A new smoker (the meat kind) soon!

I'm a big time fan of smoking meat.  A little background - for a long time, I was interested in smoking meat.  On a visit with my father in Florida, I went to a backyard party where smoked chicken was served.  Oh, my gosh, that was the best tasting meat I had ever known.  But it seemed so difficult.  And did I really want to buy a smoker and find I wasn't good at it and waste a lot of good meat???  That mindset lasted a couple of years or so until finally I decided to take the plunge.

I bought a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker, even assembled it all by myself. . . well, my two dogs at the time sat close by to supervise while I had all the pieces spread out on my living room floor.  My first venture was a whole chicken.  It turned out fantastic!  I was totally addicted!  

In over 14 years of smoking meat - chickens, baby back ribs, pork butt, a roast, a turkey, even several briskets - I am proud to say I have never ruined a piece of meat.  What I have done is produce some of the best tasting meat you could ever imagine.  In fact, I once gave my neighbors across the street a slab of baby back ribs.  Their daughter, after eating it, said she felt sorry for vegetarians!

The Weber Smokey Mountain is an excellent smoker, easy to assemble and use.  However, I began thinking of the other types of smokers and what they had to offer.  That thought simmered in the back of my mind for a few years until about a year or so ago I started researching different types of smokers.  

There are a lot of brands out there and easily available locally in the big box stores. . . Oklahoma Joe was one I was seriously considering.  It has good and bad points.

In all my poking around, I stumbled onto a small company in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  Shirley Fabrications?  Never heard of them.  Must not be highly reputable for my needs if I've never heard of them.

I made an email inquiry to them to see if they had products that would interest me.  None other than the owner of the company responded within a couple of days.  Through a long series of emails and a picture of one of their smokers, I decided I wanted to go with one of their models.  Tyler Shirley, the company owner, was very patient with me, answering all my questions.  Meanwhile, I explored You Tube to find videos of their products and reviews from their customers.  Couldn't find any negative reviews, all owners proudly showed off their Shirley smokers.  They build everything from smokers for restaurants and catering operations to smaller versions for backyard smoking enthusiasts.

Winter has set in here in the North Pole (aka New York State) and I have no interest in smoking meat in this kind of weather.  I told Tyler I would want my new smoker in early Spring 2026.  You won't find their smokers in any big box store or any other store.  They sell direct from their company.  And they aren't cheap, not to mention shipping costs.  But you get what you pay for.

I decided to go with their 24 inch vertical smoker.  Tyler gave me all the advantages of that one rather than the offset models I started out wanting.  I can do a cold smoke with it, which is for making beef jerky, smoked cheese, and a number of other things.  It is about 4 feet high and 24 x 24.  Once I remove a storage shelf from one corner of my garage that mostly holds stuff that should've been thrown out long ago, it will fit perfectly in that space over the winter.  During "smoking season" it will live in my backyard with a good cover.