Considering a stick burner

[Richard Chrz]

I'm going through a shift in how I cook and I see myself possibly selling my Weber kamado in a year it just does not truly fit my wants other than pretty, keeping my 26 kettle as my primary grill, adding a 3 burner gas grill only to be used as a small gas oven outside for dutch ovens or cooking with pans.

I think I would also like to add a 36 reverse flow stick burner for cooks up to 6 - 9 hours, it may scratch my itch to play with fire. What I do not know though is maintenance. I like to keep a fairly clean "free of grease" cooker. I would likely only use it 3 - 4 times a year, it would be kept in my garage not around back, and would be used in my driveway. So moving it around likely keeps me in the 36 size.

What are the big negatives to a stick burner, other than building maintaining a clean fire, which I think I would enjoy?

[TripleB]

Had a Jambo backyard smoker for about 10 years. Internal cooking area was 8sft. I believe you have nailed the biggest negatives, that being space (they take up a lot of room) and time (though if you want to do brisket, you're looking at 14-16 hours at roughly 280d). 6-9 hours for pork butt, but probably a bit longer 12 hours.

One question, a couple of negatives and one recommendation.

Question - why a reverse flow? Sometimes the tuning plate throws people off and takes awhile to adjust to. My Jambo was a regular offset and her sweet spot was 280d.

Negatives - 1) You have to keep an eye on it. That temp will drop quick if your not paying attention and if you lose your fire, it's a pain to get back. An offset is like taking the prettiest girl to the prom. You always have to keep an eye on her. 2) hot spots. My Jambo had no hot spots, but generally you get them with large surface areas.

Recommendation - If you have not already, check out the KBQ. 1) It has an ATC that ranges by 30d. You still get to manage a fire and get great smoke flavor, but you don't have to worry really about the temp as long as you have a good coal bed. 2) It has a small footprint (looks like a trash compactor) and can hold a lot. It can hold 14-16 racks of ribs, 8 butts or 2 briskets. 3) It is a BBQ and convection oven. So it will cook your food faster. Spares in my Jambo - 4.5-5 hrs. Spares in my KBQ - 3 hrs.

Look forward to what you get.

[Richard Chrz]

TripleB my mind is far from being made up, i ask questions and make counter points to get feedback, and counter points from those that own them. Keep them coming im reading and asking new questions my head.

[cruiseplanner1]

And I am reading them with you Richard. I love using my stick burner and would never go to pellet. Maybe looking to upgrade myself here

[Alan Brice]

MCS Baby!!!

[mrteddyprincess]

Hey Richard, I've had mine since 2018. It's a Lang 48 in "patio deluxe."

I don't really have anything negative to say about it.

In general, one needs access to seasoned wood splits. You live in WI and I can't see that being an issue for you. I have a local firewood delivery business dump a rick of hickory in my driveway about once every nine months or so. I stack it in my garage.

I think you'll have fun building that clean fire. The hardest thing I had to learn with the Lang was how to cook chicken. I now have an eye for dirty bird smoke so that my chicken pieces don't come out coated in black soot. It's tricky because what I deemed "clean" smoke with ribs, shoulders, and brisket wasn't even close to being the clean smoke I have to use for chicken.

And you'll be surprised by the overwhelming number of people in the Midwest who have never had wood fired BBQ. I have a PK360 and I love it too, but the smoke profiles, especially with chicken, are on different levels with the Lang producing an incredible smoke profile.

Good luck! I can't wait to see the pics.

Brian

[Richard Chrz]

One brand that holds my attention always is Lang.

I feel I have good access to wood, I would not need a super large supply, it would be an occasional use. Beef and pork ribs, maybe to get smoke on something I am going to finish or start with Sous Vide.

[mrteddyprincess]

One thing I forgot to mention is that I have never cooked directly on the grates. I usually put a cooling rack over a half aluminum pan so that the meat gets smoked but the drippings go into the pan, rather than the bottom of my smoker. This works well at keeping everything clean. B

[cruiseplanner1]

Wow, thanks mrteddy for that great tip! What a way to keep your grates and smoker clean from grease. I will be trying that on my next smoke. Another good reason I belong to this site.

[Steve B]

We can talk in detail about your desire for an offset on our next chat. I’ll shoot you a PM Richard when I have a moment to breathe. Spare time has been very limited of late.

