Once upon a time, I found myself at a big box store trying to find new grates for a gas grill that had already seen its best barbecues. I turned around and came face to face with a little box smoker sitting at about eye level as such stores often place them to grab your attention. I had always thought about trying to smoke meat and turkey. I love smoked barbecue and, after all, how hard could it be? So I got the little smoker, grabbed a big bag of apple wood chunks, went home and assembled our new rig.

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      We planned the event for a Saturday. My son, son-in-law, and I were going to tend the smoker for many enjoyable hours to create delicacies that would impress our family and friends. We went to the store and got a couple racks of St. Louis cut pork ribs, half of a duck, half of a small turkey and a chunk of pork belly. The little

smoker was loaded to its limit. This was going to be great!

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       I was called into work, but the boys stayed in the back yard to keep the fires burning. When I got home, most of a large bag of apple wood chunks were gone and there was a solid plume of white smoke meandering towards the sky. It reminded me of the space shuttle launch contrails I had seen many times from Cape Canaveral due south. At least it would have a smokey flavor...

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      And boy did it. If you can imagine what meat recovered from a house fire might taste like, you wouldn't be far off from the results of our first culinary smoking adventure. It was pretty clear that we were missing something about this smoking thing, so I hit the books. We did a few more smokes on the little box smoker with some store bought rubs and sauces, and each time the food got tastier. But the little box smoker began falling apart within the first year. I came across reverse flow smokers in my reading and decided on making one to replace the box smoker. A friend with connections in the honey industry hooked me up with a 55 gallon steel drum, which I combined with some steel angles, flats, rods and my new found welding hobby (which at this phase was mostly grinding down my welds) to create our own reverse flow smoker. Our first smoke on the new smoker used a rub made of chile, garlic powder, some salt and brown sugar. We dialed back the smokiness on our ribs, pork butt and turkey and it turned out pretty good!

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      We expanded the flavors in out rub, came up with a secret formula for injecting and a tomato based barbecue sauce that had spices that played off the rub we used on the meat. This was kind of fun! Then after one of the smokes it all came together. My wife doesn’t care for smoked foods but she loved the ribs. Everyone loved the ribs. And the pork and the turkey. Our family, friends, neighbors and a local fire department loved the barbecue we were making (didn’t taste like a house fire any longer). But it is a process. There’s brining, then seasoning and smoking and clean up and it ends up being a four day affair. BBQ is easier to eat then to make! We couldn’t keep up with the demand. What do most guys do when something isn’t fitting? Get a bigger hammer. We needed a bigger smoker. And this was the birth of the idea for the Deuce Q.

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      This took a load of research. I got lucky with the drum smoker and didn’t realize there was a science to building smokers. It’s about movement of gas and liquid through space, heat retention and dispersion and a lot of other factors to make a smoker make good barbecue. Thank goodness for the internet. There are formulas to help you determine the size of the firebox if you have a certain sized cook box, the square inch area of inflow and outflow vents, even the length of the chimney. I measured and poured over my diagrams and formulas. Laid it out on cardboard to check dimensions. Had a buddy who had a bunch of 2 inch square tubes and heavy gauge extruded sheet metal. Ordered an axle and tires on cool aluminum rims and built the frame first. Built the firebox out of 1/4 inch sheet steel and insulated it with sheets of vermiculite sealed in with more sheet steel, made the doors and the vents. It was perfect, other than the fact I couldn’t lift it off the dolly I built it on! Had a friend of mine who is a professional metal worker who had all the know how and equipment build the cook box after that. The size was way too much for my garage and quite honestly, my level of expertise. He was nice enough to weld on the firebox and the basics were all there.

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    I love hot rods and have been to cruisers night here in town once in a while. I especially love the 32 Ford.......the Deuce Coupe. Pretty sure I’ll never have an actual Deuce Coupe, but I got some reproduction parts and a bunch of stuff from a local surplus store (half the weight of the rig probably came from Planet Surplus) and after about 18 months of work it’s a smoker and looks pretty cool if I do say so myself.  I was worried on the first smoke it may not actually cook despite all of the planning and work but it has turned out some pretty good Barbecue. Family, friends, neighbors and the fire department are all happy, too. And that is where we got our name.

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      As we got more experience with smoking, we realized how much time goes into the process. When we “do the Q” it takes four days. Fortunately my family is all hands on deck and is a large part of it, and have really gotten it down to a science. It's nice because it's a family affair. When asked if we would like to open a BBQ place I know I'd pass. That's a full time commitment. Someday we'd like to compete, just don't have the time right now.

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      Lots of people thought the rubs and sauces we made were really good. We ended up making gallons of the stuff, then people asked if they could have the recipes. Well, no! Then they asked if they could buy it, and we started looking into how we could do that without having the IRS or the Health Department order an early morning SWAT raid at the house! I also decided to let a professional packer do the sauces so they were safe, consistent and didn't mess up the kitchen!

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      So here we are. We're starting with a couple of sauces and rubs. We also have several hot sauces in the pipe line. We hope you like them.

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