What to Consider When Buying a Smoker
What to Consider When Buying a Smoker
There are a lot of smokers on the market, and as many things to consider when buying a smoker. Most smokers produce great food when used correctly. Some do require more micromanagement than others, and each have their own quirks and characteristics. We believe that no matter which smoker you choose, BBQ should be fun and therapeutic, not frustrating. There are several things to remember when shopping for a smoker to help you avoid stress later.
How much are you willing to spend on a smoker?
The first thing to know is your budget. You can make incredible BBQ on a smoker of almost any price, but it comes at the potential cost of things like convenience and longevity. Smokers range in price from a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand. Many things contribute to this vast range in price. Understand these trade-offs and hidden factors to help you make the best decision for your needs.
Smoker Materials and Components
The majority of smokers are made of carbon steel. The thicker the steel, the higher the cost of materials. The biggest drawback of carbon steel is its vulnerability to rust. Your ability to prevent oxidation and rust is the number-one factor determining the life of your carbon steel smoker. To prevent rust, manufacturers often include a layer of heat-resistant paint or powder coating to protect the steel from exposure to weather. Even high-temp paint can flake off after prolonged heat exposure and requires constant maintenance and vigilance to prevent rusting. Powder coating is less vulnerable, but abrasive chemicals can still harm it.
Rust-proof materials such as aluminized steel, stainless steel, and ceramic can alleviate a lot of stress, but almost always increase the initial cost. Remember that a unit is only as strong as its weakest point. A stainless lid might look nice, but it will be of small comfort if the body of the smoker or the hardware that should be holding it together rusts away.
Some smokers contain a number of mechanical and electrical components. Are they bells and whistles that add novelty, or are they practical features that improve the outdoor cooking experience? Every added component increases the price and represents one more part that can potentially break or fail. Components should be chosen with care, for their longevity and performance.
Build Quality
Materials are only as good as the standards and practices that create and form them. Components made hastily in bulk with few quality control standards will break down and fail as quickly as they are formed.
Some great products are made overseas in places like Japan and South Korea. The hastily constructed parts which are made and shipped into our country by the tens of thousands, are not among them. They are designed to ideally last through the warranty period and no longer.
Like many things in life, you get what you pay for.
You can potentially save money upfront buying products made overseas, but this will absolutely come at the cost of build quality, materials quality, and quality control oversight. As a consequence you will likely experience more downtime and spend more on replacement parts, if not entirely new units. For this reason, we do not recommend buying gas grills, pellet smoker-grills, or similar smokers that are made overseas if lasting build quality is your main concern.
Smoker Design
Non-Automated Smokers
Kettle, bullet, and drum smokers are simple but effective devices. They demand skill and lack the mechanical and electrical features that create a forgiving and convenient cooking experience. This drastically reduces their cost and makes them a great option for lower budgets.
If you’re looking for a great smoker at the lowest possible price (or just feeling nostalgic!), a drum smoker might be what you’re looking for. You can buy a kit that will allow you to turn any drum into a great smoker or spend a bit more and get a drum with the kit. At less than $500, drum smokers won’t break the bank and will allow you to use charcoal, wood logs/chunks, or a combination of the two.
The money you save will come at the cost of time and energy. You’ll have to learn to manage a fire and pay close attention to it throughout your cook in order to get the results you want. While the learning curve and costs in time and energy may be steep for some, it will be therapeutic for others who are looking for a hands-on hobby.
Automated Smokers
Pellet grills, gas grills, and in some cases offsets are often more complicated in design and rich in features. The costs to design and produce them tend to be much higher. As a result, they command a higher price. You can find solid pellet smokers, cabinet smokers, and offset wood smokers in the $600 to $2000 range that should provide some degree of quality and reliability.
Kamado-style smokers like the Big Green Egg can also be found in this price range. They marry the simple design of bullets with a ceramic body that won’t rust and will hold and distribute heat more reliably.
On the higher end you can find smokers made in the United States using domestically-sourced materials and constructed by American workers. That is where build quality, materials quality, and high performance features really stand out.
Top of the line smokers can cost several thousand dollars. That price reflects the use of the highest quality materials, a wealth of practical features, exhaustive R&D for performance and reliability, and often the costs of labor, machinery, and domestically sourced materials associated with U.S. manufacturing.
MAK Grills is proud to stand among the last of the truly Made in the USA brands. Many claim to be made in the United States, but at best assemble parts made overseas with no oversight.
