As thrilling as the sight is of the best commercial grade barbecue smoker trailers that look like compact smoke houses, the ability to build a BBQ smoker provides priceless gratification and bragging rights. A smoker will generally have a closed box for wood or coal, called the fire box, where it is burned with little oxygen to produce smoke and not fire. Smoke vents to a bigger closed box for the meat, called the smoking chamber, where it gathers into a cloud and is exhausted out right away. The result is juicy, tender barbecue slow-cooked with indirect heat by the smoke cloud.
The offset barrel smoker is the classic design when you build a BBQ smoker, still reflected in the best barbeque smokers available. Holding a grill rack for the meat, a cylinder shaped smoking chamber is attached at one end to a cylinder shaped fire box, and at the other end, to an exhaust chimney.
Tiers of grillware housed in a steel drum is what the UDS, or upright drum smoker, looks like. At the bottom is the wood or coal grill rack, separated by some gap from two or more racks overhead for the meat. If there is a water pan in the space between the wood and meat grills, then it is considered to be a water smoker. Newer 6 rack refrigerator style smokers like from Brinkmann are an offshoot of the UDS.
When you build a BBQ smoker, variations of the smoking chamber are countless, such as sheet steel with tubing, a water tank or a sizable metal trash can.
