Franklin Pit: An Honest Review | Mad Scientist BBQ

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy oder and today i'm going to do an in-depth review of my franklin barbecue pit it's summertime which means a lot of us are spending a lot more time outside i know i am because i don't have to fight the bad weather i'm out here by the smoker all the time but if you're you know spending a lot of time with your smoker or if you're going to the beach or if you're riding your bike there's a great companion that you can use to make that time doubly valuable that's audible and so i'm so happy that they are sponsoring today's video the thing i love the most about audible is that it's entertaining but also educational because i read a lot of nonfiction now you might like fiction better well guess what audible has a humongous number of titles in all of those categories and podcasts and original content that you can stream another cool thing about audible is if you're a member you get to choose one title each month it could be the best seller or it could be a hot new release and you get to keep it forever whenever i'm barbecuing or riding in the car or doing anything outside basically anytime that i'm by myself i always have a headphone in and i'm always listening to something informative and so audible is a great platform for me to be able to learn all the kinds of stuff that i want to learn because there are books about almost everything and so i find a topic that i'm interested in i choose a book and it's just amazing how much you can learn passively while you're actively doing something else this app is the perfect companion for me because i always have my phone and i always have my earphones so no matter what i'm doing i can listen to great great stuff and right now for a limited time audible is 53 off for the first four months that's only 6.95 a month so jump on this deal while you have the chance get more out of summer with audible take advantage of the limited time offer that they have right now just go to audible.com mad scientist bbq that's audible.com mad scientist bbq first let me cut to the bottom line this is by far the best backyard pit i have ever cooked on but it's also by far the most expensive to get it to my door was four thousand one hundred forty six dollars and forty cents so that is certainly not cheap but let's look at some of the details that make it this expensive one of the big reasons why this smoker is not cheap is because it's made out of quarter inch thick steel or at least the main body is but to verify that i have my digital calipers here and we're going to check it out so a quarter inch is really the gold standard when it comes to offset smokers some people get away with 3 16 of an inch but if you're going to spend a lot of money on an offset smoker look for a quarter inch the main cook chamber is a quarter inch thick but one thing that makes this smoker special is that the firebox is not a quarter inch thick let's take a look at that because this firebox is 3 8 of an inch thick that means that it retains heat well and it's going to be extremely durable so you could go a quarter inch and be fine but they've taken that next step to make this extra thick to make it extra durable and really work well to manage the heat in the firebox next let's talk about the stack which is one of the reasons this smoker works so well the stack is wide enough and tall enough to really draw air through which means it's easier to burn a clean fire because the more oxygen you have going into your firebox and through your smoker the cleaner the fire will burn also the smoke stack is located at great level that's another key feature here because you get evenness of cooking because of that feature now this collector i don't know how important it is i think it's probably about the same as if you just had an l coming out but the other features that i mentioned the height the width the draw that it creates all make this cook extremely well next up we have the temperature gauge which is a telltrue and for me this is what i use on all of my smokers so my brazos i took that temperature gauge off put a teltru on all six thermometers on my 500 are telltrues all the thermometers on my thousand gallon pit are telltrues so basically every thermometer i use that's analog is a telltrue and this one comes with it which is nice you know that they care about accurate temperature readings because they include a thermometer of high quality now before anybody thinks that i'm a shill for franklin barbecue pits that is absolutely not true i make absolutely no money from anybody buying these pits as a matter of fact i'm out over 4 100 bucks to get this pit and use it and test it out and give you guys feedback but if i'm being honest i actually didn't even want to like this thing because i was thinking well aaron franklin can't possibly be batting a thousand with everything that he does but this smoker is great it cooks extremely well and for me to say anything else would be dishonest as you guys can see from these welds right here this smoker is well constructed now those might not be the world's greatest welds but they're a heck of a lot better than i could do they look really good to me and you can tell that this smoker the way it was built was incredibly well thought out things just work bolting on the stack after i got it that thing is locked in place it doesn't jiggle or wiggle and that's true for basically every part of the smoker it's solid and it's sturdy in every way one of the big reasons this smoker cooks so well is the firebox we already talked about how thick the metal is which is really nice but another thing that might go overlooked is the size of the firebox having a firebox this big is very important for you to be able to run a clean fire in an offset smoker because with a firebox that's big you can build a big enough fire without getting it nuclear hot in your cook chamber so the extra space allows you to build a hot fire but the gases can expand and cool somewhat