Smoker Info

SmokerInfo.md

1. Smoker

   • Old Country BBQ Pits Insulated Gravity Fed

2. Control Unit

   • My Choice - Fireboard 2 Drive.

     • Base unit comes with everything you need, including two food probes.
     • Internal battery that will power the unit and fan for most day-of cooks.
     • Wifi / Cloud Connectivity - See/control what's going on from anywhere.
     • Predictive cooks, provides a guess as to when the food will be done. Can't speak to the accuracy.
     • Programmable cooks, option to automate the entire cook.

   • Alternate - BBQ Guru DigiQ. You can buy the whole control system, with probes and the good fan for less than just the fireboard 2. It will definitely work great, but you won't get the cool features Fireboard has.

   • Also, people can and do just use it as is, adjusting the ball valve to adjust temperature.

3. Fan Options

   • My Choice - BBQ Guru Pit Bull. Higher CFM is nice for getting up to temp quick, but definitely overkill.
   • Alternate - BBQ Guru Pit Viper. Lower CFM is not a concern. Probably saves battery. I didn't like that it was plastic.

4. Required Fan Adapter

   • With required bushing
   • Adapter only - I bought my reducing bushing separately and upgraded to stainless.

5. Optional Items

   • The stem of the included temp guage is ridiculously short (see this video).
     • This one is a commonly recommended alternative.
     • I'm considering this so I can just hook it up to fireboard. Downside would be no way to see ambient if electronics fail.
   • A charcoal chimney starter if you don't already have one. Piper doesn't like much smoke, so if I'm adding charcoal late in the cook, I like to get the charcoal hot before dumping it in, reduces the amount of dirty smoke. You can definitely just start it inside the chimeny though.
   • A propane weed burner, makes igniting super easy.
   • Some food grade, high-temp sealant. There are a few locations where the welds aren't great and it can let smoke leak in ways you don't want to. Others have reported grease out of the bottom corners. I haven't experienced that. See this video
   • A ball valve for the grease drain on the bottom. Pretty sure I've got one I can give you.

This thing is made in Mexico and basically steels it's design from Assassin, or more likely Stumps, I haven't found anything remotely comparable for the price... I'm sure those others are "better", but not 4x the price better.