General85

Hi All,

Been a while since I have posted. I'm using Landmann Kentucky, hard to smoke with, I know...I'm wondering if anyone has used put their fuel in the cooking chamber (closest to the firebox) and meat on the far side of the cooking chamber? Basically, indirect cooking. 

I'm wondering how to control the temperature on this? Will opening the door on the firebox help with this?

Thanks.

Hmm, definitely get it sealed up and see if that makes a difference. Silly question, buy the temperature you gave, is that in farenheit?

Number 23 is to put your coals on. The ashes should drop through the holes in to the ash tray...some anyway, the rest you will have to clean out

What are you doing to try and maintain the temp? Have you got enough fuel in there? Keep the stack wide open and only adjust from the firebox.

I can't remember which is item 23, is it the black flat thing that goes on the side?

So I've had my Landmann for a year now, grilled plenty but only tried to smoke on it twice, both times I failed! I need to find out where I am going wrong so here's the details. 

1st time- Got some decent ribs, put some rub on it and put them on the smoker. Now, I'm using cheap briquettes as I bought a load last year and Also bought some Oak splits last year, these are about 25cm long. I was trying to control the temp by reading the thermometer on the grill (unreliable I know now), I kept throwing on splits every time the temp dropped. I did wait till the thick white smoke went (I think). In total I must have used about 4-5 splits. I wrapped it in foil later and finished it in the oven. The food was horrible, it smelt and tasted just as bad. The taste was the same as when you throw on wood and it's just started burning. I put this down to possibly over smoking and Oak being too strong a flavour, also the fact that logs may have had moisture due to them being stored since last year and being too big for the Landmann.

So I went a head and bought some Cherry chunks and a very cheap rack of ribs from the supermarket, they barely had meat on them but I thought I want to practice on cheaper items as I will probably mess up, and I did. This time, I got the temp to 110c, maintained with one chimney of charcoal and just that one chunk of wood. Lasted about 2.5-3 hrs, I decided to wrap and oven again. The smell/taste was still too much, strong dirty smoke smell, not as bad as the first time though and it was dry. The meat was all pink inside, there was no smoke ring, I think the meat was so thin, it absorbed all the smoke.

So my question is, what am I doing wrong? I have a number of things in my head...cheap charcoal, poor quality meat, unreliable thermometer (I've ordered an Inkbird, waiting on delivery), smoking the meat too long, not spritzing or having a water pan and I't not convinced I let the wood burn long enough before I threw the meat on, I would say I waited about 10mins?

The smoker is sealed with stove tape and silicone although I have noticed very small leaks as the tape is pealing slightly in areas, I keep having to push it back down.

I've posted about this on other groups but as they're American based with far better smokers, I figured I'm better posting here where you guys know the size and how the Landmann works.

Any help is appreciated! Thanks

59 minutes ago, Icefever said:

Don't trust any of them....buy a good digi one with 4 or 6 probes, that way you can check the temp inside the smoker and use the others in whatever meat your cooking.

 

Ice.

Ive ordered the Inkbird but it's only got 2 probes! I don't think I can add more to it.

8 hours ago, jfeeney said:

So I made pulled pork again yesterday with this smoker and the results were very very good, even if I do say so myself!

I decided to film some of the process, hope this helps others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Q87Gi3tCA

That was an interesting watch, even though I have the same smoker!

My thermometer is on order at the minute. Do you guys find the thermometer on the smoker is way off? 

Yes, for now...I didn't try to add anything to raise the temperature again as I just wanted to see maximum and how quick it drops. Guess I would be adding more wood chunks to keep the temp up.

The spike at 195c has confused me though?

I fired it up for the first time last night. I used briquettes started with a chimney and then added an oak log and these are my results. Not sure what went wrong!

6:40 start,
7:05- 150c
7:30- 150c
7:45- 195c
8:00-145c
8:10-120c
8:38- 90c
9:00- 40c

1 hour ago, Icefever said:

Don't worry to much about that mate, with an offset just open the fire box door and throw in what you think, not like a bullett when to you have to lift the top section off as I find the bottom door a little on the small side to spred the fuel about.

Ice.

Thanks, will do! For the smoker, I take it fist size chunks are better than logs?

On 6/20/2019 at 7:26 PM, dl8860 said:

Given you'd have some pretty high airflow with grate and chimney fully open, that sounds about right that you dropped after 80 mins, and I'd say still holding 125C after that time isn't bad.

Have another go aiming for 110C consistently and then you'll really know how you're doing. If you can hold that (roughly) for 5 hours without refuelling then you'll know you've done a very good job.

This is good to know as I'm yet to fire mine up! Think the tricky part for me would be how much coal and wood to add later on once it starts coming down in temp.

On 6/20/2019 at 6:28 AM, Icefever said:

Wow, that's a hard one when you see that Homebase have bbq's from £12 up to nearly a £970, then you think what Homebase sells, anything & everything,  are they the best store to buy from???
When I bought my ProQ I went to Hotsmoked but could have gone direct to ProQ direct, what I'm trying to say is go to a company that deals in just bbq kit.
Price wise I looked at around the £300 mark, if I did it again I wouldn't want to go much higher, as I would have to justify the cost, you have to draw a line somewhere....and I'm from Yorkshire...

I'm not in the market for any more kit at the moment, so can't really say which piece of kit I want,  if your thinking like I did, that it may be better to buy something else (start again so to say) go for it...check your piggy bank and start looking....the guys will throw in their hints & tips.