before they enter the cook chamber so they don't annihilate the food that you're trying so desperately to make good some of you might wonder why the thermometer is all the way over here on the stack end of the smoker but let me open this up and show you exactly why it's placed where it is so the reason the thermometer is placed all the way over here is because the smoke and gas come out here they go to the top of the crook chamber because of the hottest gases and they move across the chamber and as they do they heat and provide smoke to the things that are cooking on the grates the hottest gases are going to be right here and as it moves across those gases will start to sink down a little bit as they get drawn out by the powerful convection of the stack so that way you have even cooking on this grate from right about here all the way to the stack and that temperature that the thermometer reads is accurate for almost the entire grape one of the biggest things that makes this smoker special is its propensity to burn a clean fire if you're barbecuing and you've been doing it for any length of time you've come to the realization that clean smoke is far far superior to dirty smoke when i say clean smoke i mean a fire that's being burned with plenty of oxygen it's nice and efficient and it's burning into compounds that are really flavorful and don't taste bitter or accurate and they don't give you kind of that barbecue burp where you burp up smoke flavor clean smoke is something that you can never really get enough of and this one produces lots of clean smoke the reason is because of all that airflow this thing is a convection machine there aren't really any moving parts but the way it's designed it allows that fire to draft across the grates go up out the stack and constantly bring in new fresh air and if there are one thing that i would say commends this smoker more than anything else it's the convection and its ability to make good clean barbecue smoke and it might seem counterintuitive but having the smoking heat go to the top of the cook chamber over and across the grates and then sucked out through the smoke stack allows us to have very very even cooking temperatures without having to sacrifice its ability to draft air another thing i've discovered is that splits of about this size work the best for this smoker the reason is because they're thick enough about maybe two inches in diameter on average that they burn for a sustained period of time because i've tried thinner pieces they burn quickly burn clean but they burn out quickly and they don't leave you a good coal bed this is kind of the perfect happy medium of giving you sustained cooking good smoke flavor while still burning clean another feature is the water pan so this is a little metal pan and it's got a shelf here so the water gets really hot and fills the whole cook chamber with moisture it's a neat addition i don't think i would have done it quite this way but it's really nice to have a dedicated spot for the water pan one feature i didn't know what to make of it first is the grease drain it's located over here by the firebox and after using this pit for a while i realized that that placement is brilliant on other smokers they have the grease drain over near the smokestack which makes you want to drop that nose end a little bit down so that all the grease runs over there and drains out properly so you don't get a grease fire but what that does is it inhibits convection so dropping the nose down makes it harder for that hot air to get across the grates and not the stack with this you don't have to do that at all and as the grease pools in the bottom and runs toward the firebox it gets drained out so you don't ever have to worry about a grease fire the last thing i want to talk about before i get into some gripes is temperature maintenance and that's just essentially can you maintain the temperature that you have whether it's 225 275 350 500 whatever it is this smoker is very easy to maintain it's very responsive to your inputs just like when you drive a sports car it's extremely responsive and it's not like a boat that you're trying to steer in the right direction but it doesn't really go to it right away this one really responds quickly it's all based on how much fuel you put in the firebox if you put in more wood the temperature is going to go up if you don't put in as much wood the temperature is going to drop down if you keep the same amount of wood in the firebox the temperature is going to hold rock steady now it's time to get into my gripes about this smoker there are a lot of great things but it's an honest review so i'm going to give you the gripes as well and one of them is obviously the price it was 34.50 for the smoker itself and then about 700 to ship it if you want a cover for the smoker that's an extra 300 bucks it is certainly not cheap they give you a great product but it's definitely expensive my next two gripes kind of go together first you can't put a damper on the stack and then for the firebox you can't ever completely close the firebox because it's got that logo and those draft holes in the door so you can't ever completely smother the fire so if you live in a place like southern california and you're worried about starting a wildfire after you've finished your cook and you want to go to sleep you can't ever actually smother the fire so that can be a problem but i think the reason they've done that is because they kind of want to make it foolproof because they want to make sure that even if you don't know how to burn a clean fire it's going to draft air well enough that it's going to take care of it for you so am i super upset about that not really i think i understand why they did it but it would be nice to have that in my control when i'm running a cook another thing that kind of bugs me is the door one thing that's great about it is that it's nice and light my wife can come and open and close the door no problem on other smokers that i have it's simply not going to happen the doors