Pitts And Spitts
Lise Henton
Pitts & Spitts offers a full family of products including traditional offset smokers, wood pellet grills, charcoal grills, travel grills, combination pits, fire pits and much more. To set you up for ultimate success, we also offer high quality wood pellets, grill grates, and a local Texas spice line.
PITTS & SPITTS HAS BEEN A LEGEND IN THE BBQ BUSINESS FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS. IN THAT TIME, PITTS & SPITTS HAS BEEN MIXING TEXAS TRADITION WITH NEW WORLD TECHNIQUES TO CONSISTENTLY PRODUCE THE BEST-LOOKING, BEST-COOKING SMOKERS & GRILLS.
So what happens when a hot, new trend rolls into town with the potential to disrupt your core business? As I recently wrote about, wood pellet grills are creating BBQ rock stars thanks to removing many of the variables involved with traditional smokers and grills - the same ones Pitts & Spitts built its storied brand upon.
One of these parameters involved creating smoke throughout the entire journey of the cooking process. Some popular brands of wood pellet smokers are able to cook at a very low temp but only produce a puff of smoke every 10-15 minutes.
Pitts & Spitts sells through their web site and specialty BBQ stores which can be found within each state or geographic region of the U.S. When the specialty BBQ stores see the value of Pitts & Spitts products, they become loyal brand advocates, according to Zboril.
In addition to turning retail partners into advocates, Zboril said social media also helps, whether encouraging customers to become active brand ambassadors or simply interacting with them on Facebook, Instagram Twitter and other social channels.
I coach soccer on Saturday mornings and we go to church on Sunday mornings. If I want to do a long cook on the weekends, like brisket, pulled pork, beef cheeks, etc., I need a cooker that I can truly set and forget.
Some people swear that pellets produce the same amount of flavor as other fuels. I tend to agree with folks like Jeremy Yoder of Mad Scientist BBQ, who gives a great explainer about why this is the case in this video:
Pitts and Spitts smokers are all built with thick gauge steel and fully welded construction, just like their beautiful offset smokers. My 1250 weighs about 275 pounds and is fully American made, and I fully expect to pass it on to my kids with how long it should last with proper care.
Once I narrowed down my search to the Pitts and Spitts models, I contacted my nearest dealer (Dominion Grills in Fredericksburg, VA) with some questions. They were super helpful and great to work with, and made pickup a breeze.
Buying from them meant I supported a local dealer, avoided delivery fees, and got my smoker right away, while ordering direct from Pitts and Spitts comes with decent wait times given high demand. All it cost me was a $12.95 trailer from U-haul and a stop at Cookout.
Great take on pellet smokers! I have a recteq and love it, seems a lot of the reasons I like it so much are the same reasons you like yours!! Using charcoal and wood all night is definitely a good time, but you hit the nail on the head with how time consuming it can be. I got my 1st pellet smoker because I missed smoking brisket and with work and kids I never had the time, pellet smokers made it happen!!
But here\u2019s the thing, I don\u2019t use an offset smoker where fire management and pit knowledge are critical. For my low and slow cooks I use a variety of charcoal smokers, which are definitely on the easier side on the difficultly scale. Sure, I think about things like air flow, lighting strategy and fuel management, but I\u2019m not a true pit master.
Or, as the HowToBBQRight podcast put it in this episode: if you think pellet smokers don\u2019t produce real barbecue, you better be using cinderblocks and digging a hole in the ground to cook your food. (Jump to a about 32:00 mark for this portion.)
The one thing lacking in my previous deck set up was grate real estate. My barrel smoker has impressive capacity when hanging meat (I\u2019ve done up to 12 racks of ribs this way), but for things like wings, pork belly burnt ends, or sides, fitting a lot of food is a challenge.
And while you can purchase premium pellets to help alleviate this drop off in smoke flavor, the reality is that you are trading some flavor for convenience. For all the reasons listed above, I think it\u2019s a fine trade to make!
