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[slaga]

I am going to preface with I have no experience with stick burners. I never used one. I have the patience but at this stage in my life I just do not have the time to babysit a smoker hours on end. That said I had a Traeger BBQ07E (Lil Tex) and a Yoder YS640. I just sold the Traeger and bought the Pit Boss 5 Series Vertical Smoker, mainly for the real estate to cook jerky. I have no experience with vertical smokers or what people generally cook in them.

By offset I mean the barrel type smokers like the Traeger Texas and the like. Are there any advantages to one or the other that is not obvious to the uneducated? The only obvious thing I can see is you can hang sausage in a vertical and there just isn't as much height in an offset smoker to do the same. Is there anything about either one that gives it an advantage cooking certain foods?

[Bar-B-Lew]

You could probably get more larger meats like turkeys in the vertical than you could in most horizontal pellet grills.

[Free Mr. Tony]

Sounds like your question is mostly related to pellet fired versions of your topic. In that case, I'd say you pretty much touched on the main difference. More space for jerky and sausage. I would add a smaller footprint. As far as the horizontal barrels go, the drip tray act in a similar fashion to the steel plates on reverse flow offsets. They get hot, and the fat sizzles on them. Some people like that vaporized fat flavor. Others don't. Also the drip pan provides some radiant heat, so things may cook slightly faster on the barrel type.

As far as stick burners go, some people think the verticals draw better since it's a more natural flow for the heat and smoke to rise up instead of sideways. 

[slaga]

After I asked the question I spent a few minutes Googling the topic. One message board (not pellet fired) got quite heated over which is better, biscuit test and all... It went from mildly entertaining to more annoying pretty quickly. In doing so I actually ran across the reverse flow smokers and had to figure out how those work too.

[Free Mr. Tony]

I had a Lang reverse flow for awhile. It cooked very even on the bottom shelf, which is what reverse flow are kind of known for over the traditional offsets. The top shelf because of the way the air was forced through was about 100 degrees hotter than the bottom.

I would like to try a higher end traditional offset. The only one of that type I've ever had was the cheap Lowe's variety.

I currently have a reverse flow vertical insulated cabinet. That thing is super easy on the charcoal, and cooks much faster than other indirect smokers I've used.

[LowSlowJoe]

I had a home built vertical stick burner...  it was sort of offset, but not really.   Well, it was also a hybrid Gas/wood.   I had one chamber that wood went in, with it's own air inlet, that could be adjusted to allow more or less air in... the gas burner was under a 3/16" thick steel plate, the wood sat directly above that burner... the plate would get hot and insure the wood never would be in danger of staying lit ( no mater how much you choked off the air). This heat went up the back of the vertical chamber, but the cooking grates were never directly above that area, so the heat and smoke went upward... and circulated around a bit inside too... exhaust was at the top in the front....

 So, my experience with vertical is...  the top is usually warmer than the bottom... but with something like the Copper Head, where the heat is clearly coming directly from the bottom and around the sides, this may be why in Bentley's testing it didn't seem to have this typical hotter on top bias...

  The main advantage of a vertical, is it's easy to slide rack in and out and if it is a little hotter on top ( or even on the bottom ), it's very easy to shuffle the food around , just pull a rack out , reposition it, etc...

  Usually on typical pellet grills they run hotter toward the smoke stack side... some apparently are very even across side to side, but on most I've owned, they have a slightly higher heat on one end... Not as easy to move cooking racks around, unless you have a rack system that came with the grill, or was a aftermarket system.

[mowin]

Haven't used a vertical stick burner, but I have a 250 gal reverse flow offset.  Like mentioned above the, temps are very even side to side, but the top grate is about 60* hotter on my rig.

[LowSlowJoe]

probably the biggest disadvantage of a vertical design, is it really doesn't provide a reasonable way to 'grill' something.

[Bar-B-Lew]

probably the biggest disadvantage of a vertical design, is it really doesn't provide a reasonable way to 'grill' something.

Will find out soon with some chicken wings

[WayneB]

probably the biggest disadvantage of a vertical design, is it really doesn't provide a reasonable way to 'grill' something.

That is why you need both. One grill /smoker is very limiting, that's why I have 11

[Ross77]

I had a MES for a couple years. I didn’t like precutting ribs and packer briskets to fit.

I prefer having everything presented to me in a horizontal format at about waist height. I didn’t like managing the trays and having to bend down to access the food. I had the 30” model so maybe a larger unit would have been better.

I don’t do jerky or sausage but I could see how a vertical setup would be better in that case.