Bubba Keg Archeology

I still haven't had time to cook on this beast, and it calls to me constantly, but here's some pictures of un-boxing and assembling.

On the left, here it is as delivered. Looking at the box, it's not much smaller than an 18 1/2" Weber Smokey Mountain.

This is a big box, if you're picking one up from the store, I hope you have a van or a pickup truck. I can't imagine trying to get that into a car trunk or back seat!

The shipping label claimed that the box weighed 235 lbs, but from the packing list it's only 135 lbs. I wonder what the Bubba Keg people paid for shipping.

Let's see what it's like when it's opened up. The outer layer of cardboard has been removed. It's very Nicely packed. That's the base placed on top of the keg. Lots of Styrofoam and packing materials in this box. It's not very environmentally friendly.

Removing the base and it's surrounding packing materials I open the lid and find a box and more packing materials.

This box is heavy. Below the box I find the handles, the snap on tables, the cooking tool (more about that later) and the two cooking grates.

Carefully removing all of that, I find.... Another box! This one is much lighter than the first. I feel like I'm excavating King Tut's tomb here. Every layer produces something new and exciting.

And what is in these boxes? One contains the wheels and the various hardware. The other? It's empty. Carefully emulating Howard Carter, I dutifully document my find but wonder, "Has this keg been violated by keg robbers earlier in the century?" I'm stumped.

All the various pieces of this bad boy are now scattered around my garage floor. I'm ready to begin. I open up the operation handbook and check out the schematic, read the cooking and operating instructions and glance over the instructions for attaching my Bubba Keg to my non-existent pickup truck and it dawns on me. There's no assembly instructions! I think I've solved the mystery of the empty box.

To the internet! More tomorrow.