2nd Smoke

  • Some of the links on this forum allow SMF, at no cost to you, to earn a small commission when you click through and make a purchase. Let me know if you have any questions about this.
SMF is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

noire

Fire Starter
Original poster
May 27, 2008
37
10
Denver, CO
It's 6:58 MST and I've been getting the CGSP ready for the past hour or so. (Little delay since I was up until 2am). Today is my second smoke ever... the first one since I bought the CGSP, really.

I picked up a 6.5lb pork shoulder and 8 chicken quarters (~10lbs.) I also bought the stuff for ABTs, but haven't assembled them yet.

Wood's on now. I'm doing the minion method... some cowboy lump coals on the bottom, with some hickory wood chunks on top of that, and then some hot coals to top it off.....

wish me luck :)

some pics:
 
Thanks guys... I'll keep you posted.


Amazing how far off those OEM thermometers are:

 
Seems to be going way too fast.... after about 1-1.5 hours I'm at 81* in the shoulder.

Temps in the grill are hovering around 220 using my imprecise methods of an instant read meat thermometer stuck in the side of the smoker. It tops out at 220 so it's tough to say what the real temp is, but it's movement slows down to a crawl once it gets to about 215.

 
Updates:

My sous chef, hard at work:


Taken a few minutes ago (6hrs, 140F):


It's weird, I flipped it and adjusted the thermometer probe, my temp went from 150-ish to 130. The new position was actually in a part that was closer to the grate.
 
So far the meat looks really good, has a nice color to it. Have you done the boiling water test on the therm's to make sure they're accurate? It also does depend on where you're placing the probe as to the fluctuation in temps.
 
Haven't done the tests yet. The new remote one was within a few degrees of the thermostat here yesterday... that's as much as I did.

edit: tested the instant read meat thermometer and it's pretty spot on.
 
Just realizes that my meat temp has been at 141 since 11am (4 hours ago)... after some shuffling around, it looked like my pit temp dropped, so I started poking around and it looks like the ash from the cowboy lump charcoal was too big to pass through the grill basket that I'm using for my charcoal. I shook it a bit to clear some ash out and dumped a lot more hardwood on to get back into the zone quickly... we'll see how it goes.
 
I had the same problems with the Cowboy Lump. I stay away from it now, and use only Royal Oak from WalMart. It's much cleaner, and although I like sparklers on the 4th, I don't like 'em in my firebox.
 
It's been 15 hours, I've switched it to a 220F oven and it's just now hitting 165F :/
 
You could bump the oven up to 250* with no problems thats what I do when I throw it in the oven.
 
Fantastic... I'm at the point where my 4 hours of sleep last night has run it's course and I want to sleep.

Off to bump the temp up, thanks!
 
I forgot to ask but did you foil the butt?
 
When I put it into the oven, yes. When I was on the bbq, I was still waiting for 165F to foil.
 
Great it should go much faster now good luck with the rest of it
 
Looks great made me soooo hungry I'm going to lunch early
PDT_Armataz_01_37.gif
 
SmokingMeatForums.com is reader supported and as an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases.

Latest posts

Hot Threads

Clicky