I'm exhausted, but soooooo pleased with ROR. I was spiky on temps on Saturday during my 17.5 hour brisket cook. I'll chalk this up to the inexpeirience with ROR which definitely burns hotter. Sunday's pork butts when miles better. Temperatures were steady during my 9.5 hr cook, I was still tired from the day before, so I foil wrapped the butts instead of cooking unfoiled. Both the brisket and pork was delicious, and I'm glad I bought 10 bags of ROR. Plan on grabbing some more if I can find another sale.
As I explained earlier in this thread, I was a dedicated KBB user for decades, and four years or so in my WSM. I had to relearn how to set my vents and cold/hot load the RO Ridge. For 225F, I'd use 45-60 hot KBB, about 1/4 chimney, in my WSM. Now I use 8 or so RO Ridge. Huge difference.
Now I can dial in anything from 150F to 350+. When I want 150F, 4 hot RO Ridge briquettes.
I still use a full load of cold charcoal regardless of what I'm smoking and just reuse the unburned. Another trick I learned when loading the cold charcoal, is to give the legs on my WSM a few kicks, or just shake the bottom bowl pretty hard. The Ridges kind of settle into each other, cutting down on the airflow through the briquettes, which keeps the temps down for those low temp smokes.
I keep an eye out for sales. You can always pick up Embers at Home Depot. It is RO Ridge.