Smokin Aces BBQ

Kevin Hardin has been cooking, grilling and smoking for over 20 years. As a BBQ Institute certified Pit Master Kevin knows BBQ. Smokin Aces is taking over 70 years of Traditional Texas BBQ and bringing regional, national and international flavor influences. Kevin Hardin took his design for a high capacity trailer mounted smoker to OF Manufacturing in Brownwood Lake Texas. Now the smoker was supposed to be about 3' feet in diameter and about 6 feet long. One month after project start the lead engineer sent Kevin pictures. "OH MY GOD!" was what Kevin Hardin exclaimed when the pictures were opened. He got the lead engineer on the phone and asked what the heck? The engineer said "Son, everything in Texas is Big". LOL! Big is right! "Big Tex" weighs 3,000 lbs. It is over 7 feet tall, 5 feet wide and 8 feet deep. It has 16 10" x 42" trays on a powered rotisserie. The fire box has a 4 foot long gas burner in it to start the logs which turns out can heat the smoker all on its own to 500 degrees. Wow! It is 28" in diameter and we actually put a tray rail in it to grill in it also.  Bonus! It is made out of 3/16" steal plate holding heat very well creating an efficient and stable smoker. All of this is mounted on a 5 foot by 10 foot trailer, which by the way does not include the 5 feet of tongue sticking out of the front and a 5 foot by 5 foot fold down deck on the back and when fully laid out and parked it is 21 feet long!

Ok, the end of the story as Paul Harvey would say is; OF Manufacturing stands for Old Fart in the barn or also known as my dad Kenneth Hardin and a barn with lots of tools. Take an old boy from West Texas, make him an engineer, retire him, given him an unlimited supply of steel and tools and throw in some Miller Lite and you get "Big Tex" Frankly you could not duplicate this from the commercial smoker makers for less than $20,000 and I would not take a million for it. Ok maybe a million. We have now fed over 7,000 plates out of it so far this year and it has performed very well turning out award winning BBQ.