[yakima]

KBQ here. No offset experience.
Issues for me are mobility and wood handling. Prior owner of my rig installed quality wheels/casters.
The orchard wood that I have has to be cut down to fist/hand sized chunks. I use a Black and Decker Alligator corded 2 handed little chain saw. Put the jaws in the middle of a 16 inch chunk, grab the handles, pull the trigger, then scramble around to collect the pieces.

Another alternative you might consider: A smokeless fire pit, like Breeo, topped with a Santa Maris style adjustable grate. I believe that Ash & Ember has the attachment. Designed for kettles, but works fine on fire pit. I reversed the circular bottom flange. Fuel selection for a fire pit is easier than for KBQ.

[dpearce]

Following, I'd eventually like a stick burner as well.

[Andrrr]

You mean I get to talk you into another smoker now?😂
I’d imagine if you have the itch to be interactive with your fire, that kamado is leaving you a little empty. I’m not sure I need another one but if you’re going to sell, lmk.

[Richard Chrz]

LOL right! I have enjoyed the Kamado, right now though I only see myself using it as an "oven", I really do not like the diffuser plate experience. If I all I want is an oven, I think a 3 burner gaser sitting in some corner could make a pretty convenient oven.

I love the plancha on it, and I still think the upgrade grate from SNS is a solid purchase.

[Andrrr]

I prefer the SnS experience to the diffuser as well if space permits. I still haven’t bought the SnS grate either😑 Richard Chrz

[Henrik]

I too question why you want a reverse flow (specifically). Nothing wrong with them, but if you want a simple cooker that's easy to clean then a "normal" flow offset gets the job done. It will be greasy, but all the grease drops to the bottom and runs out through a valve or hole, I've never seen that as a problem. When done, just scrape it out with a plastic spatula and then pour hot water in the food chamber (with a bucket underneath the grease drain, and then put it back in the garage.

The whole point of having an offset is the fun cooking with it, as well as the clean smoke. I've had a kamado (the green one) for 7 years, and although the offset needs a lot more baby sitting the flavor is just so much better.

Let me know if you have any specific questions. One thing to consider is upgrading the wheel size. Most offsets come with wheels that are too small, and a decent offset of the size your'e after weighs in at 150-200 kilos. It's not trivial to move around. Think through the path of travel from your garage to wherever you want to cook with it.

[Alan Brice]

330 - 440 lbs. for those of use who were deprived of the metric sys, growing up.
All great advice here.

[Ace]

Greetings Richard,
A few years ago I wanted to learn about offset wood/charcoal cooking and was considering a smoker from Aaron Franklin. That was way over my budget at the time just to find out if I was going to like / use it. I was in the process of replacing a worn out gas grill so I settled on a Oklahoma Joe's gas / offset combo. From your post above, this is not what you're looking for but I thought I would use my experience with this unit to help answer some of the questions that you asked. This is a fairly inexpensive cooker and the internet is flush with mods and fixes to improve these to be more like a more expensive cooker. If you're buying a better quality unit, then a lot of fixes for those issues will probably already be built in.

Reverse flow or direct flow is good, just a little different on how the smoke travels over the meat. I actually extended my smoke stack downward closer to the grate to get the smoke to travel over the meat more before it gets exhausted out the top mounted stack (an Aaron Franklin tip) .

The meat that I was cooking was getting overcooked closer to the firebox and less done on the far end of the chamber. To help with that I made a heat deflector to try and force the heat down underneath the cooking grates more plus rotating the meat positions as normal.

As far as helping with less grease clean up, I use two water pans under the grates to add moisture and to catch most of the drippings.

As you know, making a clean fire usually is a matter of inlet air shutter / exhaust damper adjustment and well seasoned wood.
I'll normally crack the firebox door on most cooks to get more oxygen.

I'll post some pictures below to show some of the mods that I did but again, a better, more expensive unit should have these already covered. Looking forward to see what you end up with. Hope that helps... Enjoy the journey.

[Alan Brice]

Man! That is clean!

[Henrik]

I think the Oklahoma Joe is an awesome reasonably priced smoker. With the mods suggested it's great. But I want air from the firebox to go up first, hit the "ceiling" and then move downwards across the food chamber to the smoke stack.

[barelfly]

Too bad Idaho isn’t closer to you, as someone was selling an LSG offset for cheap within the last few weeks. That would be fun to cook with!

