My UDS Smokers

My Ugly Drum Smokers

A few years ago I was introduced to the UDS. Since then, I have been building these things for friends and family members. They are an awesome addition to the back yard and you can make them fully custom to your desires. The UDS will give you, your friends and family something to talk about. The food I have cooked on these things have been so good and different, that it has blown away anything I have ever eaten at any BBQ joint. The key is low and slow. As well as doing some experimental test runs with different charcoal and wood chunks. You need to keep an eye on your temperature gauges as well. If you want to impress your friends and family, I suggest building a UDS. The cost of building one will be way cheaper than anything worth a crap at one of those big box stores, and should last you twice as long if built correctly. You can purchase most of the products needed to build one online and at your local hardware store. They are also very adaptable, to where you can use them as a charcoal grill as well. I will be breaking down the cost and how to build one in future posts, so stay tuned.

My Newest Build

After many builds, I have my smokers pretty dialed in. My latest build is something that I am very proud of. I built a smoker with two cooking racks, water pan (that sits in the rack) as well as having an access door on the side to make it easy to get the charcoal in the smoker without pulling everything apart. It also makes it easy to reload if necessary. I have two temperature gauges, which I found important, because the difference between my two rack heights is about 10-15 degrees. Also I added a damper on the bottom for the intake, as well as one on the exhaust. This helps me with keeping my temperature within my ranges I desire (180-220). I do plan on hooking up an IQ110 temperature control unit in the near future.

I will be adding a post soon of the break down of this smoker. But to get an idea, here is a YouTube video I made.

Some pictures of my other builds

A smoker I made for a friend, He did the paint job. 

This was my first smoker I made with a door. Since then, I have improved on design.