So given my newfound quest for a stick burner, I have been watching a TON of offset smoker fire management videos. Came across a lot of good info. Some maybe not so good. One of the better ones shows Ben Lang explaining that you want to make heat, not smoke. He says make heat with a clean burning fire and the smoke will take care of itself. Makes sense.
So armed with all of my newfound knowledge and also this quote about firing smaller smokers . . .
I decided to try it out on my Brinkmann Smoke N Pit. Thin metal and all.
So I put the original firebox door back on. (I have a modified one I use with the Afterburner.) Had to make a new door latch. Don't know where the original got to.
I wanted to be able to objectively evaluate how I did so I had the thermos and data logger running. I like data!!
Started off with a full chimney of RO lump in the charcoal basket.
I don't have any small splits so I was using hickory chunks for "wood". Pre warmed a couple of chunks on the firebox and put them in on the bed of coals.
Pre-warming the chunks worked great. Got very little extra smoke when adding wood. I left the firebox door open until it was burning clean then closed the door.
I ran it most of the day with the firebox door open a bit to all the way to keep the fire burning clean. Even with the damper open all the way and the door closed it would start smoking after a few minutes.
Came up to 250° fairly quick with about a 15° difference end to end.
When the temp would drop to 240ish° or so I would add a couple more preheated chunks. Any lower than that and the coal bed was almost too small to keep things going. In fact early on I had to add a bit more lump to build the coal bed back up. The temp would spike up higher than I wanted but I wasn't too worried about it since it was mostly empty.
After awhile I put on some brats for the heck of it.
After about an hour, they were done. Check out the smoke ring.
After awhile I ran out of hickory so I was using some maple chunks that I have had for years. Tried to keep the fire small and hot.
Here is the extent of it.
Had to add wood about every 20 to 25 minutes which I expected. More frequently it seemed when I switched to maple. But the point was to practice so that was fine.
Here is a graph of the temps.
You can see the huge dip at about 1:15 pm when I had to add more lump to rebuild the coal bed. Put the brats on at 1:50 pm and took them off at 2:50 pm and you can see the associated dips in temp.
The dotted lines are at 225° and 275°. I had several hours of just cycling with a reasonable amount of control. I was pretty happy with that as it was my first time out with a cheapo big box store tin can offset.
Went about 4-1/2 hours and this is all the ashes I had.
Heck of a lot better than burning briquettes.
I'll definitely have to give it another go. And I can't wait until I have access to a smoker that can handle a bit larger fire.
So armed with all of my newfound knowledge and also this quote about firing smaller smokers . . .
Originally posted by SMOKE FREAK
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So I put the original firebox door back on. (I have a modified one I use with the Afterburner.) Had to make a new door latch. Don't know where the original got to.
I wanted to be able to objectively evaluate how I did so I had the thermos and data logger running. I like data!!
Started off with a full chimney of RO lump in the charcoal basket.
I don't have any small splits so I was using hickory chunks for "wood". Pre warmed a couple of chunks on the firebox and put them in on the bed of coals.
Pre-warming the chunks worked great. Got very little extra smoke when adding wood. I left the firebox door open until it was burning clean then closed the door.
I ran it most of the day with the firebox door open a bit to all the way to keep the fire burning clean. Even with the damper open all the way and the door closed it would start smoking after a few minutes.
Came up to 250° fairly quick with about a 15° difference end to end.
When the temp would drop to 240ish° or so I would add a couple more preheated chunks. Any lower than that and the coal bed was almost too small to keep things going. In fact early on I had to add a bit more lump to build the coal bed back up. The temp would spike up higher than I wanted but I wasn't too worried about it since it was mostly empty.
After awhile I put on some brats for the heck of it.
After about an hour, they were done. Check out the smoke ring.
After awhile I ran out of hickory so I was using some maple chunks that I have had for years. Tried to keep the fire small and hot.
Here is the extent of it.
Had to add wood about every 20 to 25 minutes which I expected. More frequently it seemed when I switched to maple. But the point was to practice so that was fine.
Here is a graph of the temps.
You can see the huge dip at about 1:15 pm when I had to add more lump to rebuild the coal bed. Put the brats on at 1:50 pm and took them off at 2:50 pm and you can see the associated dips in temp.
The dotted lines are at 225° and 275°. I had several hours of just cycling with a reasonable amount of control. I was pretty happy with that as it was my first time out with a cheapo big box store tin can offset.
Went about 4-1/2 hours and this is all the ashes I had.
Heck of a lot better than burning briquettes.
I'll definitely have to give it another go. And I can't wait until I have access to a smoker that can handle a bit larger fire.
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