Typical cost of materials is about $50 plus you need one used 22" Weber kettle grill which can be had for about $40 on Craigslist. Look of a typical completed UDS:
Drill 1" air holes X 2 on 4 air controls. 4"x1.25 1/8 angle iron or Alum angle. These top ones are for grilling only and they double as great handles for transport too:
Pic of the fire ring in grilling mode. It's basicly a 8"x56" cut rectangle of expanded metal wrapped and wire tied around a 16" Weber fire grate. You can weld it in the cylinder shape or tie with clothes hanger wire:
One of the best tricks of any Ugly Drum Smoker is that you can load it up with fuel and once running it will run for hours with hardly any fiddling with it. Mine will run an easy 8hrs on a half load of charcoal and wood chunks, or 16hrs on a full load, and all you do is alter the air input to adjust the temp. My usage instructions:
Comment From Layne Monson:
ReplyDeletecouldn't post a comment you your UDS page - even after getting my google login added....
best "time" i had smoking ever!
well I smoked a 12lb brisket on Easter and was very , very impressed with how the UDS did.
By far the easiest smoking ever done to date.
makes me actually want to do it again!
I only checked it 3 times over a 7 hour period, and found very little needed.
did the minion method. about half a bag of charcoal (8-9lbs i think), + a dozen fist sized mequite chunks intermixed.
made it kind of concave shaped in the firering.
lit about 18 coals and got them going about half way and dumped on top.
opened bottom vents on drum (4 1" holes) and top on weber vent
about 3 hours later it looked too high on my temp gauge 300degrees, so I stuck the foil under the fatty side, closed the vents all half way.
That worked perfect , it stayed at 200 degrees the last 4 hours and i could have probably gone longer on the fuel.
Internal temp was 200 on my brisket though, so I took it off.
tasted awesome.
I actually marinated it this time over night , and I would definitely say it was worth it compared to dry rub..... which doesn't seem to do much except for the outside surface mainly.
very impressed , very easy. managed to nap my butt off, while the rest of you would have been working that smoker like a fat, sweaty , hungry, train conductor, tossing logs in there and screwing with vents, etc
Comment from B. Blevins:
ReplyDeleteI wanted to tell you fellas about my smoking experience (on the MUDSOG) this weekend. We had the Spring Cub Scout camp out last weekend. I had planned on smoking a butt for Saturday Dinner, and one for Sunday Breakfast. Last Fall when I did this, I smoked them both at the same time and then just reheated on Sunday morning. I didn’t want to do that this time. I wanted fresh food on Sunday morning for Breakfast. So, I fired up my smoker at 4:00 AM on Saturday morning and threw 1 butt on the rack. I pulled that butt at 5:30 PM for a 6:00 PM dinner. It took us about an hour to eat. When we were done, I put the second butt on the rack at 7:00 PM. I left that one on the rack until 8:00 AM Sunday Morning.
I started the smoke with half a basket of Royal Oak Lump (left over from the pig hunt). I laid some pecan in there at that level figuring that is about where it would be when I pulled the first butt and I wanted to put on a smoke show when I was pulling the first one off. Then, I topped my basket off with some Kingsford Blue Bag. When I lit it up, I used minion of course (I only light 10 coals when I do it) and laid two big Pecan logs that I had debarked on top.
The point I am trying to get to is that I smoked for 28 hours straight on my UDS with no refuel. Half of my fuel had been sitting out in the humidity since our hunt. And when I pulled off the last butt, I noticed that there was still a good 6 inches of coal left in the basket. I love that durn thing! Stickburners Suck! I may light her up and just let her burn to find out how long it could actually go.