And as this review from AmazingRibs puts it, \u201CThat gauge matters. Thicker steel retains heat better, delivers more heat, and recovers heat better, giving the smoker an edge at maintaining a steady temperature throughout the cooking. Better heat retention also means better efficiency because you\u2019re using less fuel.\u201D
This edge to edge temperature control, and the ability to recover temperature after the pit has been opened, are critical components to nailing a cook. Pitmasters all work to limit swings in temperature inside their cooker, and I figure this is especially important when I\u2019m already sacrificing some flavor to fuel type.
The Maverick 1250 got its name because of it\u2019s 1250 square inches of grate space. Tack on a 35 pound pellet hopper \u2014 compared to the 24 pound hopper that comes with the comparably sized Treager 1300 \u2014 and this thing can run for a long time and hold a lot of food.
And with the roll top lid, it gets a substantial amount of its grate capacity on the upper rack, meaning the smoker is still very reasonably sized for a backyard pit \u2014 and fits very nicely next to the rest of my collection!
If so, send me your suggestions, including which brand of pellets you prefer. And if you\u2019re local to the DC area, send me a note if you\u2019d like to get in on a bulk pellet order: costcog...@gmail.com.
Let me know if you have questions about my cookers and when I use which one. To state the obvious: I\u2019m not retiring any of my other cookers, and will still use them plenty. Here\u2019s to a growing squad!
I was on the phone earlier looking to order a YS1500 and the salesman on the other line mentioned that pitts and spits model is quite good and has PID controller and is fully welded. I know people have asked the question before about the PID and the general response has been that the yoder firmware is better. Can someone explain why its better? Also does yoder YS1500 come fully welded?
I think the smokers that you are looking at are in two different classes. The YS1500 is a dump truck. Since you don't mention a S&P model, then I can only imagine that it's a pickup truck at best. This is like comparing a fine chop house in downtown St Louis, to a Starbucks in SanFran. I'm out on this one. Can anyone help?
patrickd26 wrote:I think the smokers that you are looking at are in two different classes. The YS1500 is a dump truck. Since you don't mention a S&P model, then I can only imagine that it's a pickup truck at best. This is like comparing a fine chop house in downtown St Louis, to a Starbucks in SanFran. I'm out on this one. Can anyone help?
Actually, the Pitts and Spitts are 7 and 10 gauge on the body/lid, all welded. Check out their website, pretty impressive. I saw one at a local BBQ store, they are heavy duty.
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The Pitts & Spitts Maverick 1250 pellet grill is their most popular mid-size model and rivals the best thermostatically controlled cookers in the business. For years, I have been using a Pitts & Spitts offset stickburner (the Ultimate Upright Smoker Pit, 36 inch), so I was eager to test their set-it-and-forget-it pellet version. I was not disappointed, although all cookers have their little quirks, and Pitts & Spitts is no different.
The roll top lid is a Pitts & Spitts signature, and it opens effortlessly even with one finger. Constructed of shiny 304 marine grade stainless steel, the lid has a comfortable red cedar wood handle. The front work table uses the same steel, and the lid rolls back smoothly without knocking anything off the table so you can leave your tools, food, or beer there while opening and closing the cooker. Even the smokestack and pellet hopper lid are made of stainless, giving the whole smoker a cool silver and black look.
The heavy deflector plate separates the fuel from the grease. And the drip pan over the deflector plate sits on an angle, directing drippings to a nice big grease chamber on the right. You actuate grease cleanout with a brass ball valve, another nice touch that allows you to open the valve as much or as little as you like for precise control of the airflow, and the grease flow.
The Maverick functions like other pellet smokers: you load up the hopper with wood pellets, an electric motor turns an auger that feeds pellets into the firepot, where a hot rod ignites the pellets and a fan blows oxygen to keep the wood smoldering. A thermostat maintains steady temperature in the cooker, similar to how home ovens work.
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