[ABC Australia] Australian takes American barbecue to new heights building 19,000L smoker big enough for 150 briskets.
"Everything is bigger in Texas" is a popular expression for a reason — Texas is the largest state in the US mainland, it boasts the country's biggest ranch, and it's home to the world's biggest pair of cowboy boots.
It also has a big infatuation with barbecue.
A primary food group, check the pyramid.
In 1999, the Texas House of Representatives even passed a proclamation making Lockhart the state's official "barbecue capital".
But across the Pacific, Aussies are quickly catching up when it comes to American-style barbecuing — building bigger meat smokers, hosting bigger festivals, and receiving acclaim from international "pitmasters".
MEET 'FRANK THE TANK'
American barbecue is a style of cooking that originated in the southern US.
Unlike Australian-style grill barbecuing, it involves slow-cooking meats — such as pork, beef and chicken — in a smoker, over indirect heat from wood or charcoal.
The meats are typically marinated or rubbed with a mixture of spices and sauces — and the result is intense, smoky flavours.
In a sign of the times, a metal fabricator at Plainland, 60 kilometres west of Brisbane, has just finished building what he says is the biggest smoker of its kind.
"It is the biggest reverse flow smoker in the world," creator Brendan Muhling said.
While there are larger "regular flow" offset smokers out there, Mr Muhling argues reverse flow provides a more even cooking temperature due to the way the smoke and heat travels.
In a reverse flow smoker, the smoke and heat are forced under an internal plate, then back over the meat and out the chimney, whereas in a regular offset smoker, smoke and heat travels directly from the firebox towards the chimney.
Affectionately named "Frank the tank" and built for a restaurant at nearby Walloon, Mr Muhling's $30,000 steel behemoth was crafted using the ends of an old service station gas tank and a large sheet of rolled steel.
It measures 7.5 metres in length and 5.5m from the ground to the top of the smokestack.
And with a diameter of 1.8m, a tall person can stand upright in it.
After being welded together, Frank had to be moved with a crane due to its 6.5-tonne mass.
These dimensions give it the capacity to cook 150 briskets at a time, which is about 1T of meat.
For a typical 12-hour cook, the single firebox needs to be loaded with about 140 kilograms of wood.
The build, which took four weeks, didn't go unnoticed in Mr Muhling's neighbourhood.
"When it was at the front of my place, everyone was pulling up and just taking pictures and people were saying, 'That's just insane'," he said.
PUSHING THE LIMITS
As to why there was a need for a 19,000L (5,000 gallon) smoker, Mr Muhling said since 2018, restaurant owner and mate Luke Saggus had been pushing the limits of what was possible in the world of barbecue.
"It started one night when we were just having some beers," Mr Muhling said.
"Luke goes, 'We need to go bigger'.
"In America, they all stop at 1,000 gallons (3,800L) because they believe [that] over 1,000 gallons, you can't make a smoker work.
"I guess we wanted to prove them wrong [and] it actually works very, very well — it's pretty crazy."
Mr Muhling believes Australia's love of the culinary style was driven by TV shows from the US like BBQ Pitmasters, and that social media has taken it to the next level.
Videos of Frank the tank on social media have been viewed more than 1.5 million times.
"My page is blowing up with a lot of American people starting to follow, because even they're blown away just by the sheer size of it," he said. 
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