British BBQ Society Forums

Hey Guys, Hope everyone enjoyed their bank holiday.

My friend decided to do a Hog Roast and called on my help. after a few discussions he built his 'rig' from scratch (which I must say, weighed a ton and took some manoeuvring to get through the gate).

We had some trouble with the rotisserie (used a 4x4 winch but couldnt get the power right, it was all a bit last minute.
After drilling some air holes / chimney and paint we did a quick test burn and all looked good.
We started the 75KG pig off at 3am and the BBQ oven help temperature really well with not too much coal / applewood. Sprayed regularly with applejuice and it after tending all night was ready for the 2pm party, started serving around 2:30 / 2:45 with their home made apple sauce and other than a little charing from manually turning every hour (and hooking up the chain to gears to lock position) It was cooked perfect. Anyway, attached some piggy and oven pics. This thing is definitely getting used again with a few mods and makes my smoker look tiny haha.

BBQ:


Pig:


Half way:


Done:


Eaten:

Nice looking hog!

I built my own stainless steel hog roaster around 8 or 9 years ago so I've come into contact with a lot of the problems you probably did. I used an electric wheelchair motor, the front sprocket from a mountain bike and made my own small gear to go onto the motor.

It was still a little fast so I ended up buying a proper high torque, low rev motor in the end. It cost £150 or so but it did away with the chain drive and allowed me to get less than 1rpm on the pig.

You can't slow a DC motor by lowing the voltage as I'm sure you'll have found out as when you decrease the voltage as well as decreasing rpm it decreases torque massively. You can do it with a DC speed controlled though. Instead of lowering the voltage it literally pulses the motor on and off at full power which reduces speed but more importantly retains torque.

These pulsed controllers are a bit pricey though and it's probably easier and cheaper to buy a proper high torque heavily geared motor.

We want to a jubilee hog rest yesterday and it was absolutely crap. £5 a sandwich.....dry, tough and tasteless. Cooked on a commercial gas hog roaster. Cooked better in my oven at home and definately done way better on the GMG DB.

With some practice you should get your Hog Roasts even better. Ours improved massively everything we did one. Although recently I've been thinking of getting Jim Bowie as it'll fit the bulk of a pig on if quartered.

With regard to the Hog Roasting, I think I could speak for a few of the posters on here that should you require independant quality control on the finished meat we would self-sacrificingly drop whatever we were doing and rush to assist. Great looking piggie (we need the drooling smilie)

keith157 wrote:With regard to the Hog Roasting, I think I could speak for a few of the posters on here that should you require independant quality control on the finished meat we would self-sacrificingly drop whatever we were doing and rush to assist. Great looking piggie (we need the drooling smilie)

+1 to that. nice looking piggy....

I've done one a couple of years ago, so I know how much work it takes. Good effort it looks awesome.
Cheers
Marcus

thanks for the tips crphillips. My friend just managed to get hold of a shop front shutter motor and pole with barrings so looking forward to testing with that.