"You gotta learn your pit just like a man learns his woman. Or you can't get nothing good outta her." Anonymous

I know you want to buy an offset. It looks so macho. It says "I'm serious about barbecue". And Home Depot has one for only $200! Slow down, Dale Earnhardt. Yes, offsets look cool, but the cheap ones have turned more people off barbecue than any other smoker. After one season of frustration, owners dump them and often never return to smoking. They kill the curious.

Let's divide the world of offsets into two categories: EOS and COS. There is a big difference in quality between the Expensive Offset Smokers (EOS) in the $800 and up range like Horizon or Lang, and the Cheapo Offset Smokers (COS) in the $400 and under range. The most popular COS commonly found in hardware stores are Brinkmann Pitmaster, Brinkmann Smoke'N Pit Professional, Char-Broil Silver Smoker, Char-Broil American Gourmet, and especially the Char-Griller Smokin Pro. Stay away from them, please.

COS have serious shortcomings that can mar meals and marriages. At the core of the problem is the simple fact of physics: Heat and smoke want to go up, not sideways. So heat and smoke exit the firebox on one side and try to go up making the side of the cooking chamber next to the firebox much hotter than the side next to the chimney. So if you put on six slabs of ribs, some will be done way sooner than the others. Yes, you can move them around, but that's a pain, and they still come out uneven.

COS also have poor fire management control because the fireboxes leak so badly so you cannot control oxygen and that is what controls temperature and smoke quality. The food chamber doors also leak so you can't control the draw of air with the chimney damper. That hot air seeping out the doors also carries with it moisture from your meat.

COS are designed and build poorly. They are built from thin metal so heat retention is poor making them a bitch to work with in cold weather. Paint flakes off and they are prone to rust.

EOS are made from thick metal that absorbs and distributes heat more evenly end to end, their doors and dampers are tight so you can really control temp. Some even have a duct system that forces the hot air to travel the length of the cooking chamber under a thick metal plate that warms the space from below, and the chimney is located on the same side as the firebox so that it pulls the warm air across the top of the food.

Please resist the temptation to buy a COS. If you have to look macho, get a drum smoker. It can cook circles around the cheap offsets.

Click here for an article with our impressions of many of the different offset smokers on the market, in all price ranges. But if you want something that looks macho and works well, get a drum smoker. At only $350 (shipping included), the Pit Barrel Cooker will cook circles around any COS. If you prefer, there is even an easy to assemble kit that you can build yourself, or they'll build it for you.

How to tame your offset If you have an offset, here are some important techniques and modifications to make, cheap or otherwise: 1) Cook with charcoal, not wood. Wood fires are too hard to manage in a COS, and they can easily spoil the meat with too much smoke, creosote, soot, or ash. A common question: "How much charcoal should I start with?" There are too many variables for a pat answer. It depends on how hot a day it is, how windy, how tight your cooker is, how heavy the metal is, how much cold meat is inside, and where the meat is in the cooking chamber (it can vary as much as 50°F from side to side). This is the craft of BBQ and it will take a few cooks for you to get the feel of your machine. Start with about 1 chimney of lit charcoal and a good thermometer and a cooking log. 2) Preheat the cooker. Start your coals and wait until the cooking chamber is up to temp before putting the meat in. This will help prevent bitter creosote from forming. 3) Add fully lit coals. Use a chimney to start the coals before you start cooking. Then, when the temperature begins to decline because the coals are fading, add only fully lit coals from the chimney. 4) Use good thermometers on both ends. Beware of the fact that the heat near the firebox can be 50°F higher than by the flue. Drill holes in the door on each end and insert a good digital thermometer probe in each to monitor the temperature on both sides of the cooking chamber. Theree are seveeral models that have more than one probe. If you must, mount a couple of Tel-Tru BQ300 Bi-metal Barbecue Thermometers with 4" stems as indicators, but use a digital next to the meat for real accuracy. 5) Don't soak your wood chips or chunks. The wood absorbs only about 5% of its weight in water and the water just cools the coals when you add it. This can cause yo-yoing temperatures. 6) Keep the lid closed. Opening the doors, either on the firebox or the cooking chamber, upsets the delicate balance of oxygen on the coals. 7) Rotate the meat. If you have meat on the left and meat on the right, they will need to be switched halfway through the cooking. 8) Learn one vent at a time. Most COS have an intake baffle and a chimney baffle. Begin by controlling the temperature with the intake baffle only and leave the chimney wide open. The intake baffle controls oxygen flow to the coals and has the most impact on cooking temperature. The chimney controls smoke in the cooking chamber (somewhat), and the temperature differential from one side to the other (somewhat). Start with the intake wide open until the chamber is up to temp, and then close it half way or more until the temp stabilizes in the 225-250°F range on the hot side. Never close the intake all the way or the fire can starve and produce creosote. Don't touch the chimney until the cooking chamber is stable for 30 minutes or more. 9) Go easy on the smoke. It is easy to ruin meat with too much smoke. Use chips, chunks, or pellets. Add about 4 ounces at a time in 3-4 doses every 30 minutes, starting as soon as the cooking chamber gets over 200°F. 10) Beware of the weather. The ambient temperature will effect the cooking temperature, and rain (or snow) and wind can significantly affect cooking temperature. 11) Pull up a chair. Bring a book, a beer, and some tunes, and stay near your cooker. 12) Protect your investment. Your COS will rust. When it is not in use, use a cover or park it in the garage. Put your car on the street. It won't rust. Sand out rust and repaint with heat resistent paint. If you use it on the interior, let it dry thoroughly before cooking. The fumes are poisonous. 13) Use a water pan. Put a grate above the coals and put a water pan on the grate. This will add humidity to the smoke and help the flavor and moistness. Don't bother putting water pans under the meat, and don't waste money on apple juice in the pan. 14) Calibrate it with dry runs. The first thing to do after you assemble your new grill or smoker is to season it and calibrate it by doing a few dry runs without food. This will burn off any manufacturer's grease, and give you a sense for how to set it up to hit the two important target temps that almost all my recipes use: 225°F and 325°F. Of course, in order to do this, you absolutely positively must have a good digital oven thermometer. I don't care how much you spent on your grill, the bi-metal dial thermometer that came with it is probably cheap and unreliable and likely to be off by as much as 50°F. Worse still, it is in the dome, and the temp down on the grate where the meat sits is much different. Like a musician, you must master your instrument to make great food. 15) Practice. Practice. Practice. Remember the old joke about the tourist who asked the street vendor how to get to Carnegie Hall? His response was "Practice. Practice. Practice." Nothing could be more true for owners of COS. Practice without meat. Set it up and run througha cook so you can see how it behaves.