smokers Drum Barrel Smoker Build (Pic Heavy)

A week or so ago I started building a new 55 gallon drum smoker build (UDS). This is my second one I have made and decided to do a few things different this time around. There are tons of ways to do these, this is my version.
 
First, acquire a barrel. This one was a sealed top oil barrel that was empty. I rinsed it out very well and had a little water in the bottom before cutting out the lid. Now, side note here...It was my plan all along to use a Weber dome lid on this smoker that is why I cut out the lid instead of grinding down the lip to take it off.
 
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Now, this one wasn't lined however many are and that is a pain. It will need to burned out very good since this held oil but it is a good idea to burn them out either way just to make sure there aren't any contaminants that get on your food. Pallets usually do the trick for me.
 
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Wah Lah
 
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So now it is time to get down to business. I am going with 2 1" ball valve intakes with risers. Here they are mocked up.
 
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And here is the lid I am using. At this point the fit isn't great but that is coming.
 
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Painted the intake pipes with high temp exhaust paint in flat black.
 
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I also did a support on each pipe with a u-bolt.
 
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They are held on with lock washers on the outside and a piece of threaded pipe on the inside.
 
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After this, I started working the lid. The inside diameter of the Weber lid is about 22.5 inches and the barrel lip is 23 inches. I started with some channel locks and just grabbed and bent it in working my way around the lip getting it close. After I had the lid where it would at least fit over the barrel I lit a few charcoals to make some smoke to see how leaky it would be. It was close but not perfect. I ended up enlisting the help of my dad and he took a 3lb mini sledge and a regular hammer and went to work rounding it out and bringing it in. Now the lid fits and seals great.
 
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Now it was time for racks. In my other UDS I had 2 grates and I will do the same with this one. While you can cook on the bottom I never do but I keep a pizza pan on there as a heat diffuser so that I have even temps across the top grate. On my other smoker I simply drilled 4 holes around the barrel at each level and used stainless hardware to hold the shelves. This worked but I was locked in on my rack height. With this go around, I used some closet racks so that it is adjustable.
 
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After it was pretty much done I sanded down the inside really well, wiped it out and then sprayed it down with pam cooking spray. Then I did a seasoning burn to prevent rust and get some flavor going in there.
 
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So that is pretty much where I am at now. I am still trying to decide a color/paint theme to do on it. I will probably end up going all flat black like my other one but who knows. I'll toss up a picture when it is all done but for now I am ready to do a cook on it. First one will be a couple pork butts for Easter this weekend.
 
Are you going to have a temp gauge on the top rack to monitor temps at rack height? Also How long of a burn will you get? I see you didnt have hatch door for refilling or adding chips. 
 
LUCKYDOG said:
Are you going to have a temp gauge on the top rack to monitor temps at rack height? Also How long of a burn will you get? I see you didnt have hatch door for refilling or adding chips. 
 
First, I am super anal with my cooking so I monitor temps all over. One on the grate, one in the food and one through the lid in a different spot than the grate. When smoking I use a BBQ Guru Digi-Q DX-2. (https://www.bbqguru.com/StoreNav?CategoryId=1&ProductId=22&gclid=Cj0KEQjwi-moBRDL4Omf9d_LndMBEiQAQtFf805nGvm_u-oiuVo5DO8trbgZK8-2QIh-v5ZyBbAf26MaAoyr8P8HAQ) Long story short it is a computer controlled temperature controller. It has a 10cfm fan that goes into the intake and controls the air intake into the drum which in turn controls the temps. Here it is in action on my original drum smoker.
 
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With my coal basket I can hold 30+lbs of coals however I usually use about 10-15 depending. I have run my smoker untouched for 30+ hours before without adding any coals or even so much as looking at it. Typically I will fire it up and get it going around 6pm and let it run overnight until around 8-10am at which point I pull the meat, wrap it in foil and put it in a cooler to rest until it is time to eat. This thing will even see that the meat is getting close to done temps ~205 internal and lower the pit temps to that and go into a holding pattern until I turn it off. It's the tits, you should get one lol.
 
As far as a door or whatever, it isn't necessary with these drum smokers as I never have to add charcoal. Without the fan blowing just letting it do its thing you can get even longer burn times but you have to monitor it closer and play with the intakes every couple hours.
 
Looks good man! Hopefully those shelf brackets aren't galvanized metal, they go down as far as the fire where it is hot enough to worry about zinc poisoning. I'm sure you checked it all out, you got skills. Looks awesome.
 
Yeah ... I'm going to upgrade my controller from the Party Q to one that can be plugged in, so I can smoke overnight in the Akorn grill ...
 
