# Novice smoker from PA



## slickmick84 (May 30, 2022)

Hello smoker gurus,  
Chris from Pennsylvanias. Started on a tiny weber 22" Charcoal grill/smoker and only did small things since I was limited on space; short rack beef ribs, beer can chicken, tried a pitmaster pineapple burger (came out banging) other then that just your regular BBQ grill. I bought a char-griller XD grand champion smoker from HD for cheap ($300) brought it home and seasoned it with canola oil everywhere on the inside. Now here's my novice part of the smoking experience. I saw but haven't checked out the recipe section of the forum. Any other advice for this XD? I've seen some mods I'll be doing to keep smoke from exiting the chamber and stack. Can't wait to smoke some goods meats. SMOKE on fellas!


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## SmokinEdge (May 30, 2022)

Welcome from Colorado 
You will be right at home here.


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## yankee2bbq (May 30, 2022)

Welcome from Arkansas.  Don’t have the answers to your questions, since I don’t have that type of smoker, but I am sure others can help you. 
Again, welcome!!!!


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## smokerjim (May 30, 2022)

Welcome from pa


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## sandyut (May 30, 2022)

Welcome to SMF from Utah


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## clifish (May 30, 2022)

Welcome from NY and NEPA


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## bauchjw (May 30, 2022)

Greetings from Virginia! Good price! I had one similar a few years ago, not exactly sure how yours is though. I recommend putting a pan of water/beer/etc in the cooking chamber to act as a heat sink and maybe putting a bit of a heat deflector over the area where the fire box and cooking chamber meet. That’s normally the hot spot. Also, make sure there is some space between the grate where you place your wood/charcoal and bottom of the box for oxygen. Seems common that a chimney of charcoal and a split or two of wood will get you in the 250-275 range, but I’d play a bit with it! 

Looking forward to seeing your progress!


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## Sven Svensson (May 30, 2022)

Welcome, from California.


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## 912smoker (May 30, 2022)

Welcome to SMF from SE GA!

Keith


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## Fat Old Guy (May 30, 2022)

Welcome from WI.


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## Bearcarver (May 30, 2022)

Welcome Slic!!
What part of Pennsy' are you from?

Bear, From SE PA (Macungie)


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## DougE (May 30, 2022)

Welcome from Kentucky!


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## BCP3006 (May 30, 2022)

DougE said:


> Welcome from Kentucky!


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## slickmick84 (May 31, 2022)

smokerjim said:


> Welcome from pa


Where about  Pa? I'm in the northeastern  part of the state ( Scranton Dunmore area.


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## slickmick84 (May 31, 2022)

Bearcarver said:


> Welcome Slic!!
> What part of Pennsy' are you from?
> 
> Bear, From SE PA (Macungie)


From NEPA ( throop)


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## smokerjim (May 31, 2022)

slickmick84 said:


> Where about  Pa? I'm in the northeastern  part of the state ( Scranton Dunmore area.


About 20 miles north of scranton, actually went to high school in dunmore.


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## SmokinAl (May 31, 2022)

Welcome to SMF!
Glad to have you join us!
Al


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## JLeonard (May 31, 2022)

Welcome from the Mississippi! Look forward to your posts and pics.
Jim


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## Bearcarver (May 31, 2022)

smokerjim said:


> About 20 miles north of scranton, actually went to high school in dunmore.


LOL---And I went to college 4 years (Muhlenberg).
To visit my Sister.

Bear


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## slickmick84 (May 31, 2022)

smokerjim said:


> About 20 miles north of scranton, actually went to high school in dunmore.


Nice, maybe we'll link together to show me the ropes or to get some good BBQ on.


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## BCP3006 (May 31, 2022)