 

Ice. 

My piggy bank is empty 😂. I don't think I could start again, I'm going to stick with this one as it's a good size and with a few mods, could be a decent smoker/grill.

Were there any other decent smokers in Homebase? Out of curiosity, if you could pick another smoker now rather than the Landmann, what would you pick? Taking budget in to consideration.

On 6/17/2019 at 7:56 AM, dl8860 said:

That's not the first time I've heard of manufacturers saying that's normal, there's a good YouTuber called  baby back maniac who complained to weber because his 1500 dollar weber summit charcoal was leaking smoke and customer service came back saying that it was normal and wouldn't recognise the issue. Mental! 

If you watch landmanns demo video for a pork shoulder they end up slicing it instead of pulling, presumably because to cook it for long enough to be able to pull they would a) have to use a truck load of fuel to keep the smoker going long enough at that rate of air flow and b) it would be dried out by then due to the high temps. 

Must be really confusing for those new to smoking to see manufacturers doing this. 

It is, I'm brand new to it...in fact, I've never smoked, this is my first smoker I've bought but because of the issues, I haven't had a chance to use it. Luckily, I've been looking at plenty of videos and read up on this forum to know that it shouldn't leak through any where!

But yes, I've seen the Landmann video and agree with you (although originally, I never noticed they didn't pull the shoulder) but it makes sense. If I look back, it did look slightly tough, too tough to pull.

3 minutes ago, Icefever said:

The idea of the smoke is to stay inside the smoker,  work/flow up and over whatever you have in there,  not seep out of every smegging joint on

the smoker.

 

Ice.

Agreed. Unfortunately we don't have the range that the Americans have! I'll make it work one way or another!

16 minutes ago, Icefever said:

It is a PITA,  I'm surprised Landmann get away with it??? if as you say the new parts are as bad, then that is down to crap manufacturing.

 

Ice.

Landmann say it's supposed to be designed that way due to it "working better with air flow". They show it on their YouTube video with smoke coming out of every possible hole! 

On the plus, the parts aren't dented but the new lid has a some bubbling on it! I've raised the issue again with the seller telling them they can sort it with the manufacturer. While it's not the worst, it's far from amazing and I shouldn't have to mod it so much for a brand new item

Landmann sent me the new parts but they're still not lining up, I believe that's how its 'supposed to be'. To get rid of those gaps I've doubled or in one case, tripled the stove tape. To the right, I did it over the edge with two strips, the back, I did the same and the left had to be two strips next to each other and another one on top, not sure if this will hold but time will tell.

7 minutes ago, MrMelons said:

Yep. Same here. Too big a gap.  There's does seem to be something more to it than just a loose fit.  

Hard to tell if there's anything wrong with my lid. No obvious signs of damage. Thats what leads me to suspect the dastardly "piece 30."   

Looking forward to hearing what others peoples looks like.

If yours has gaps in the same place as mine, the I think it is caused by the two bolts hooking the lid (think they were bolt B?). The hinges and bolts are too far from the pit.

3 minutes ago, goldencrunchs said:

Have you tried putting self-adhesive stove rope both on top and bottom? It sealed the gap nicely for me and now only minimal smoke leaks. But either way I went from it being impossible to get up to the right temperature to keeping it down being the hard part.

I've put tape on and it fills some gaps nicely but my lid sticks out 1cm either side compared to the pit, the gap is too large to cover by tape alone. I now need to get an angled metal strip and then add tape. I'm waiting for the new lid to see if this is slightly better as mine had dents in it too which didn't help

I will have a look at mine tonight. The retailer for me hasn't been too bad and Landmann have said they are sending me replacement parts. They claim there are supposed to be gaps as it works better due to airflow but I think that's complete rubbish. They told me their director made a video on Youtube where you can see it is leaking smoke due to the gaps. I've attached the video.

If they fail to send the parts, I can always ask my credit card company to sort it out for me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek3v-Skq2GE

I agree with you MrMelons, you will only see the gaps once you have put it together so to take it all apart and return it is a ball ache! Hopefully you get a better response from Landmann.

I'm just worried if they send me a new lid, that it won't match up to size with my current pit. I'll keep you posted on how I get on (if/when they contact me).

MrMelons, where did you buy it from?

I've contacted my seller and they have got in touch with Landmann who are going to contact me to send replacement parts (mine also had some small dents in it).

I completely agree with you, like with most things, the ones that cost more are for a reason. Like you, I've never been near an offset before either but I've been researching the hell out of them for the past couple of months so I knew about some gaps etc, bought stove tape, heat silicone and clamps at the same time as ordering the offset.

I didn't expect this huge gap though as it's not one people have come across on the mod videos I have watched. 

The issue with a replacement is that I've assembled it now and it has stove tape and heat sealant on it's easier to put it on when assembling. 

Ah great, so doesn't have to be welded on then? I've wrote to the company I purchased from anyway as there's a few dents on it as well 😳

Is that a flat metal strip? Or does it have an edge at the top where the tape is, like a 90 degree angle if that makes sense?

I thought I had added text to the above photos but clearly not! Haha

I just finished putting mine together yesterday, the gaps between the lid and the bottom is horrendous! As you can see in the photos, there's a good 1-1.5cm gap, too much for me to add sealant. 

How can I fix this?