lil help please

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trotline

Fire Starter
Original poster
Aug 3, 2009
39
10
tennessee
Ok, I put 2 racks of spares on earlier this morning and temp started out good. Now it is a couple hours later and my temp has dropped and I cannot get it to return. I dumped a new chimney full of lit coals in about 30-45 minutes ago and it is still below 200. I'm still learning this so any help would be appreciated. Oh, I am using a cheapo Brinkmann offset smoker.
 
Sounds like you don't have enough airflow to the fire - do you have the exhaust wide open? How about the intake on the fire box? Do you have the fire up off the floor of the firebox or sitting directly on it?

One other thing - are you sure your thermo is accurate?
 
You might have a build up of ash and it's choking out the fire. Blue bag Kingsford is famous for excessive ash, if that's what you're using.
 
Last time I checked my therm. it was correct but that was a few months ago. The thing with the ash is probably my problem. My parents had some blue kingsford here so I just used that. I will dump it and start over. Thanks very much. You may have just saved football Saturday!
 
Thanks a lot for the advice. I got the heat back up and the ribs turned out good. Man I love this site!
 
That's great. Now get yourself a piece of expanded metal and fashion a basket. Use something like a couple of bricks to keep it up off the floor of the firebox and problems like that will go away.

Or you can buy one of those BBQ Woks to used instead of the expanded metal. They work really well.

Here's an example of the wok. http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/co...box.jsp.form23

Give them a sharp rap every once in a while to get the ash to fall away and your set.
 
thanks, I will def. check into a basket or something to eliminate this problem. I have an old grate in there to help with this but in this case it was not enough. I try to use lump also but my family had the Kingsford that needed to be used and I was too lazy to go buy some good stuff. :) Thanks for all the advice.
 
Yet another fine reason to join and by a member of this site. You ask and we will answer even in the middle of the night.
 
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