Hey Doug welcome from The lone Star State. I have been using offset smokers for the last 35 years and started from the ground up. I lived in Titusville Pennsylvania that's about 40 miles south of lake Erie. That's the city where Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well and when I was in high school I worked at the colonel Drake hotel washing dishes.
From there I join the Navy and became an electrician.
From there I moved to Texas looking for better work and got hooked on offset smokers. Thought I'd like to try something different so I ended up buying a pit boss pro series four vertical pellet smoker and I couldn't create blue smoke to save my life out of that thing. Any pills that looks like wood never did give me any blue smoke no matter if the smoker was clean or if it was dirty so after about 120-150 bucks of trying this pillar than that pellet I picked up one bag I saw laying on the shelf at Walmart and it said pit boss charcoal blend pellets so that was the end of smoking season for buying pellets at the store so I brought it home through some pellets in the hopper one really expecting anything and it came outside and I always look over at the smoker when I go out of the house just out of habit maybe hoping it's still there when I come back out anyway I couldn't believe my eyes. All I saw was thin blue smoke churning out of the smoker.. heck I didn't do anything different but there was along with that big smile on my face. I had a couple racks of ribs on the smoker and I looked beautiful and had a good red smoke ring on them if there was no good smoke flavor on the meat. Yes I have water in the water pan and I smoked them at 130° and it was turning out blue smoke like you wouldn't believe, but there was no smoke flavor on the meat. I smoke them for 5 hours at that lowest temperature.
I took a hygrometer and put it in the container that I was storing my pellets in that tube was air air tight. A couple days later I came back and looked at the meter and it said moisture content was 41% and still creating blue smoke. Maybe if the moisture content was lower the flavor might have been different but I know if you tried to create more blue smoke that wouldn't add any more flavor to the meat because even blue smoke you can barely see is enough to give you that deep down wood Smoky flavor.
I have an accountant friend that lives in Dallas and he works in one of those tall buildings full of accountants and I gave him some of the ribs I had on and offset smoker and he brought them to work then heated them up in the break room in the microwave then all of a sudden the atmosphere changed into break room people were moving fast look like they were looking for something and he my friend heard them talking about where that where that barbecue smell coming from my buddy just sat there and kind of chuckled to himself and finally they veered in on him and he says we have never ever in our entire life smelled rib that ever smelled like that in our entire lives. You just proceeded to tell them that his buddy gave him some that he keep that he made on a cheap smoker from Walmart.so we sat there and ate every last rib and didn't give anybody any LOL...
I'm about to trust something drastic and put three or four bottles of cherry extract flavoring in the water pan and let that mingle around my next rack of ribs and see if that would impart some added flavor.. it's like Elvis has left the building and he took all the flavor with him.
I've been watching gurus on YouTube using pellet smokers and bragging about the flavor and the smoke Ring well I can get the smoke ring but where is he getting the flavor? They might be doing something behind the scene that gear is of these videos can't see like getting these pills delivered straight from the manufacturing plant right out of the pellet maker, bagged up and rushed


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## BCP3006 (May 31, 2022)

BCP3006 said:


> Hey Doug welcome from The lone Star State. I have been using offset smokers for the last 35 years and started from the ground up. I lived in Titusville Pennsylvania that's about 40 miles south of lake Erie. That's the city where Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well and when I was in high school I worked at the colonel Drake hotel washing dishes.
> From there I join the Navy and became an electrician.
> From there I moved to Texas looking for better work and got hooked on offset smokers. Thought I'd like to try something different so I ended up buying a pit boss pro series four vertical pellet smoker and I couldn't create blue smoke to save my life out of that thing. Any pills that looks like wood never did give me any blue smoke no matter if the smoker was clean or if it was dirty so after about 120-150 bucks of trying this pillar than that pellet I picked up one bag I saw laying on the shelf at Walmart and it said pit boss charcoal blend pellets so that was the end of smoking season for buying pellets at the store so I brought it home through some pellets in the hopper one really expecting anything and it came outside and I always look over at the smoker when I go out of the house just out of habit maybe hoping it's still there when I come back out anyway I couldn't believe my eyes. All I saw was thin blue smoke churning out of the smoker.. heck I didn't do anything different but there was along with that big smile on my face. I had a couple racks of ribs on the smoker and I looked beautiful and had a good red smoke ring on them if there was no good smoke flavor on the meat. Yes I have water in the water pan and I smoked them at 130° and it was turning out blue smoke like you wouldn't believe, but there was no smoke flavor on the meat. I smoke them for 5 hours at that lowest temperature.
> I took a hygrometer and put it in the container that I was storing my pellets in that tube was air air tight. A couple days later I came back and looked at the meter and it said moisture content was 41% and still creating blue smoke. Maybe if the moisture content was lower the flavor might have been different but I know if you tried to create more blue smoke that wouldn't add any more flavor to the meat because even blue smoke you can barely see is enough to give you that deep down wood Smoky flavor.
> ...


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## DougE (May 31, 2022)

Paragraphs are your friend. When people see a wall of text, they tend to move along.


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

DougE said:


> Paragraphs are your friend. When people see a wall of text, they tend to move along.


First time I've heard of the wall and I just had a problem and needed to explain myself


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

BCP3006 said:


> First time I've heard of the wall and I just had a problem and needed to explain myself


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

How could I have ever gotten my point across by sending a paragraph, just asking?