are too heavy but the issue with the door is that it leaked smoke now i have other smokers that i bought that leak a little bit of smoke and that can be easily fixed with some barbecue gasket or high temperature silicone but if you spend four thousand dollars to get a smoker to your door you do not want it to leak smoke in terms of functionality it doesn't really matter there's way more smoking heat going through the smoker than is coming out of the door this probably is i don't know 0.001 percent of the smoke that leaks out of the door so it's not about function it's about the aesthetic and you don't want to spend that much money on a smoker and feel like it's not constructed well enough to hold in all the smoke so it looks like these tanks are made and then they're little tabs that they cut out for the doors so i think the smoke leaking is a result of how this thing is made so if you open up the door here you can see little marks where they were grinding away the tabs that held this piece in place and then they have on the inside this flange to keep smoke and heat in it just isn't wide enough to hold everything in a lot of other smoker manufacturers will take a flange and put it on the outside of the door to keep everything in but this one has it on the inside and it just doesn't work as well as i would like the next thing is the wheels and this is something you might not think about this thing is extremely heavy because it's made out of thick metal which is good but the issue is those wheels are pretty small so if you're rolling this thing on concrete it works fairly well it's not easy to move around but it's not too bad you don't have to lift anything up you just push it but if you got this thing into your lawn into the dirt you would not be getting it out of there because this thing will not roll on anything that's not like concrete or asphalt or something like that my final issue relates to the size of the smoker itself so on the website it says it's a perfect size for three briskets but most briskets won't fit in the way that they're describing so the way that they're talking about putting three briskets on here is you put them perpendicular to the flow of heat and smoke so they go like flat here point towards the back flat here point towards the back flat here point towards the back now that would work if your briskets are all short if you have very small briskets but a 15-pound brisket after trimming won't fit that way you're going to have to put it point toward the fire and that limits the space you're not going to be able to do three briskets on there you probably can do two you might be able to do three or if you just get smaller briskets you could do three but i would just like it to have a little bit more space i would like the cook chamber to be deeper and a little bit longer and still maintain that incredible draw and clean smoke property that this thing has one contributing factor to the limited size of the cooking grate is this right here this shelf to hold the water pan now i would rather have the grate go all the way to the firebox because you can still put a water pan on the grate and it'll work just as well in my opinion at least and you can use that space for direct heat if you have a direct heat application so say you're smoking chicken and then at the end you want to crisp the skin well this thing can get extremely hot because it draws so well so to get this thing up to 500 degrees isn't hard so you could get it super super hot put it over there skin side down right next to the fire box crisp out that skin but you don't have that option because of this shelf and the grate doesn't extend all the way over there so to sum things up this smoker is extremely good i mean extremely extremely good and the gripes that i have are just that they're gripes most of those things i think are to make it fool proof oh there's a water pan i should put water in it because some people wouldn't think to put water in their smoker also with the firebox door they make it so that you can't shut it off and burn a dirty fire also with the damper they make it so you can't restrict airflow so much that you can't burn a clean fire so i think a lot of it is to make it foolproof and i get that because they want everybody who gets their pit to make great barbecue so my thoughts are this is the best backyard smoker i've ever used it's not really even all that close but it's very expensive if you have the money then go for it my bra does cost one-fourth of the price so this is four times as expensive as that but it's not four times better it's definitely a lot better but ultimately the decision lies with you is this worth your money well if you have the money lying around i think so if you don't want to spend four grand then you can go with an alternative either way if you follow the principles of making great barbecue you can make great barbecue on whatever smoker you have so for the franklin smoker it's not just a name it's not just hype it really is that good also i want to take a chance to give a shout out to our cameraman jd stewart he's been with us for the last about six months a lot of you in the comments have noticed that the quality of the video has dramatically improved and so we can thank jd stewart for that if you guys enjoyed this video hit the like button down below and subscribe to the channel you can also follow me on instagram and twitter at mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 194,741

Keywords: Franklin barbecue, Franklin barbecue pit, Franklin bbq pit, Franklin bbq, Aaron Franklin, brisket, texas, texas barbecue, Austin, texas bbq, offset smoker, barbecue, mad scientist bbq, Franklin bbq pits, mad scientist, smoking, leather apron, backyard smoker, Austin texas, smoker, offset smoker for beginners, offset smoker tips, offset smoker fire management, how to use offset smoker, offset smoker review, smoker review, offset smoker fire, offset smokers, best offset smoker

Id: q9RK3EjT2Ls

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021