Realcook Vertical 17 Inch Steel Charcoal Smoker, Heavy Duty Round BBQ Grill f...

(updated Review) Been 2 and a half years, and I have used this smoker constantly. I bought a couple of hooks to hang meat and do vertical roasting (I make a lot of different kinds of tacos and make sausages). I know a lot of reviews will talk about how you have to do all kinds of things to it, but I wanted to point out that this is a 100 dollar smoker. Those folks will say the same thing on any smoker in the sub 1000 dollar range, and Since I have done just about everything one can do in this smoker, I want to say that it is a killer smoker that works well even if you don't do anything to it. I have done pastrami, ham, brisket, salmon, smoked peppers, smoked yams and even done a whole bunch of smoked salt and smoked peppercorns. And never did anything more than assemble it. It can work great with pellet soke as well as raw wood or wood chips. I came back looking for a second cheap smoker, and wanted a box style, but this will be my primary for a long time -- preferred even over the fancy electric smoker I bought years ago. Previous Review: I wasn’t able to move my larger grill with side box to my new home, and wanted to do some charcoal cooking and grilling and smoking, so went for this one. Assembly was a bit of a bear, but not hard to do, and was able to get it fired up and cooking some quick dinner steaks that night. The ability to hang from inside has been a boon for doing vertical smoking, and the way the chip bin works to diffuse the heat was wonderful. Great flavor from the smoke — and it does a better job on pork than my electric one does. Could probably use pellets if you wanted. I used chips and chunks, and no soaking needed. It is very light — I have a bit of a strong wind at times, and came home to find it lifted into parts. The dual doors give you a great ability to both regulate the heat (adding hot coals or fresh charcoal) and still be able to adjust for the hotter lower grill and then the cooler upper grill. Like most barrels, it gives off good heat, so can also function as a nice fire pit for roasting marshmallows. Clean up is super easy, as you just lift the parts and everything can be washed if you want. I recommend it.

This is a great smoker and grill for the beach. I was a bit hesitant as I always judge a new product purchase by the 1, 2, and 3 star reviews and find a common denominator or complaint. I found assembly time, temp control, and insulation to be top negatives. Assembly took me about 40 minutes. You will need a 7 and 9mm socket and or wrench and Phillips head screwdriver for this. Anytime you build a new grill, you need to burn it in before first cook. So I loaded it with charcoal and got it up to 400 degrees. During this time, I did notice that smoke escaped quite a bit through the seals. However, this is not entirely a negative because they sell high temp smoker tape at the hardware store or even Amazon. I highly recommend you grab a roll and seal the doors and connections. After doing this, you will have a noticeable difference. The seller should consider including a roll as part of the install process. Lastly was temp control. Honestly, it is just a tank of metal. With most grills, you will have temp control problems if you don't put the right amount of wood or briquettes. Each grill is different so you may have to do some trial and error but I was able to get this properly to 275 where I needed it and smoke some meat. Overall, for the price and portability, this is a great smoker and grill. Going to the beach or lake early? Take this and begin smoking when you get there or use it as dual grill or one grill and one fire pit. Another tip too: overtime any grill may have paint flake off and cause rusting. I highly recommend you get some high temp spray paint and spray down scratched areas periodically. If you take care of this grill then it has a chance to last long.

