How to Manage the Fire in a Cheap Offset Smoker (COS)

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder and today i'm going to answer a question that i've gotten over and over and over again today i'm going to show you how to manage your fire if you own a cheap offset smoker i view this video as one of the more important videos that i've ever made because there are so many people out there who have a smoker like this and not one like the one in the back there and they need to know how to manage their fire so they can make great barbecue without spending thousands of dollars on an expensive smoker it may seem counterintuitive but using a small offset smoker like this especially one with thin metal is much harder than using something like that 500 gallon smoker in the background the 500 gallon is much easier to burn a clean fire because there's so much heat in the coal bed there that you can put in big pieces you don't have to have the logs arranged perfectly or anything like that and it will just burn them up and produce pretty clean smoke now there can be great smoke that you produce or pretty good smoke but generally speaking there's a lot of forgiveness when you use a big offset with these small offsets all that forgiveness is taken away it is a cruel master and you have to be incredibly diligent about how you manage that fire because if you're not then your fire is going to get choked off and you're not going to produce the kind of flavors that is the whole reason why you're barbecuing on an offset in the first place now we're going to do in this video is pretty simple i'm going to teach you how to start the fire how to maintain the fire the temperature and the smoke correctly and then i'm going to teach you what to do when you're done with the fire and you need to walk away so here i've got a chimney of lump charcoal i prefer lump charcoal i think it burns a little hotter works better to light the wood that we're going to add and then also there are no adjuncts or fillers or binders or anything like that besides just pure charcoal now to light it i have a starter here you can use all different kinds you can use those little white cubes that people like you can use the tumbleweeds you can use those things that look like little boards that you break off in like doesn't matter this is what i'm going to use today we're going to get this thing lit and put the coals over the top of it and after about 15 minutes we should be ready to go okay we've got flames shooting out of the top of this chimney and it's starting to get white ash on the coals that are on the very top that tells me this thing is ready to go so i'm going to pick it up pour it into the firebox now i wouldn't recommend lighting your charcoal chimney on this grate but i didn't really have anything else to use today if you have some concrete you don't mind messing up but for me this is the thing that i didn't mind messing up so i started it there now after we have our coals in now it's time to start adding wood and so i have a bag of wood i got at cabela's and i'm going to cut that open and see what we're working with when you buy a bag of wood you'll run into some issues so in this bag of wood i have this piece and this piece this one i could probably use it might be a shade bigger than what i like but we could totally use this this one there's not a chance i can use this it is humongous and i need to cut this down and you're probably going to run into that issue no matter where you get your wood so i'm going to take this over and split some of this down so that we have pieces that are appropriate for this size of smoker [Music] so [Music] so those two pieces of wood i've now split into one two three four five six seven eight pieces so these are a more appropriate size for the size of smoker all right so i'm going to start with these two pieces because generally speaking you want to get your fire hotter than you want and then let it settle down into cooking temperature the reason for that is twofold number one is you know that you're not gonna have a wild swing up when you put your meat on first and then second is you build a bigger coal bed to maintain that fire for longer at this point i'm going to leave the door to the firebox and the door to the cook chamber open because i don't want any of this white smoke that you see right here to go through and you know deposit on the grates or anything like that also i want as much air to move past that as possible so that i get an open flame and i'm not depriving it of oxygen in addition i have these vents on the firebox wide open but i'm not only going to do that i'm actually going to pull out this drawer some so i get plenty of airflow more than i think i need because if there's too much oxygen that's not a problem if there's too little oxygen that's a big big problem these two logs are now burning in open flame that tells me two things fire's healthy and number two is i'm producing clean smoke which is going to make great tasting barbecue so i want to get the air to start drafting through this thing so i'm going to close the firebox door then i'm also going to close the main cook chamber door because i want this metal to heat up because when the metal heats up it's going to draft better because if you don't allow the metal to heat up the hot air from the firebox will come in here it'll cool down and no longer escape through the chimney as well as it would if the metal were already hot now one quick tip if your wood feels kind of heavy that is it has still quite a bit of water in it you can preheat these pieces of wood by placing them on the firebox so you place them on there they get hotter and they ignite more easily than if they're still cold and also if you leave them on for a while it can actually drive water out of the wood and you have a better burning fire at this point i'm starting to be concerned about temperature so i'm going to monitor the temperature because i want it to go up high and then come back down and settle in to a good cooking temperature and on a smoker of this size i would recommend something around 250 degrees you're going to have fluctuations because this is a live fire and you have to manage it yourself so it might get as high as 275 or as low as 225 but if you keep it in that range it's still brisket weather inside that cooker so i don't trust the gauge on top of the smoker it's already filled with water it's filled with water condensation rather i think the second day i ever had this thing so what i do is i use the thermoworks smoke x4 so this is four channels and it's got a remote receiver so you can be inside and you can be monitoring the temperature of your pit so you don't have to stay out here 100 of the time and it's got a i think a one mile range on this so that's great so i can be in the basement and still get signal from the smoker that's outside digital probes are much more useful than analog thermometers in my experience now there are some exceptions if you have telltrue or a brand that's have really high quality those are very useful but the gold standard is always going to be a digital probe to illustrate the difference between this analog thermometer and the digital probe i have inside on great level this one is reading well over 400 degrees actually with the condensate no it's reading well over 500 degrees whereas the digital probe right now is right about 415. so that's a big difference when the temperature of the smoker goes down to about 250 degrees the difference between what you're reading with the digital probe and what you're seeing on this analog thermometer might be a smaller difference but it's still going to be a big enough difference to make a difference in the outcome of your barbecue now all i'm going to do is wait for this