Custom build/DIY BBQ Offset Smoker

Hello all, apologies if a thread like this exists already, I searched for somehting similar but the only results were for retail smokers you can buy already.

A bit of background, I have a garden but hardly used it, girlfriend moved in and now have a young family, she convinced me to BBQ more, so I threw away my £30 cheap B&Q kettle grill and bought a £110 Drum grill from Argos. Watched about a billion Youtube videos on how to BBQ and realised smoking briskets and beef ribs is what I want to do. So tried to convert my grill to a pseudo smoker by putting the hot coals and wood on one end of the drum, the results were pretty good (to the uninitiated), everyone that ate the food loved it and they looked forward to my BBQs. But for me things were not as good as I thought they should be, the briskets were never as moist as I wanted. Simply put, the food was much too close to the heat - plus with a big brisket on the grill bed there is no space for anything else - and I usually smoke beef ribs, pork ribs and pork shoulder during a session.

So I did some looking, all of the retail offset smokers were either too thin/small or too large for me to manouvere through my house to get to the garden, so I decided it may need to be custom made. Looking at the prices for custom made BBQs I can buy in England, I'm looking at £2500-3500, I'm not willing to fork out that much. So my first queston here is, does anyone know of a place that can custom make an offset smoker for considerably better prices than the above ?

I have decided to build my own, after watching 1 million Youtube videos (considerably less than the amount I watched on how to BBQ) on custom offset smokers I know what I want, I know what features I want and I think I know how to do it. Whilst I consider myself an "I'll give that a go" type of person, I have never welded anything in my life. I have done an induction for a workshop, to use their metalwork area and convinced myself I can do it. The key design element is that I need to be able to take it apart, so I can get it to my garden and if I ever want to take it somewhere to use it, I can.

So my thinking is, make it semi modular, cook chamber, frame and wheels (with collapsible legs/supports), fire box. I have rudimentary designs for all, utilising features that I have seen on other smokers. I have calculated the materials I need and early cost estimates are around £700-800 plus workshop time (I hope 6-8 all day sessions should do it). I want it to be completed by mid-July/begining of August at the latest, i have roped in my bro to help because many hands make light work and he is strong !!

Any advice you can give me on this project would be greatly appreciated - especially from the fabricators among you

Why offset and not a vertical one?

A vertical one can be as tall as a door and will fit through the house to the back garden.

Good question. I have dismissed them outright from the start, but for no real reason

Now I have given it some thought, I think its because I like the idea of a large barrel-type smoker, I don't get excited when I picture having friends and family round and putting the meat in a vertical smoker.

I did give the reverse offset smoker some thought, but after watching so many BBQ videos it seems that a lot of the popular BBQ'ers use normal offset smokers so I thought it wasn't worth going for a reverse smoker. My understanding of the reverse flow is it gives a more consistent temp through the cook chamber, my hope with having a longer chamber is, I don't have to have food too close to the fire box and with the help of a heat deflector at the chamber entry and some moveable plates, I can even out the temp.

Decided I needed a big grill too, so built a Santa Maria grill too

Built a little something for the missus too

Yeah I might've gone a bit overboard LOOOOOL.

Probably the smoker because I needed to do so much thinking about how to make it modular, to fit it through my house and up the stairs and down again into the garden. When you have never fabricated for a day in your life stuff that to fabricators is no big deal seem like constructing a suspension bridge !! I did the build with my bro who you can see in the pic, I'm a little bit smaller than him, I got my cousin to come and give us a hand when I brought it home, he is a little bit smaller than me. We were busted by the time we moved the smoker, its ridiculously heavy and very big, but putting it together and seeing it work for the first time was amazing. I have a bit of grinding and welding to do, will hire a mig welder and do it in the garden next year, left a load of spot welds.

The ratchet mechanism on the Santa Maria grill was a challenge, I couldn't get my head around how it worked, was super shocked when it worked first time. Honestly, there are so many things wrong with the smoker and the grill but, its all cosmetic and, considering me and my bro have never done anything even remotely like this before I am very proud of what we built !!! Got loads more pictures if anyone is interested in more details. Both grill and smoker are modular with collapsible legs, on frames with pneumatic castors. I didn't paint anything, just seasoned the key components with canola oil, bought some rust spray for the areas that won't get any heat.

Dimensions of the smoker:

Cook Chamber - 52cm diameter, 144 cm length
Firebox - 50cm x 67cm (length)

Firebox is semi-insulated, its a box inside a box with ceramic wool surrounding all sides apart from the top. I can use the top as a griddle, or to pre-heat the wood splits, or can put a grill on top and cook with hot coals. I did build a second shelf for the cook chamber but it cramped things up too much, I needed to have the lower shelf lower down and have the cook chamber door open wider from the top, to make it usable.

Whole thing is 2.4m long and about 2.2m high

Santa Maria Grill is about 1.5m wide (inc handles), the grill area is 1m wide and 55cm deep, I have firebricks along the bottom to help heat retention.

what the actual f-ing hell??!!

This is really fantastic on every level. Double delight to open this and find out that its an old thread reaching an amazing conclusion.

You literally took the opposite route to me. I was sloshed one evening and started watching the bbq challenge or something on netflix. Woke up the next morning to the receipt of a wood pellet smoker working its way to me on a pallet. Managed to use it once at the end of the season 2020 and havent used it since!

I'm sure you've seen already my favourite bbq/smoking guy Malcolm reed on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC--MxpGXJ3LVD8Kvl...

and reddit smoking https://www.reddit.com/r/smoking/

The guys i bought my smoker from actually competed in bbq competitions, and have some unbelievable sauces and rubs. Which are well worth checking out.

https://www.fireflybbq.co.uk/

If you havent already got one, maybe invest in a welders blanket to lay over the top for insulation while you smoke, but I'd definitely also get some kind of winter cover and tie it down tight.

Happy smoking!

Edit: weirdly today, I went to the best bbq restaurant I've ever been to, Smokestak in london's east end. WELL worth going if you can

Thanks for the advice and the recommendations, will definitely check them out, I have never used a shop-bought rub, would like to see what they are like. Also definitely gonna check out Smokestak, I'm in North East London