and grass on it was very apparent. The girls asked WTF and we played stupid -- "How'd that get on there? No, of course we didn't drop them!"
Thankfully our girlfriends laughed it off and we ate PB&J sandwiches instead.
Good times....
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Well I tried my first rack of baby back ribs on this new Lang 2 days ago and let me tell you CRVAN you are certainly correct about starting the wood about 2 hours ahead of time so you can get that sucker up to temp but once you do then it is fairly easy to control the temp and then it just cooks beautifully. I used a combination of oak and hickory to smoke the ribs with and they turned out awesome, the flavor was so much better than when they are when cooked on one of my Traegers. Hickory is pretty plentiful around here Woodland Tree Service here sells a pallet for $85.00 if you pick it up.Comment
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I Have to agree with you crvan, I don't see how in the world he caught the Lang on fire unless he had that thing really hot and then dumped a lot of grease on the gridle at one time. It takes forever to get the thing up to cooking temp. I guess if you are not used to the way something cooks anything can happen. I have only used my Lang a couple of times and so far I love it but man it does take some wood to get the thing up to operating temp so you can control it. I have a long way to go before I can master this thing but it is fun learning.Comment
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Well let me see if I can get a picture of the ribs to post. Too bad the photo is not as good as the ribs were.Attached FilesComment
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Don't forget that briskets are very uneven cuts of meat. The point needs to face towards the fire in the interests of it cooking more evenly. Reverse flow designs are not optimal for briskets. Aaron Franklin's specialty is brisket. He uses traditional offsets because they're ideal for briskets.
Another thing to keep in mind are the smokestack placement and the circular firebox. The heat and smoke travel in a vortex through the smoke chamber.Attached FilesComment
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Hey Steve, check this out. A couple years ago a guy posted on the main site that they had a 500 gallon offsetsmoker with about 6 briskets in it, and his was the only one that came out with a smoke ring. Can you guess where his brisket was and why? GuestLast edited by Jerod Broussard; January 17, 2016, 09:25 PM.
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Reverse flows can achieve a tighter range of temperatures along your cook chamber when done right. Problem is, there is a LOT of math involved in getting one dimensioned right. Reverse flow can be more sensitive to how you build your fire because it naturally has less room for smoke to flow through. It is a trade off - but I like having a less than 5 degree difference from one end of my cook chamber to the other when it is dialed in right.
Oh - and I would disagree that reverse flows are not "optimal" for briskets as that would imply that every non-round cook chamber smoker is "not optimal" for brisket too. I suspect that everyone winning competitions with cabinet style smokers might be interested to know they are handicapping themselves too - but that is just my opinion and suspicion =)Comment
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I haven't tried every smoker, but I can tell you that I truly love my Lang. I don't care what the flow is, she and I make great BBQ. The chef knowing and owning his smoker in my opinion matters more than which specific smoker.Comment
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Reverse flow aren’t for briskets? You got to be kidding me. I have had many of darn good briskets come out of my Lang reverse flow smoker.Comment
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Based upon the entirety of this thread, I conclude that reverse-flow vs traditional isn't an inherent advantage either way, assuming the build quality is equal. They are just different ways to achieve the same end. After giving it a lot of thought, I am leaning toward traditional for the following reasons:
A diffuser plate (small holes by the firebox with the holes getting bigger further away) approximates the more even-cooking temps that a reverse-flow achieves. Remove the plate and space for a water pan is created and a combination of meats that are cooked best at different temps can be cooked simultaneously based upon geographic placement on the grate.
Shipping costs for all of these cookers are exorbitant. Bass Pro Shops retail the Horizon 16" and 20" and the one in Auburn Hills is less than an hour away from me. . Horizon Smokers have a gold star rating on this site and I could circumvent the shipping cost by borrowing a truck and arranging a retail transaction. I have a cousin who has a truck and LOVES my food. At a tailgate last year he told me if he won the lottery he would load up my backyard with the best cookers money could buy...because he would reap the benefits. He owns an F150 (and a '17 Mustang GT, but I digress) and a barter arrangement would be super-easy.Comment
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We have tuning plates in ours Its nice to be able to run multiple temperatures So we can go Hot and Fast Plus Low and Slow in the same cook
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