Assembly took about 2 hours by myself at a very casual pace. Not horrible to assemble, but the instructions could be better for certain. I had no shortage of parts and had a few small screws and nuts left over. The unit arrived triple boxed and well packed. The legs of this thing are thick and sturdy, so that part is very impressive. The metal walls of the smoker/grill are somewhat thin, but serviceable enough. The screws are a tad soft, but thankfully were flathead, so you can put a fair amount of torque on them and get a solid assembly. The cooking grates are nice enough and have handles built in, though there are only the rounded screw heads more or less holding the lowest grate that the charcoal sits on in place. That grate just kind of sits on those screw heads. The unit came with 3 chromed cooking grates, which is very nice. The clips that hold the smoker together are kind of flimsy and they are more or less a requirement for this thing to work well. They don't align extremely well and honestly are my biggest complaint about this smoker/grill. I am very handy and can replace these really substandard clips if needed, but they are serviceable at least for now. The aluminum access doors look nice, but are not bead rolled etc to permanently shape it to fit the smoker. They are kind of bent to more or less fit the shape of the smoker walls. In order to get a tighter fit and a MUCH better seal, I flattened them out slightly and bent the internal latch arm to make that fit much tighter, so the natural spring of the material will now force it into the walls of the smoker and form a much better seal than just slapping it on there leaving very large gaps. If you install the doors without fitting them like this, they will leak like mad. When you install the grate supports, use pliers to hold the nut on the inside of the grate support oriented vertically and screw it in from the outside with the head of the screw on the outside. That is the easiest way to install them and it looks way better to boot, though it's not intuitive from looking at that arrangement. The grate supports are thin steel and are very flimsy. They will not stand up to a lot of abuse. Be careful when installing the handles, because two have angled ends for mounting to the rounded sides and one is flat for the top of the smoker. Installing the flat one on the rounded sides could warp or damage that side. The vent on the top fits very nicely and looks very functional. The vent/ash catcher in the bottom looks very neat and looks like it will work very well. This 20" model has an adjustable vent below, which is an absolute must have for one of these charcoal smokers. My opinion thus far is that I got exactly what I paid for. I didn't buy this unit with the expectation that the parts would all be perfectly aligned and would assemble without any difficulty. I knew assembly would be time consuming and I would likely have to do some fitting etc. That being said, the unit looks very functional and the design itself looks like it should turn out some very good BBQ if I do my part and I don't abuse my smoker. I would not recommend transporting this unit after assembly or take it camping etc really. I don't think it would stand up to rough treatment without needing to be repaired afterward. If you do transport it, I would take extreme care doing so. First use - Loaded the smoker up with some Hickory and Pecan chunks and covered those in Kingsford charcoal and fired this bad boy up three days ago. Let it burn in for a while with the vents wide open and the unit got to about 340 degrees with no water in the pan before my Inkbird thermometer maxxed out. The top thermometer read 400 degrees, which seems a tad high to me considering the Inkbird's reading. Wanted a hot and fast smoke with some well trimmed chicken thighs, angus burgers and bratwursts, so left the water out of the pan and loaded two grates down with meat and waited for the harsh white smoke to die down and smell/taste better before loading them into the smoker. Once the meat was loaded in, the temp dropped to 255 and slowly started dropping ending at 230 by the end of the two hours that I smoked everything. There was a lot of surface area of the meat and that was absorbing all the heat and smoke this unit was putting out. Put a lot of charcoal in the bottom of the smoker (nearly a whole bag) and thought the temp would gradually rise instead of drop as the temperature of the meat rose. I was using the "minion method" putting the lit charcoal in a central pile over more unlit charcoal expecting the burn to gradually reach the edges of the smoker evenly spreading as it goes. Unfortunately, the heat spread in only one direction towards the back of the smoker, which I think contributed to the temp drop. My pile of charcoal was kinda thick in the middle and thinner towards the edges. That likely contributed to the gradual temp drop I think as the burn marched toward the back of the smoker and ignored many coals at the front leaving them completely unburned. After I felt that the smoking had commenced to a point that I was happy with, I took off the upper two shells and put the meats directly on the coals and grilled everything to crisp it up nicely. That was a very good idea and I am very happy I did that. I am also happy that this unit has the functionality to grill my food after I smoke it. Operating those tiny side clips to hold everything together etc is kinda tough when they are hot by the way. The ash buildup for a 2 hour smoke was pretty severe overall and I think that had an impact on the amount of heat I was getting as well. I think good quality lump charcoal for longer smokes will be an absolute requirement. The end result, It makes very good BBQ. The smoke flavor was a bit subtle in the burgers, which is expected as beef is a strong flavor by itself that takes a lot to dominate it. The brats were absolutely superb and grilling them crisped up their skin and gave them a nice snap when you bit through. The chicken tasted wonderful, but needed more time in the smoker to loosen it up. The app on my thermometer wants you to eat pink chicken, but that isn't what I am comfortable with. Learning as I go. 6/12/20 - Adding my experience with temp stability and second cook. With water or a great deal of cold meat in this baby the temp is very very stable. Its a balancing act though. If you take meat out or wrap it, that changes the heat transfer inside and the temps will climb. Have to adjust the lower vent to control temps and leave the upper vent wide open. Having a pan full of water is great for temp stability and low temp cooking. Once temp is established (gotta give it a while to see where it stabilizes at), it holds very well. My last smoke lasted 7 hours in the smoker using ordinary Kingsford briquettes and it was still going strong holding around 255 on the grate the entire time. I transferred the shoulder to an oven wrapped in foil and finished the cooking there bringing the internal temp of the shoulder to 205 degrees before resting and eating. The ribs I did turned out amazing with wonderful smoke flavor. My shoulder also turned out very nice, but lighter on the smoke as I should have put more wood in there for it once I wrapped the ribs. I LOVE this smoker/grill. It works beautifully once you learn its ways. Highly recommended. Its putting out the most perfumed pecan smoke for me right now and my pork shoulder is soaking it in like a sponge. I have almost no experience with charcoal smokers and I'm putting out very good BBQ with just a little research and due care. This smoker can be "fire and forget" if you don't change anything. One addendum. After smoking for about 5 hours, I had a lot of ash in the catch pan in the bottom and some spilled out of the open vent holes. Thankfully no lit chunks came out etc, but it could have caught my patio on fire had the wood been dryer etc. I will be putting a pan beneath the smoker to catch this stuff going forward. Addendum 2: Getting a lot of rust on the mount for the bottom vent/ash pan. That thing is rusting like crazy and it's only a month old. That's very disconcerting. At the rate this is rusting, I don't expect this smoker to last more than a couple of years max. Dropped it a star for the shocking amount of rust in the very short period of time. Must be some VERY cheap steel.

