Review of Outdoor Vertical Propane Smoker

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List Price: $297.98
Sale Price: $199.00
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I have owned this smoker for about a year now. I must say I was less than impressed when I received it. It seemed a lot flimsier(sp) than I had thought it woud be. The legs are very weak, and one needs to be careful when moving the smoker around. I fired it up for the first time to burn off all of the grease, and other things that would ruin your first smoking attempt. First of all use a lighter to start the smoker. If you use the igniter provided you will blow yourself up.

The smoker is single wall constructruction, so the wind affects it significantly. If it is cool out, and windy it is hard to keep the temperature steady. I solved this problem by buiding a shed onto the side of my shop, for the smoker. I also converted it to natural gas, as it consumed a great deal of propane. The control knob is not indexed properly, so what it says is wrong as far as the settings are concerned. You need to look at the flame to actually see where it is set.

Now that it is on Natural gas it has been a good smoker. I cook about every weekend for others. I do mostly pork sholders, and ribs. I put 6 to 8 pork sholders in at a time. I load up the wood box only once during the whole process. It actually only produces smoke from the wood for about 2 hrs. I leave it this way for 8 hrs. I then remove the meat, and wrap each sholder in foil. It then returns to the smoker for another 4 hours. It always comes out where it is juicy, and just falls apart. The whole time I try to maintain a temp. of 200 deg. I never put water in the pan. This helps it develop a bark on the meat. As the juices drip into the pan they develop a very good smoke. Also put something under the smoker to catch the grease. It will make a mess if you don't.

Bottom line is you can find a better smoker for the money. If you already have one you can make it work just fine.

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I received my Weston 48 gasser smoker last week after being on backorder for 5 months. I feel it was well worth the wait.

By myself it took about 2 hours to put together, but I did take a lot of breaks. I did have two problems 1) front connection tab on propane box was bent 2) Flange on door contacted front of smoker box, so wouldn't close. Both of these were easily fixed with a set of vise grips. They may have re-engineered some things since the last review as I found the unit very sturdy and the legs strong. I did notice the seams were tack welded and there were spaces I could see light through. I used heat rated silicon and filled all the seams from the outside.

I seasoned it by spraying the inside with vegetable oil and used a paper towel to coat the sidewalls, door, top and bottom then cranked it up for 2 hours using hickory chunks in the wood box. Then I put 2 4-lb turkey breasts in with more hickory chunks. Chips burn up to fast. It held 250* steady on high with no problems. Tweaked the temp a bit using the 2 lower air intakes. I kept the top vent open 3/4 of the way the entire time. I verified the supplied thermometer was dead on accurate, but will replace it with a TelTru large dial so I only have to peek out the door to read it. Oh, and the turkey came out perfectly done and moist at an internal temp of 160*.

I have glued an oven gasket around the door to seal it better. Future plans include wrapping with a welding blanket to insulate it so I can continue to smoke during the winter, and place ceramic briquets in the water pan to help stabilize the temperature. I'll also add some wheels to the bottom of the dropping pan (think bottom of rabbit cage) it sets on to catch grease, so I can wheel it in and out of the garage. It weighs about 100 lbs.

If you aren't a purist who demands BBQ be done with charcoal/wood this is one fine smoker that can hold a heckuva lot of food.

Edit: The temp controller has only Low, Med and Hi settings. A variable flow gas valve would be so much better to allow for "tweaking" the smoker box temperatures.

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This smoker looks like a good one. It was easy to assemble and easy to get started with the first smoking project. Thermometer seemed to work just fine and the construction of the cabinet is nice and sturdy. The smoking was uniform and relatively easy to maintain the temp. The cast iron chip tray is a little heavy and unweildy, I may switch to the coffee can technique so it is easier to change the smoking ships/chunks. Overall, it is a good smoker and I am happy with the purchase.

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this is my second smoker the first was a masterbuilt electric which did not last one day the control unit failed but enough of that, I purchased received and assembled my gas smoker I did notice that on cool day it is very hard to keep the tempeture above 200 degrees most recepies I find call for a smoking temp of around 225 also the seals around the door as well as the matting surfaces of the side and back walls allow a little smoke to escape and I would guess also heat I have smoked chicken which was outstanig also pork ribs which were just o.k. this week I will try beef brisket I am still getting the hang of this thing and also when I have some time I will modify this a little so that heat and smoke are not lost through the seams, other than that only time and use will tell how well we really like this smoker

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This is a great smoker! works well and the food tastes excellent! only two issues I have with it is getting the temperature up and maintaining it, but that could also be due to the outside thermometer, so im not counting it out, and the only other downfall is there are no directions with it, but once you get it figured out, you will want to smoke everything....enjoy it, I know I do.