Had a fire break out in my offset yesterday! In all my years of smoking I never had this happen before. I had 4 briskets on at the time but fortunately they were in foil pans and covered otherwise I would have lost them I'm sure. I happened to notice a lot of smoke coming from my exhaust which is unusual because normally I am running a nice thin blue or just a heat signature. When I got within 6 feet of the smoker I could hear the fire howling!
I shut down all the vents on the firebox. I knew I needed to get the briskets out of there So I put on my welder gloves and open the cabinet doors and the flames came leaping out! I used my fire poker to grab the shelves and pulled them out as far as I could then grabbed each of the 4 pans containing my briskets. I was able to save the briskets thank God they were in pans and foiled! These are for a party today and I would have been screwed as I don't think I would have been able to save them had they just been on the racks.
Not sure how this happened as I had cleaned the smoker less than a week before and had not used it until yesterday. When I clean I take all the racks and tuning plates out and use a wide blade putty knife to scrape all the grease out of the bottom of the pit. The tuning plates have a build up thats as hard as cement as does the bottom of the pit right next to the firebox. I chip at it but very little comes off. Do I get it perfectly clean? No but the majority of the excess grease comes out so I'm not sure how this fire started or where the fuel came from.
I had 4 big briskets on all day and had just panned them a hour or so before the fire broke out. I'm thinking two things and maybe a combination of both. Did the solid mass of the 4 pans on the racks force the heat down and concentrate on the bottom of the pit and ignite the grease that was left?
Also I recently started building my fire in the fire box closer to the opening in the pit. This is because I put a log up against the otherside of the box as far away from the fire for preheating. So I guess this allows for the flames to more easily lick into the smoke chamber from the firebox. Because I had just panned the briskets I was building the fire up to increase the temp in the chamber.
First preventive measure I will take is to go back to preheating my logs on the top of the outside of the firebox and build my fire further away from the chamber opening.
I will be using it again today so hopefully I don't have a repeat!
I shut down all the vents on the firebox. I knew I needed to get the briskets out of there So I put on my welder gloves and open the cabinet doors and the flames came leaping out! I used my fire poker to grab the shelves and pulled them out as far as I could then grabbed each of the 4 pans containing my briskets. I was able to save the briskets thank God they were in pans and foiled! These are for a party today and I would have been screwed as I don't think I would have been able to save them had they just been on the racks.
Not sure how this happened as I had cleaned the smoker less than a week before and had not used it until yesterday. When I clean I take all the racks and tuning plates out and use a wide blade putty knife to scrape all the grease out of the bottom of the pit. The tuning plates have a build up thats as hard as cement as does the bottom of the pit right next to the firebox. I chip at it but very little comes off. Do I get it perfectly clean? No but the majority of the excess grease comes out so I'm not sure how this fire started or where the fuel came from.
I had 4 big briskets on all day and had just panned them a hour or so before the fire broke out. I'm thinking two things and maybe a combination of both. Did the solid mass of the 4 pans on the racks force the heat down and concentrate on the bottom of the pit and ignite the grease that was left?
Also I recently started building my fire in the fire box closer to the opening in the pit. This is because I put a log up against the otherside of the box as far away from the fire for preheating. So I guess this allows for the flames to more easily lick into the smoke chamber from the firebox. Because I had just panned the briskets I was building the fire up to increase the temp in the chamber.
First preventive measure I will take is to go back to preheating my logs on the top of the outside of the firebox and build my fire further away from the chamber opening.
I will be using it again today so hopefully I don't have a repeat!
