Demystifying the Functioning Of an Offset Smoker

Posted by kamal on January 8th, 2019

Pellet smokers, barrel, box and water smokers all do a good job smoking seafood and meat. However, nothing builds your street credentials like a pit master meaning business as an offset smoker. For many years, these smokers have been in dominance of the barbecue circuit competition. And thanks to better technology facilitating mass-market models, you can now buy these at most of the stores in your area. The new mass produced models are now bringing their own unique aura of machismo to your backyards for anyone in need of old country bbq smokers.

Understanding the World of Offset Smokers

It is believed the first offset smokers were made in Oklahoma and Texas by oilfield workers. The downturn of oil prices in the 1980s must have starved the workers of barbecue and it didn’t take them long to see the surplus drums of fuel and oil pipes from a different perspective. Their design was founded on the traditional brick pits used for barbecue. The pits had one chamber for building fire and another for the smoke and heat to cross food. Before getting to shop for offset smokers for sale, it would help to understand how these cooking appliances were first invented.

Design Features

Offset smokers have become mainstream today and are known by different names depending on where you are, including stick-burners, offset barrel smokers, pipe smokers and horizontal smokers. Most of the horizontal smokers you’ll encounter in the market today mimic designs similar to the initial ones of the 1980s. They often come with a smoking or cooking chamber that has a lid and is often barrel shaped or sometimes looking like box.

The cooking chamber where you smoke your food is also connected to a firebox at one end and a chimney on the other side. This is probably the result of the name offset. Some of the models have the firebox on the back side of the unit.

With this unit, the firebox facilitates building fire using charcoal, wood or wood pellets so that the heat is next to the meat and not directly under. The smoke and heat will flow to the cooking chamber using a portal. They then circulate your food before exiting using the chimney. One of the defining features about offset smokers is the aspect where hot air and smoke from wood flowing around your food.

As such, if you go out to buy an offset smoker for sale, it is important to ensure that whatever design you find, maintains this flow of smoke and heat.