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You got great advice here...stop soaking the wood, it really does nothing and keep the exhaust fully open the entire cook, really no need to close it off at all, control your temps with intakes only.
Hey guys - The minion method does make excess smoke for the reasons noted in the first replies. It allows that initial burnoff and smokeoff to occur inside the smoker. Depending on how much you overlap the coals you can develop an acrid taste as well. I've gotten decent results with it but you can't fine tune the smoke as nice as preburned charcoal and added wood chunks.