temperature to settle down into about 250 degrees and then we're going to work with the fire and then if we were cooking meat today we would put it on so at this point the fire has kind of burned down it's mostly coals and so it's time to rearrange those coals so you can shake off some of that ash that's present on the outside so it can still continue to burn hot so i'm going to get in there move them around and at this point it's time to add another log because the temperature has dropped to 252 degrees now when you add a new log the temperature doesn't immediately spike everything moves on a curve so when it's going down i want to add wood before it gets too cool so that i don't lose too much temperature and the fire gets too cold that i don't produce the kind of smoke that i want when i put a new log on to deal with the fire on a smoker this size i like to use long-handled metal tongs because then i can grab logs move them around grab coals move them around it's just a really convenient way to do it also i'm going to leave the firebox door open as long as it takes for that piece of wood to burst into open flame at that point i close everything down again and i keep cooking with cheap offset smokers we have one thing that we're going to do differently than if we have a quarter inch thick offset that's a backyard size and it's very different from what we would do with a 500 gallon offset here we're going to add unlit lump charcoal and the reason for that is if you look at the fire right now most of the coals have burned away and the piece of wood that's in there isn't burning super strong so i need to add more coals because i don't burn enough wood in a smoker of this size to generate a sufficient coal bed to keep the thing going so i have some coals in this chimney right here i'm going to pour them on top of the existing coals and those will start to light and at that point i can continue to add more wood with a sufficient coal bed to get clean [Music] smoke with the coals in there now you see that there's a bunch of white smoke coming out of there now i've never noticed any off flavors with the unlit charcoal being put in there it's possible you might get them so what i do to try to minimize any all flavors that might occur is i leave this firebox door open until these coals get lit well and then i have good clean smoke coming out of here i close it back down now to speed the process you can actually kind of blow on the coals with lump charcoal you want to be a little careful because it can spark and crack and you can get you know sparks that fly in your face that's happened to me plenty of times but if you're willing to deal with that that's okay my little brother he has a smoker about this size and he actually uses an electric leaf blower and just points it toward the coals they get screaming hot he puts on the next log ready to rock and roll and that should be good the final part of fire management is what do you do when you are done cooking but you still have a fire going there are different ways people have tried some people shovel out all the coals put it in a metal garbage can put the lid on top and smother it that way works but it's more trouble than i think most people are willing to go through some people try to close all the vents down and shut everything down and smother the fire while it's still in the smoker number one you're going to trap a bunch of nasty growth smoke inside your smoker which you don't want and number two is it doesn't really work very well because especially on a smoker like this there are leaks there are holes air is going to get in and that fire is going to continue to burn very slowly so you might have coals that are still hot two or three days later and you might go in there and reach in try to scrape out all those ashes and burn yourself pretty badly you do not want that to happen instead what i recommend people to do is open everything up and let all the oxygen in you can and let the fire burn itself out and then you only have ashes remaining so that you can come back the next day and just clean everything out so open that up open this up and walk away now if it's super windy you don't want to do this or if you live in some place that's really dry you probably don't want to do this but for most people across the country this is the easiest way to let your fire go out and make it easy to clean your smoker when it's time to clean it up so let's review what we've covered here number one you want clean smoke to get clean smoke you have to choose pieces of wood that are small enough or split them down so that they're small enough that when you put them on the fire they're going to burn cleanly and that is born with lots of oxygen you want the vents wide open so that the kinds of compounds you make are the flavorful compounds that make barbecue so special also you have to maintain a big enough coal bed because if the coal bed dies your fire is essentially dead so the heart of the smoker is the firebox and the heart of the firebox is the coal bed the coal bed is crucial you got to keep that thing going to that end you have to do two things you have to have two fuel sources in this case we have wood and we have charcoal the charcoal is primarily for heat and to keep the coal bed going the wood is for smoke flavor so we're going to continually add charcoal to the firebox and add wood as one piece burns out the charcoal keeps the coal bed going the wood provides flavor that makes barbecue so much fun to do the third thing you have to keep in mind is consistent temperature earlier i told you that everything moves on a curve when it comes to temperature so what helps you is if you act before you think you need to so if you want to keep the temperature at 250 degrees and it's coming down and hits 252 251 250 i wouldn't wait around for it to hit 225 i would add a piece of wood or add some charcoal to increase the heat because it's going to go lower than 250 and then work its way back up so adding stuff before you think you need to is going to be the most helpful way to deal with those swings that are on that curve of temperature you're going to deal with and you're going to fight against for the whole cook if you follow these principles you're going to be able to make incredible barbecue in your backyard and you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to get a custom you know 500 gallon pit to do it to me what barbecue is is cooking meat with a real fire this is a real fire and it's going to take a lot of work to make it good so if you're diligent about monitoring this fire and you're willing to spend a lot of time out here and fiddle with it and blow on it and check on it and nurture it along you're going to be able to make incredible flavors and it's going to blow the socks off of anybody who's used to eating stuff cooked on a pellet grill or some other inferior method of cooking no offense to people who use pellet grills it's just for me offset smokers are kind of the pinnacle of flavor that you can achieve in barbecue and even with an inexpensive one you can make incredible stuff thank you guys for watching if you have ideas for more videos you'd like to see please leave them in the comments below and if you found this video to be helpful like the video subscribe to the channel and turn the notification bell on so you get notified whenever i put out a new video 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: 195,627

Rating: 4.9522104 out of 5

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Id: NGucNJ67_wg

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/kr0sswalk]

That was really cool. Thanks for posting this video.

[u/bevin88]

this guy is my favourite YouTube source for BBQ info. he has amazing videos and really explains this very well.