DIY drum smoker (or how I spent my summer vacation)

I recently went back home for a week and decided to do a little project with my father to keep busy.

I checked the internet and found a bunch of youtube videos on building a smoker out of an old drum barrel. This one had snorkels to vent air in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejpbwAXdKf0&feature=fvsr. Awesome idea but a little out of our league.

Then there was this awesome smoker http://jmillerid.com/wordpress/2009/12/55-gallon-drum-smoker/.

This is our drum. It is an old juice drum.

The grill on top of it is a standard 22" grill. It didn't fit inside of the drum so we used a smaller one.

We had an extra cover off an old weber. We had to fashion a new handle for it.

Notice the thermometer under the handle on the leftside picture.

We were planning to use a 22" grill and bolts to hold the grill in place but the drum was too narrow for the grill. We ended up using a smaller grill and we used wire hangers to hang the grill from the top of the drum. (This would also make it easier to remove the grills while the smoking is being done.)

We drilled some holes at the bottom of the drum for venting. We wanted to use a valve for the venting so that we could control the airflow, but we were trying to keep it simple and cheap so we went with metal sliding pieces to control air.

Torching the drum inside and out.

For the fuel, we will use charcoal or wood. We got an old metal milk crate and put some mesh inside so that it is raised off the bottom. That way air can get through the bottom of the charcoal/wood and it shouldn't smother so quickly. The crate + charcoal/wood goes to the bottom of the drum.

This picture shows the two grills we used and the wire hangers we used to keep the grills in place. The bottom grill will hold our wood chips and drip pan.

The finished product. No paint or anything yet. My dad smoked some chicken inside of it and it tasted good.

This was a good and simple project. You would need some tools. But for the most part, anyone with a drum could do it. I would suggest cleaning it really well. Add some paint to this and it would make a nice, cheap, easy to use smoker.

If we had more time, a door would come in handy but since we decided to go with the wire hangers for everything, the door would be more of a luxury rather than a necessity. About half way through the smoking of the chicken, we did add more wood chips and the hangers made removing the grills easier.