[Uncle Bob]

One of the common things to deal with on a reverse flow is that the plate that guides the heat/smoke flow to the far end of the cook chamber before opening up to allow it to reverse course back to the stack is that it will heat up and give you radiant heat under the cook racks. Users can get used to that and move the meat where necessary to mitigate, but that's an issue to consider and to a degree complicates the cooking procedure.

Conventional flow offsets will do other things, particularly at the transfer portal from the firebox to the cook chamber. Older style, or less expensive models will just have a good sized hole that enters toward the bottom of the cook chamber expecting the heat to rise and move to the stack. The outcome there is usually a big hot spot just above that portal, rendering the first foot or so of the cook grate too hot for long smokes. Those units will often have a water tray in that space to make some use of an area that is otherwise very difficult or unusable. In the past several years most of the bigger names in premium offsets have been developing dozens of different designs of baffles to mount on the cook chamber side of the portal to redirect all or some amount of the heat/smoke upward which, in conjunction with the design of the exhaust stack collector will induce a convection flow pattern that in the good cases evens the heat across the grate, and in some cases, depending on the configuration, that hot spot at the fire box end is nearly eliminated except for a couple of inches of grate due to radiant heat from the common wall between the fire box and the cook chamber. Dean's Jambo and my LSG Texas Edition have a high mounted fire box with a baffle at the portal that routes the heat/smoke near the top of the cook chamber. I find it very good for comparative uniform heat across the cook chamber, though if there's an upper grate as well as the lower grate, the upper one can be upwards of 100 degrees higher (not a bad thing, just a different temp to be used as needed, e.g. chicken above, beef below). If you're going for a "narrow" cook chamber you might want to look at the baffled portal designs since, let's say a 36" chamber will only have 24-8" of useable grate length with the older, conventional transfer portal. Being aware of this will afford you many rabbit holes of research.

As for general cons, grease accumulation could be a concern depending on what and how much you're cooking. For example, four prime briskets or half a dozen racks of dino ribs can generate a lot of tallow. The suggestions above to use drip pans can help, just know there will still be a lot of rendered fat to deal with. Another con to consider is the cooking grate material. Expanded metal is the baseline and isn't horrible for cleaning, but takes time, effort, and commitment. Many better builders are offering bar style, or laser cut plate grates for a significant up charge. Another con is wood storage. This is location dependent. Various critters might find your wood rack a nice motel. If they're nesters just being mindful may be enough. The problem comes from what else do they do in their new neighborhood. Storing inside the garage is good unless wood eating bugs come along for the ride, they will "enjoy" both the fire wood and the building framing with equal delight.

All that said for those who enjoy being an active cooker seeking outstanding results (after the learning curve) an offset is a wonderful thing. The naysayers about the fire management likely haven't made the effort to figure it out. Number one is you must maintain a good, consistent bed of coals. Do that, and the reset of the fire management is comparatively easy. Not only can you control temp with the fire, but also smoke output/level. Many focus on just the amount of air in and out, but the way you feed the splits makes a difference. To keep it simple; stack the new splits with lots of airflow spacing and you get relatively more heat. Stack the new splits more tightly together and you increase smoke output. There's more to it, but that fire management 201.

[jfmorris]

I will toss out a few quick ideas, as I need to shutdown the home office for the day and go check on Yvonne.

Outdoor gas grill

You say primarily for dutch ovens and pots/pans. If the goal is indirect for the dutch oven, I get it. But if the goal is direct firing the pots/pans/DO's, I would think about something like one of the 3 burner Camp Chef outdoor stoves instead. That gives you 3 nice burners that can handle all your pots, pans and dutch ovens, but not for indirect baking, if the is what you are looking for. Heck - Camp Chef actually makes a $399 outdoor gas powered oven, which has 2 burners on top of it I think. Not sure if it is big enough for your dutch ovens inside though - more casserole pan sized I think. If you go the gas grill route, I would go for a side burner so that you do have the direct fired option. I've done my DO on a gas grill, and you are FAR from the flame and it has a tent over it, so getting to a boil is harder than you think.

Offset

I'll leave you to ponder reverse flow and direct flow (I've cooked on both), but what I was going to chime in on was how I minimized cleanup on my old offset, with a 24x36 cooking chamber. I would line the bottom of the barrel (under the cooking grate) with heavy duty foil, with a hole poked through it at the grease drain. I kept a galvanized steel bucket on the ground to catch the drippings, and would toss the foil after a cook. Sometimes, if the cooking grate was crowded with ribs, butts, etc, grease would get under the foil, in which case I squirted some dawn in there, and hosed it all out through the grease trap, and into the yard.

