Quick review of my new smoker after the first two smokes.
First thing I did was seal up all the seams with high-temp RTV and the doors with LavaLock gasket. After I seasoned it, I added a small cooling rack to the charcoal grate to keep the smaller coals from falling through and then a small foil wrapped cookie sheet on the first grate as a heat dissipation shield/drip collector. I had a cookout/Oktoberfest this past weekend and smoked a 5.15lb butt along with 15 beer Brats (sorry no picks of the Brats, was kind of running around the whole time haha).
First thing of note: the thermometer that comes with it is useless. Not too surprising but c'mon, 40 degrees off?
No wonder the chicken thighs I first put on it as a test were dry as jerky after an hour and change. I should've used my digital thermometer that time, but I was just messing around as it was my first time with the smoker.
My biggest problem with the smoker so far is keeping the temp down, though. I used what I thought was a normal amount of lump charcoal and once they were going the temp was at 325 despite having both chokes down by the fire closed (more on those in a bit). To get the temp down to between 225-250 and keep it there, I had to douse the coals periodically until there weren't many coals left. From there, I would only add a few coals at a time to keep it going. Not the absolute end of the world but geez, it was kind of a pain. Luckily, the food turned out great, but I came away with a lot of questions.
First, here is all that was left of the pork. I didn't even have time to take a pic before it got attacked by my guests haha.
Now onto my questions:
Did I make the smoker too efficient? Should I just start out with a small amount of coals and go from there?
What is a good way to get rid of the gaps on the chokes when they're closed? Could those few gaps be why I had trouble with the temp? (I can provide pics if needed)
Should I be using some kind of ceramic deflector shield? If so, where can I get one that would fit?
First thing I did was seal up all the seams with high-temp RTV and the doors with LavaLock gasket. After I seasoned it, I added a small cooling rack to the charcoal grate to keep the smaller coals from falling through and then a small foil wrapped cookie sheet on the first grate as a heat dissipation shield/drip collector. I had a cookout/Oktoberfest this past weekend and smoked a 5.15lb butt along with 15 beer Brats (sorry no picks of the Brats, was kind of running around the whole time haha).
First thing of note: the thermometer that comes with it is useless. Not too surprising but c'mon, 40 degrees off?
No wonder the chicken thighs I first put on it as a test were dry as jerky after an hour and change. I should've used my digital thermometer that time, but I was just messing around as it was my first time with the smoker.
My biggest problem with the smoker so far is keeping the temp down, though. I used what I thought was a normal amount of lump charcoal and once they were going the temp was at 325 despite having both chokes down by the fire closed (more on those in a bit). To get the temp down to between 225-250 and keep it there, I had to douse the coals periodically until there weren't many coals left. From there, I would only add a few coals at a time to keep it going. Not the absolute end of the world but geez, it was kind of a pain. Luckily, the food turned out great, but I came away with a lot of questions.
First, here is all that was left of the pork. I didn't even have time to take a pic before it got attacked by my guests haha.
Now onto my questions:
Did I make the smoker too efficient? Should I just start out with a small amount of coals and go from there?
What is a good way to get rid of the gaps on the chokes when they're closed? Could those few gaps be why I had trouble with the temp? (I can provide pics if needed)
Should I be using some kind of ceramic deflector shield? If so, where can I get one that would fit?
