For Tasunka....

[bigsteve]

Hey, you wanted some photos of my lighting technique. I thought your's looked better, but here you go.........


I normally light 32 blue bag kingsford to get 240* at my dome thermometer. In this photo there are 50 lit, since I'm cooking chicken and want to run higher. Hope it works, it's the first time I wanted to smoke hotter than 240*



In this step I generally take about 70 or so unlit, and dump them next to the lit coal, not on top, or vice versa. (It's just my spin on Minions' method is all.) Then I use tongs to put unlits across the edge of the lit coals, and to make sure I have my unlits pretty much doubled up. Normally this configuration will give me 240* solid for 3 hours. Next regular smoke, I'll finish filling the pan with unlits and see if it will go 4 hrs. Today I need a hotter and shorter smoke. Not sure where these coals will take me.

 

[tasunkawitko]

looks good so far, steve - thanks for posting it.

it looks like it should work just fine that way, don't know if burn rates or consistency would be any different than the way i do it (which is from the middle out rather than side-to side), but would be interesting to do a comparison.

 

[suprfast]

Thanks, this might work for me too.

kris

 

[bigsteve]

This method was my first attempt at fine tuning. It works well for me, so I haven't tried anything else yet. Last week Ron lit off his whole pan, and had 240* for over 4 hrs. First smoke I did, I lit off a whole large Weber chimney, which didn't fill the whole pan, and I was up around 400* for a long time,

 

[bigsteve]

Well that's strange

I started with 50 hot coals instead of 32, and it went to 240* and has set steady for an hour. LOL Just when I thought I had it figured out!

Not going to mess with it. 240 will get me fine results. Might crisp the skin at the end if needed.

 

[tasunkawitko]

did it hold pretty well for a length of time?

 

[bigsteve]

I was just telling Ron in another thread....... It held solid at 240* for the whole two hours it took to do the birds. When I was done, I looked at the firepan, and only about half of the unlits were burning. That's odd. Normally the whole pan is ashed over and going strong by then. I'm really not sure what happened. I know the coal has never been wet, and the pan could breath. 240 solid is great on a Brinkman, except I was trying to go passed 300. Weird.

 

[tasunkawitko]

perhaps the smoker thought you were doing ribs today instead of birds?

 

[bigsteve]

That makes as much sense as anything else. Bottom line was the chicken was very moist and tender.