Tighten down the vents a bit and let the blower do the work, while I'm lazy (or better yet, asleep) . ..
 
The Party Q runs on batteries and it's hit or miss (based on temp, humidity, direct sunlight) how many hours of smoking you get out of the two AA's ...
 
Glad you posted, reminded me I want to look into that sooner than later ... because I need to pull some pork soon, and I want to do those butts overnight w/o worry ...
 
The Hot Pepper said:
Looks good man! Hopefully those shelf brackets aren't galvanized metal, they go down as far as the fire where it is hot enough to worry about zinc poisoning. I'm sure you checked it all out, you got skills. Looks awesome.
 
Sooo...yes. The racks are galvanized metal but I have done due diligence. For starters, on my seasoning run I got the barrel screaming hot 400+ to make sure the rest of the cooties after the burn out are gone as well as the galvanized metal. With that being said, under normal smoking conditions galvanized metal will not omit any toxic chemicals. That only starts to happen around 392* or 200*c. Since I never cook remotely close to that temperature it is completely safe. Especially once the whole inside is covered in "seasoning"/the black stuff that coats everything lol. 
 
I'm glad you thought of it, but it will be that hot near the coals, they extend down very far. :)
 
But glad you feel it is safe now.
 
chiefmanywrenches said:
 
First, I am super anal with my cooking so I monitor temps all over. One on the grate, one in the food and one through the lid in a different spot than the grate. When smoking I use a BBQ Guru Digi-Q DX-2. (https://www.bbqguru.com/StoreNav?CategoryId=1&ProductId=22&gclid=Cj0KEQjwi-moBRDL4Omf9d_LndMBEiQAQtFf805nGvm_u-oiuVo5DO8trbgZK8-2QIh-v5ZyBbAf26MaAoyr8P8HAQ) Long story short it is a computer controlled temperature controller. It has a 10cfm fan that goes into the intake and controls the air intake into the drum which in turn controls the temps. Here it is in action on my original drum smoker.
 
AB2A0EA0-76C8-4F2F-B566-463BAD787D49.jpg

 
With my coal basket I can hold 30+lbs of coals however I usually use about 10-15 depending. I have run my smoker untouched for 30+ hours before without adding any coals or even so much as looking at it. Typically I will fire it up and get it going around 6pm and let it run overnight until around 8-10am at which point I pull the meat, wrap it in foil and put it in a cooler to rest until it is time to eat. This thing will even see that the meat is getting close to done temps ~205 internal and lower the pit temps to that and go into a holding pattern until I turn it off. It's the tits, you should get one lol.
 
As far as a door or whatever, it isn't necessary with these drum smokers as I never have to add charcoal. Without the fan blowing just letting it do its thing you can get even longer burn times but you have to monitor it closer and play with the intakes every couple hours.
great burn times!! I have seen the fan used on the WSM's not on a drum. V cool
 
So I made a little progress today by painting my smoker. First I did 2 coats of engine header paint good to 2000* supposedly. Then, I followed that up with 2 coats of black high heat brake caliper paint with ceramic. I still plan to add a logo or something but not sure what.
 
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So last update for this smoker minus some Q-view that will happen this weekend. I got started on another smoker for my friend last night and decided to use the lid we cut out of his drum as an ash catcher for my fire basket. I just tack welded the legs to the lid and called it a day. Not perfect but my tacks are getting better. I just need to bend the sides up to make more of a bowl shape.
 
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Hope everyone had a happy Easter. My weekend started out by buying two 9.5 lb pork shoulders to get ready for the smoker. I mixed up some rub consisting of about a half package of Dittle Dattle seasoning, some of my house seasoning so eloquently dubbed as "Not Lowrys", some extra garlic powder, extra onion powder, some paprika and a lot of brown sugar. My mom requested sweet and spicy and that's exactly what she got.
 
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They hit the smoker around 5:30 once the temps leveled out to 220. Since I was doing an overnight smoke I wanted to make sure it didn't get done in the middle of the night. I usually estimate about 1.5 hours per pound.
 
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This picture was about 10 in the morning. It ran all night and I never had to touch it or open it once. I wanted to check the other butt because I only put a thermo probe in one of them. I probed it in a different spot and it was right at 200 so I took it off and put it back in the foil pan and wrapped it in foil good and into the cooler wrapped in towels. The other one came off about 20 minutes later. When I got to my parents house they had been resting in the cooler for 2.5 hours and were still very hot. They basically fell apart as I like and were delicious. The new smoker did amazing, I should also add that I started with a big full basket of charcoal and in 16-17 hours only burned trough between 1/3 and 1/2 of it.
 
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