2Fifty Texas BBQ in Riverdale Park has added a 1,000-gallon wood smoker to its onsite smokehouse that will allow it to dramatically expand the amount of meat it prepares each day.

Made from repurposed steel propane tanks, the cherry red smoker is literally the biggest trend in Texas barbecue right now.

To give a sense of the size of it, the 12-foot-long smoker can cook 26 briskets at a time.

Co-owner Debby González told the Hyattsville Wire that the popular Texas barbecue restaurant needed a larger smoker to accommodate the demand from customers while remaining authentic. It will complement an existing 500-gallon smoker.

The goal is to use only oak wood, without relying on electricity or gas.

“It is important for our handcrafted style BBQ because it achieves the highest smoke penetration into our prime quality meats, like Creekstone Farms or Snake River Farms,” she said.

González said they will have customers help name the smoker as they did when they named their existing 500-gallon smoker “Apollo.”

“We haven’t named her yet, although we know it’s a ‘she,'” she said.

The smokers are something of an engineering marvel, relying entirely on fluid dynamics to draw smoke from the firebox at one end to the exhaust stack at the other while losing no more than five degrees of heat along the way.

2Fifty’s smoker was built by Georgia-based Primitive Pits, which has made smokers for barbecue joints recognized by Texas Monthly’s top 50.

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