You don't want to shut the lid if you have hosed it out, and leave water, or for that matter, a bunch of grease, to grow mold. I would deep clean at least once a year with Dawn, brushes and the hose, and then drop a chimney of lit charcoal in the firebox with all vents open, just to dry the grill out good, before I covered it with the cover again. If kept in a garage, no cover is needed of course.

I never had mold issues if I left all the vents wide open when not in use, and/or did not use a cover.

[Richard Chrz]

Regarding gas grill, it would only be for cooking in roasters, dutch ovens covered pans 2 zone kind of thing, i’m not worried about getting to temp so high that im boiling water, i have induction burners for those, But a convenient gas oven outside could be a benefit.

[jfmorris]

Richard Chrz what I used to do on my Weber gas grill to make it more "oven like" for things like reheating or warming food for Thanksgiving was to put a sheet pan or heavy aluminum foil across the flavorizer bars (under the grate), leaving about a 1 inch gap all around. That way the heat wasn't coming up directly under the food, but circulating more. And I literally just went by the lid thermometer, although these days I could clip a probe to the grate.

[jfmorris]

Richard Chrz I have baked bread in a dutch oven on the gas grill, with the dutch oven over the center two burners, and the outer 2 burners on high. I think I did it because I had a sourdough boule ready to go for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but my wife needed the oven for sides.

[Santamarina]

A stickburner is a lot of work…but worth every second! I’ve used a kettle and an offset, and rated from friends kamodos and pellet smokers, and without question I prefer the offset 100% of the time.

It becomes a major bragging right when you can nail your temp AND have a clean burning fire at the same time. It’s as much of an art as a science, and from what I know about you from these pages you’re certainly an artist and a scientist when it comes to food!

So if you’re looking for someone to talk you out of it, I’m not your guy!

[efincoop]

I am a little late to the discussion, but I thought I would share my experience. First a tip of the hat to Uncle Bob . He really captures the pros & cons very well.

I decided I wanted to get a stick burner after I found I could never duplicate the taste of my son-in-law's food from his Lang 36 Deluxe Patio model. After doing lots of research I landed on the Shirley Fabrication 24x36 Patio Model. There was a long wait period for new build so I kept my eyes open for a used one close by and got lucky. I am super happy with it. The Shirley holds temps like a champ and the learning curve was very short. I made ribs on it the first day & they were amazing. I love having 3 shelves inside as it gives me lots of flexibility! Yes there is some maintenance but as others say, it is not terrible, but it is not maintenance free.

As Henrik pointed out offsets are heavy. The Shirley weighs in at close to 900lbs. The big back wheels make it fairly easy to move on level ground, but it is firebox side heavy and with a shorter wheelbase than the Lang, it will tip backwards going uphill unless you go firebox first.

As far as hot spots go with this particular reverse flow cooker, they are on the bottom left & top left. Last weekend I had it loaded with 12 racks of ribs for a charity cook with my son-in-law and those were the spots we had to rotate. My son-in-law has insulated his Lang's firebox but he still can't maintain temps like my Shirley. He also feels the warming box is a waste of space. You may feel differently especially if you think you will do some cold smoking. To be fair I switched to a V-shaped basket and that was a game changer. It may be true with Lang as well.

I hope all this helps. Feel free to reach out if you have any follow up questions. I'm adding a few photos for reference.

[jfmorris]

I didn't even think about the weight of a quality offset. Those hundreds of pounds are a big consideration for someone that wants to move it in and out of a garage for use.

[Richard Chrz]

jfmorris, weight of moving has been in my mind, but my wheelchair is power so it pulls as i move, and stops with electric brakes as I stop, and if need be there would be room left on the grate for a neighbor that helped me. For me clean up and a few other bits are my biggest hurdles

[realdocBBQ]

I'll weigh in a little bit, a lot of what I would say has already been covered fairly well.