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## DougE (Jun 1, 2022)

BCP3006 said:


> How could I have ever gotten my point across by sending a paragraph, just asking?


I wasn't saying only one paragraph. What I said was that one big block of text is hard to read. Breaking it up into paragraphs with a space between makes it much easier to read.


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

DougE said:


> I wasn't saying only one paragraph. What I said was that one big block of text is hard to read. Breaking it up into paragraphs with a space between makes it much easier to read.


Well I'm learning how to write on the internet now. So glad to get a few lessons from somebody that loves barbecue.
Anything's liable to happen while I'm typing and it's all because of where I live I'm just lucky to get it typed out while the phone still has enough signal to function. I'm typing now with no signal strength at all.
There's a lot to be said about sending a text message that is lost because it's not like two people talking face to face and you can hear the tone of The voice and facial expressions body language, kind of like blue smoke from a pellet smoker with no flavor to go along with the smoke ring...


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

BCP3006 said:


> Well I'm learning how to write on the internet now. So glad to get a few lessons from somebody that loves barbecue.
> Anything's liable to happen while I'm typing and it's all because of where I live I'm just lucky to get it typed out while the phone still has enough signal to function. I'm typing now with no signal strength at all.
> There's a lot to be said about sending a text message that is lost because it's not like two people talking face to face and you can hear the tone of The voice and facial expressions body language, kind of like blue smoke from a pellet smoker with no flavor to go along with the smoke ring...


Some people say STOP SHOUTING AT ME , when I type.
I have concluded that large letters mean you are shouting but I type with large letters sometimes because it's easier to read sometimes when the lighting isn't good enough. Some people can't stand to read capital letters.
I have never been called out for not creating paragraphs. Ask not and receive not...

I will try to please anybody that I can because it's too easy to make an enemy... We already have one enemy trying to send us to hell...

Right now I'm trying to find the minimum amount of moisture content in these wood pellets that will affect the quality of The thin blue smoke.

I've posted earlier about a charcoal blended pellet and that moisture was 41% but I still got a wonderful looking thin blue smoke. But I'm understanding from reading that the thinnest blue smoke you can barely see is really the smoke that you're looking for and I know that more thin blue smoke will not get you any more flavor.

Some people that have sat down and ate my smoked meat talked about me not having enough billowing clouds of smoke coming out of my smokestack but everybody sure sat down and ate, but no one complained... I must have done something right and no one cared to ask why there was blue smoke coming out of the stack that you could hardly see...

But I have blue smoke from a pellet smoker without that smokey wood flavor that's supposed to be deposited on the meat... I smoked that rack of ribs for 5 hours with no apparent flavor on the meat...

All my meat comes from the refrigerator as cold as it can get and straight to the smoker it goes
I see pellet gurus on YouTube using whatever flavor pellet they're using and they're always bragging about the flavor.
These guys may get their pellets direct from the manufacturer to their pellet smoker in their backyard lickity split.
Not sure how long these pellets sit in a warehouse where they are manufactured then they sell some pellets to Walmart and they sit in their warehouse.
These pellets are very hygroscopic and any wood pellet that I have ever used I've only seen white smoke come from them, which made me think the charcoal had something to do with it and I'm thinking charcoal Burns hotter than wood. I may need to be corrected on that.
have only been using offset smokers for 35 years


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

BCP3006 said:


> Some people say STOP SHOUTING AT ME , when I type.
> I have concluded that large letters mean you are shouting but I type with large letters sometimes because it's easier to read sometimes when the lighting isn't good enough. Some people can't stand to read capital letters.
> I have never been called out for not creating paragraphs. Ask not and receive not...
> 
> ...


I had to go back and put the space in between the paragraphs.
I miss two or three paragraphs at the end before I sent it but I'll do better next time...


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## BCP3006 (Jun 1, 2022)

BCP3006 said:


> I had to go back and put the space in between the paragraphs.
> I miss two or three paragraphs at the end before I sent it but I'll do better next time...


I've read another article about moisture in split wood for offset smokers or the moisture content was 20% put offset smokers same to handle that amount of moisture fairly well.
I read about a pellet manufacturer wanted to try 5 to 10% moisture leaving the pellet dies.

I thought about starting out at 5% moisture and smoking something simple like a hamburger. For 30 minutes made from ground chuck 80/20... Then flame broil for 30 seconds on each side from a chimney . Now that was better than Burger King...


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