How do you get "thin blue smoke" without being too high on temps?

Not having a Kamado, but reading others posts about kettle type smokers, "usually" briquettes are used as a base heat with chunks buried in the briquettes for smoke flavor...  burying, I think, reduces the flare up from chunks..  reduced oxygen from being buried..   Maybe some Kamado folks will give their opinion about fire control...

Oh....   seal up the lower air inlet...  should help keep stray oxygen out of the cooker...   even my Weber lower inlet seas air tight...  I can close it and the fire goes out in the briquettes....

These kinds of things are difficult to diagnose from afar, but I'll throw some ideas out there based on having smoked on a ceramic (Grill Dome) almost 15 years.

My first thoughts are your issues are related to one (or more of the following):

1.  Building too big a fire at the start.

2.  Wood chunks ignited.  If they catch fire it would certainly increase the temp in a hurry.

3.  Flare ups from grease dripping from the meat into the fire.  This is easily diagnosed by the great gobs of gray/white smoke that come out the exhaust like an old coal-fired locomotive.  You didn't mention this, so probably not the issue.

I'll explain my process to see if it helps.

One of the primary advantages of ceramics is how efficient they are.  Only takes a small fire to carry temps from 200-250 for hours.

If I'm doing a long cook (like butt or brisket), I load the cooker up to the fire ring with Royal Oak lump (I still miss Ozark Oak).

I want a beginning fire only about the size of my fist.  I start it with a single paraffin charcoal starter in the very center of the lump.  Light the cube, open the vents, and close the lid.  Only takes about 15 minutes for it to fire up.

When the coals are good and started, I damper down.  Put the exhaust about 1/2 way and the intake just barely open.  I putz around with the vents if needed until the cooker has stabilized at the target temp for 30 minutes.  Also go slow when making adjustments because it's a real pain to bring the temp down if you overshoot.  That's why it's important to damper down earlier than you might think is right.

Once temp is stable I put a tennis ball size chunk (or combination if they're small) on the fire and 1 or 2 more on the unlit coals next to the fire. These will light as the fire works itself outward when the original coals are exhausted.

Then put the meat on.  Temp will drop a lot, but resist the urge to mess with the controls.  The residual heat from the ceramic helps with recovery, and if you gets antsy trying to hurry up the process you'll throw off the setting you had already dialed in and might never get it back.

I guess I've been really lucky cooking on the ceramic because it's almost always "fire and forget" with me.  Typically I have the top vent open about 3/4 and the bottom just barely open--usually about the width of a toothpick and never wider than a pencil (when doing low & slow). This gets me through up to 12 hours of smoking, and there's usually unfired or partially fired lump left over.

Nice post zymer!

Mike