Fast shipping (ordered one day, arrived the next by noon). Easy to put together (took me about 30 minutes; I’m no build master). This is the first smoker I’ve ever owned, I didn’t do a lot of research, I just went for it. The best decision for a simple smoker. I used the hickory wood blocks (from Walmart; comes in a box), Kingsford Insta Matchlight charcoal, and hickory wood chips. I put the wood blocks in the center the charcoal, and then built some charcoal on top. I then took aluminum foil and filled it with the wood chips and placed it on top once I had a good flame going. I decided to do pork chili verde as my first meal. I smoked the meat by itself for a little bit, then I added my homemade chili verde sauce over it. I played in the pool, enjoyed the amazing smell for about 4/6 hours. The most tender meat, I didn’t even need to cut it, it fell apart. I decided to keep cooking as the temp held for over 8 hours and made some rice and sausage for my breakfast the next day. One of the complaints that people said was that the smoke comes out a lot, and it does, but the top where your food sits, holds the most smoke I’ve ever seen. If I had a second person I would have taken a video to show how much smoke holds in the top when I pulled the lid off! I love it, I will be using the hack out of it this summer!!

This is my first smoker. I'm no novice to grilling and backyard BBQ craft, but wanted to try something different. Took about a half hour or so to put this smoker together. Didn't realize there were actual instructions till almost done. I'm an ex master tech (mechanic). Anyway getting familiar with this unit I decided to try cooking something. I wanted smoked something. We had 2 Pikes Peak Roasts and not a clue what to do with them. The others we had were too tough to cook on a grill or so I thought. I started my charcoal in a charcoal chimney, let it take off and then moved to the bottom rack/grill. Played around until I hot my temp where I wanted, about 180-200F. At that temp I began adding a few hickory pieces to build some smoke and then introduced the roast to the top grill area about the center of the catch pan. The roast had been lightly rubbed with Olive oil and Worcestershire sauce before patting down with a dry commercial rub. Every hour for the next 5 hours I would add a little hickory chips and adjust temp to maintain the temp I desired. After 5 hours I removed the roast and brought it inside to set for 15 minutes or so. I was amazed the grill kept a constant temp without any more than the original charcoal and small hickory pieces. When the meat aired to 150F internal temp we cut it in 1/4" pieces like a brisket. It was not overly smokey, dry or tough. Sorry for the long story but I am amazed it worked so well. When and if it wears out(the Smoker) I'll get another. Thanks for the great product. My experience may be different from others, but I'm sure if I can so this well the first time trying this others can as well.

The quality is ok. The smoker works fairly well for the price and size and has smoked/grilled delicious meats/veggies/dishes. The inside of the grill, particularly the lid section, started peeling after several uses, which is considered dangerous if it gets on food. This should never be a problem that consumers have, but that is what happened with my smoker. If you’re looking for robust temperature regulation, this grill is not the best at that, but it is okay. The build and parts of the grill are not precise, which is why I believe temperature regulation can suffer sometimes.

Quite happy with this smoker. I assembled it in less than 30 minutes with 2 teenage boys who are, well, teenage boys. We burned it up that night with some coals and oak to season it and to get rid of any goofy stuff being a new smoker. Vertical smoking is far more efficient than side box. I put 1 can of charcoal in bottom, set vents, and stay at 225 for 4 to 5 hours. For all the pellet fans out there this is as close to set and forget as it comes in charcoal land. I add 1 6x6x6 piece of cherry, hick, oak, etc. every 2 hrs. Nice smoke ring every time. Each of the 2 levels holds a full packer brisket with room on sides for sausages, or 2 butts, or 2 St. Louis ribs flat. We cooked 4 butts and leaned 4 ribs vertically against them last week and all turned out just right. As a grill it works fine just low to the ground. You may want a Webber if you grill often though. Cleaning a smoker is not my favorite part of cooking but this smoker is easy enough to clean up. So far we've smoked over 200lbs with no temperature fluctuations or other nasty surprises. This product is pretty light as well and can be taken to the woods quite easily. This would be about the only time I'd use it as a grill to avoid taking both in the truck. Should you want to grill with it on a regular basis you may want to invest in an aftermarket grate that has a thicker gauge steel/cast iron. You can spend more money on a similar item but in my experience it hasn't been worth it.

I love it. It's my favorite smoker.

Se siente muy frágil, el armado toma tiempo, no creo que dure mucho

Very nice made, quality vs price good. Amazing if you have small balcony or garden. Keeping the heat very well.

El smoker funciona correctamente, muy bonito diseño, solo que no sella correctamente y se sale el humo por las puertas, está bien la relación costo-beneficio.

We absolutely love this BBQ/Smoker. It’s easy to assemble, easy to use, and does a great job. It has a lot of cooking/smoking surface. We used both level and switched every once in a while. Very impressed for the price. I would recommend.

Great customer service when needed.