• Reverse flow - I haven't built one of these, I just can't bring myself to WANT to. They're not bad, but the (small) downsides kind turn me off a little bit. If I'm bothering running an offset, then I want the heavier smoke and bark formation you get on an offset. A RF... you might get slightly less of this. Many people who have or do use them side by side have noted less of these things on the RF. There are physics reasons for this, but for me, I don't like radiant heat cooking all that much. I prefer more of a convective heat cook, and mostly from one direction. RF will give you lots of radiant heat from below and some convective heat from above. Again, not really a bad thing, but something to get used to. Cleanup will involve scraping the baffle plate, which often isn't removable on these. I've seen some that are, but those also let grease and gunk get underneath it, so you have to be even more diligent and proactive in that case. Just seems messy to me. A smaller baffle like in my Yoder pellet cooker it isn't such a big deal, but a bigger, heavier baffle in a larger RF seems like it would be messy if removable and inconvenient to clean if not. I dunno, like I said haven't used one, but I don't care much for the radiant heat cooking, so I haven't pursued it.
• Offset flavor - can't be beat. 'Nuff said.
• Offset bark - can't be beat. 'Nuff said.
• Fire management - this is an upside AND a downside. I don't think you'll have any problem with it, but sourcing wood that is appropriately sized and processed for your cooker and just getting to know your cooker will do worlds of good for this point.

A lot of people point to one of the big benefits of a reverse flow smoker being "even temperatures". This is all the rage these days, and while I get the temptation, it's honestly not that big of a deal. I actually LIKE having some different temp zones, I can cook different proteins in different areas, or move from one to the other to really work on the bark the way I want, etc. Someone above mentioned baffle plates being added to redirect flow. This is a big thing these days, too, and I am not much of a fan of the horizontal baffle plates (i.e., Workhorse and some others), I think it's actually the WORST of both worlds. Heat wants to go up. When you have an open traditional offset, the heat comes blasting out of the firebox very active and direct. This leads to a superheated zone right in front of the throat opening and an often 'unusable' zone for the first foot or more.

If you put a horizontal baffle plate here... yes, it redirects that heat out and downward. And when it gets to the end of the baffle plate, what does it want to do? It wants to go upward. So, now, you can get a hot zone right in the MIDDLE of your cooker, and now you've got radiant heat cooking from below at the throat opening, then hot, convective cooking from below at the end of the baffle plate, and a lazier convective cooking from ABOVE beyond that zone, all the way to the collector or exhaust. To me, this is too many varying types, directions and intensity levels of heat to mess with. I just don't like it.

For me and many other builders, the vertical baffle plate has become the go-to and seems to be the best way to get even, predictable and consistent heat across the entire cooking surface. See these pics... this is my measurement on a 250-gallon cooker I built with a vertical baffle plate with some holes through it to allow a little bit of the direct heat to come right through and most of it to be directed upwards. TOTALLY eliminated the 'hot zone' at the throat opening, allowing 100% of the main level cooking grates to be used at the same time with the same cooking environment:

6ºF from end to end:


3ºF from end to end:



3ºF



2.6ºF:



As you can see, even on a large cooker, you can get great control with proper baffle arrangement and proper fire management. To me, this negated the need for a RF, essentially. This is on the main cooking grate - upper grates will be hotter, anywhere from 50 to 70 to 100 degrees, depending on how 'energetic' your fire and your convective flow is.

There's just a ton of factors.

One thing you didn't mention, Richard Chrz is your budget? I'd make a suggestion, perhaps... maybe look into a Smokeslinger? They do have the Liberty 94 offset, which is a great cooker. But also the traditional Smokeslinger cooks with direct heat and can do 90-minute ribs that are fantastic, can do direct grilling, can do offset and reverse flow modes and many different configurations. They also have a Smokeslinger Mini. Both can do all those things. I've cooked on 'em numerous times and helped teach a class in cooking on them, learning how to use them, etc. They're excellent pits. You generally cook with charcoal or wood chunks burned DOWN to coals, but you can also throw logs on when cooking in offset mode and it works exactly like an offset. Maybe something worth looking into.


Or.... if you want, I'll build you a pit.


I actually have one sitting around I haven't finished yet, and it's a fully-insulated 'chubby' which is exactly half of a 250-gallon tank. 30" diameter cook chamber and 48" long, slide out shelves. It's on big golf cart wheels, but it's still a fairly compact unit one guy can pretty easily move around, especially if you're using it mostly on concrete. I pull it around easily on gravel and grass. Just throwing it out there.

Hope some of this was helpful. Definitely hit me up if something I said wasn't clear or something. These are only my opinions and experiences. Everyone has their own style of cooking and the way they like to do things.

[Henrik]

I concur 100% with what realdocBBQ said, solid advice, especially around the construction details.