Why are you considering a smoker?
Are you looking to learn a new hobby?
The steep learning curve and hands-on requirements of a wood-burning offset smoker might be a rewarding challenge for you. Do your research. There are many different kinds, and even among offsets there are variants like reverse flow smokers that you’ll want to consider.
After you’ve chosen a smoker you will doubtlessly find that there are many ways to use and maintain it. Temperature control alone can be approached in different ways. Some units control internal temperatures by balancing air flow, using water pans, limiting fire size, or all of the above. Every machine and every cook has idiosyncrasies, and it takes time to learn them all.
You can even take it a step further and harvest and cure your own wood, if learning to properly manage a fire isn’t enough excitement for you.
On the other hand, you may want something more convenient that lets you focus on creativity, recipe creation, and perfect time and temps rather than the fire itself. Take the fire out of the equation and you’re left with thousands of ingredients and thousands of ways to prepare each of them. BBQ is a hobby which you could truly spend a lifetime perfecting.
Do you want to be the next great BBQ champion?
You need something built like a tank but with a small enough footprint to be easily moved across the country in a trailer.
Travel shouldn’t be your only consideration though, nor is it the most important. Competitions demand precise timing and results every single time from both the competitors and their chosen equipment. Competitors must come to know and trust the equipment they use, making it an extension of themselves. That’s why the best smoker for competition use is the one that has proved itself to be the most reliable performer in your experience.
Sponsorship plays a role, of course. Companies frequently offer competitors incentives to use their brand of smoker. Consequently, you will find a lot of the same equipment on competition trailers.
Competitors won’t just use whatever people pay them to use though. Competition BBQ is an expensive endeavor. With the costs of travel, prime grade meat, high quality ingredients, rubs, sauces, tools, and equipment, competition BBQ is expensive. There are few winners, and losing is costly.
Competitors often use a lot of the same equipment because the brands they like set themselves apart with high quality, reliable products.
You will find high-end bullet, drum, offset, and pellet smokers like the MAK Two-Star General, on the back of many competition trailers.
Among the teams that MAK sponsors are American Royal World series of BBQ winners Big Poppa Smokers and Iowa’s Smokey D’s BBQ as well as Jack Daniel’s competitors Maddog’s BBQ & Wine Country Q.
Is buying a smoker an investment for a catering business or restaurant?
In that case, capacity is king. You’ll want something reliable that can feed an army. Brands like Ole Hickory Pits specialize in commercial units and are NSF certified.
Reliability and trust are again key. Most restaurants or caterers will own multiple large smokers, but a malfunctioning unit can still be catastrophic. People count on you to deliver, often during important events. Unexpected downtime can be devastating to your business. Take care to faithfully maintain your smokers according to your owners manual and best practices.
You just love BBQ
More than likely, you just want to make great food for your friends and family. This is where the convenience, flavor, and versatility of pellet smoker-grills are unmatched. There are many advantages of pellet smoker-grills, but in short, they allow you to achieve the flavor of smoking real hardwoods, with unmatched safety and convenience. A computer does the work, and all you have to do is reap the rewards and the praise.
What are your taste preferences?
Charcoal has a distinct flavor profile. Briquettes burn uniformly. They are created by artificial means, often involving chemicals. These chemicals can create a strong, unpleasant flavor profile on your food. It is common practice to start charcoal with lighter fluid. Avoid this at all costs. Kerosene will flavor the food and constitutes a real fire hazard.
Gas and electric smokers do not create smoke on their own. They are essentially just heat sources that smoke when you add wood chunks, lump charcoal, or pellets to them. Gas grills that malfunction or burn inefficiently for any reason may also impart unwanted flavor to your food.
Offset wood burners will produce a strong smoke flavor profile that can be overwhelming if not tended by skilled hands. Many find this flavor particularly delicious, however.
Pellet smoker-grills burn with 98% efficiency, creating clean smoke. This eliminates almost all creosote and other particulates and as a result, the smoke flavor will be pleasant, but lighter. If you want that heavy creosote flavor, you won’t find it with a pellet smoker-grill. You will find delicious smoke flavor easily achieved every time.
What works best for you?
Ultimately, the best smoker is the one you can afford, that suits your lifestyle and that you enjoy using. BBQ should be fun! Be sure to consider that when buying a smoker! By imparting smoke, you’re probably going to enhance the flavor of your day-to-day meals no matter which way you go. Do your research and make the right decision for you and your family.